Ronald Duman

Ronald S. Duman is a Professor of Psychiatry and Pharmacology Director, Division of Molecular Psychiatry and Abraham Ribicoff Research Facilities at Yale University. [ [http://www.med.yale.edu/psych/faculty/duman.html Duman's Yale Faculty Website] ] .

Education

Duman received his Ph.D. in 1985 from the The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.

Career

Ron Duman's research centers around the biological mechanisms behind antidepressants. In his landmark 1995 paper, he discovered that antidepressants increase the gene expression of Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor, or (BDNF) [ [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=7472505&query_hl=2&itool=pubmed_DocSum First paper demonstrating the link between antidepressants and BDNF levels] ] in the hippocampus. In a later paper he discovered that the downstream effect of BDNF is to increase neurogenesis or the formation of new neurons in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus] ) [ [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=11124987&query_hl=2&itool=pubmed_DocSum Abstract of paper demonstrating that antidepressants increase neurogenesis] ] .

The results of this work led him to formulate the hypothesis that depression is caused by a decrease in hippocampal neurogenesis caused by elevated cortisol levels.

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