Yale Bulletin and Calendar

June 29, 2001Volume 29, Number 33Four-Week Issue



Ronald Duman



Duman is designated as Jameson Professor

Ronald Duman, recently appointed as ,the Elizabeth Mears & House Jameson Professor of Psychiatry, is studying how antidepressant treatments and stress affect the body at the molecular and cellular level, and how brain receptors are involved in drug reward and craving.

A major focus of his work is to characterize the molecular and cellular mechanisms that mediate the long-term effects of psychotropic drugs and stress. The results of his laboratory work in this area suggest that antidepressant treatments increase the survival and health of neurons and alter their synaptic architecture. He is also testing a hypothesis that certain stress-related forms of depression may result from injury of neurons and that antidepressant treatments may repair or protect these neurons.

Duman's laboratory has identified several neuropeptide receptors that are expressed in drug reward and craving. He and his colleagues are now studying ways to block certain dopamine system reactions to prevent drug abuse behavior in humans. Much of Duman's work has been supported by grants from the National Institutes of Mental Health, the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression.

Duman authored or coauthored more than 100 original articles in scientific publications. He also has coauthored more than three dozen book reviews and chapters.

Duman earned his B.S. from the College of William and Mary in Virginia and his Ph.D. from the University of Texas Medical School in Houston. Before coming to Yale as a postdoctoral fellow in the School of Medicine's Department of Psychiatry, he was a laboratory director in the University of Notre Dame's biology department and was a predoctoral and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas Medical School. At Yale, he became an assistant professor in 1988, an associate professor in 1993 and a tenured associate professor in 1997. Since 1999 he has been a full professor in both the Department of Psychiatry and the Department of Pharmacology.

Duman was director of the psychiatry department's Division of Molecular Neurobiology and Neuropharmacology and director of the department's Biological Sciences Training Program. He also directed the Ribicoff Research Laboratory.

Duman's awards include a National Science Foundation Travel Award, an Eli Lilly Pharmacology Award, an ECT Investigator's Award and a Donaghue Foundation Investigator Award. He also was named a Laureate Psychiatry and Hospital Investigator and a van Ameringen Investigator.


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