Huda Akil

Walker Ames Endowment

• Co-Director and Research Professor, MBNI
• Distinguished University Professor and Quarton Professor of Neurosciences, Department of Psychiatry, University of Michigan

October 26, 2011   |   6:30 p.m.
Health Sciences Building, Hogness Auditorium

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You do not need to be an alum of the University of Washington to attend or register.
Powered in partnership with the UW Alumni Association

The Depressed Brain: Here Lies the Winter of Our Discontent

Huda Akil's talk will describe the efforts to search for genes and molecules related to mood disorders: major depression and bipolar (manic-depressive) illness. It discusses the power and challenges of genetic and genomic approaches to certain brain diseases, and presents the concept of a "brain signature" of the mood disorder. Finally, it focuses on some specific new discoveries and their implications for developing better strategies for diagnosis, treatment and prevention of these devastating disorders.

Huda Akil, Ph.D. is the Gardner Quarton Distinguished University Professor of Neuroscience and Psychiatry and the co-director of the Molecular & Behavioral Neuroscience Institute at the University of Michigan. Akil has made seminal contributions to the understanding of the brain biology of emotions, including pain, anxiety, depression and substance abuse. She and her colleagues provided the first physiological evidence for a role of endorphins in the brain; they showed that endorphins are activated by stress and cause pain inhibition.

Akil's current research investigates the genetic, molecular and neural mechanisms underlying stress, addiction and mood disorders. She is engaged in large-scale studies to discover new genes and proteins that cause vulnerability to major depression and bipolar illness. Her laboratory also develops genetic and behavioral animal models of temperament and affect. She is the author of over 500 original scientific papers, and has been named as one of the most highly cited neuroscientists by the ISI Citation Index.

Akil's scientific contributions have been recognized with numerous honors and awards. These include the Pacesetter Award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse in 1993 and the Pasarow Award for Neuroscience Research in 1994. In 1998, she received the Sachar Award from Columbia University and the Bristol-Myers Squibb Unrestricted Research Funds Award. She is also the recipient of the Society for Neuroscience Mika Salpeter Lifetime Achievement Award, the NARSAD Patricia Goldman-Rakic Prize for Cognitive Neuroscience (2007), and most recently the Koch Award from the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (2010). In 1994, she was elected to the membership of the Institute of Medicine (IOM). She was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2000. In 2004, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2011, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

Akil has served on numerous boards and scientific councils as well as non-profit national and international organizations to promote scientific and brain health awareness nationally and globally. She is the past president of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (1998) and the past president of the Society for Neuroscience (2004), the largest neuroscience organization in the world. She co-chairs the Neuroscience Steering Committee at the Foundation for the National Institute of Health (FNIH) gro-bruntlandand is currently serving her second term on the Council of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.

Sponsoring Departments:

• UW Graduate School
• UW Alumni Association
• UW Medicine: Department of Pharmacology
• Department of Physiology and Biophysics
• Graduate Program of Neurobiology and Behavior
• Department of Neurology
• Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
• Department of Psychology