Our research team of mental health clinicians and preclinical scientists, housed primarily at the New York Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, collaborates extensively with faculty throughout NYU School of Medicine and at other institutions.

Projects involving schizophrenia include: 1) studies on the role of dopamine and other neurotransmitters in symptom production and as the mechanism for both the therapeutic effects and the acute and longterm side effects of the antipsychotic drugs; 2) neuroimaging studies using positron emission tomography (PET), structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and functional MRI, which explore gray and white matter structural changes in schizophrenics, brain metabolic effects of drugs and cognitive activation paradigms, differences between treatment responsive and treatment refractory patients, and structural and metabolic changes associated with negative symptoms and the deficit syndrome; 3) pathophysiology and treatment of neuroleptic-induced movement disorders, involving a national Department of Veterans Affairs Cooperative Study, which we direct, on the efficacy of antioxidant treatment for tardive dyskinesia and a parallel study in rodents; and 4) psychophysiological studies exploring very early information-processing deficits associated with schizophrenia.

Similarly, we study the pathophysiology and treatment of substance abuse disorders, particularly opiate and cocaine dependence. We were recently funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse to establish a Substance Abuse Medications Development Center which includes a data management core and an analytical chemistry and pharmacokinetics core at the Nathan Kline Institute, PET pharmacokinetics at Brookhaven National Laboratories, and a pharmacogenetics laboratory at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.