Dr. Steven E. Hyman will be the guest speaker at The Vanderbilt Brain Institute’s public lecture, “Genes and the Brain: The Future of Brain Research.” The lecture will be held Sept. 24 at 8 p.m. in 208 Light Hall.
Hyman is the director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the component of the National Institutes of Health charged with generating the knowledge needed to understand, treat, and prevent mental illness.
Under Hyman’s leadership, NIMH has heightened the priority it gives to four broad areas: fundamental research on brain, behavior and genetics; rapid translation of basic discoveries into research on mental disorders and their treatment; research focused on improving the lives of people with mental disorders, including clinical trials and studies of preventive interventions conducted in “real world” settings; and research on childhood mental disorders.
Hyman continues to direct an active research program in molecular neurobiology on the NIH campus (Bethesda, MD), focused on how the neurotransmitter dopamine regulates gene expression in neurons in the brain.