Godfrey Pearlson, MA, MBBS
Professor of Psychiatry and of NeuroscienceCards
About
Titles
Professor of Psychiatry and of Neuroscience
Biography
Dr. Pearlson's medical school training was in the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in England. Following this he completed a graduate degree in philosophy at Columbia University in New York and was successively a resident, postdoctoral fellow and faculty member at Johns Hopkins University Department of Psychiatry under Dr. Paul McHugh, where he was ultimately Professor of Psychiatry and founding director of the division of Psychiatry Neuroimaging.
Dr. Pearlson is currently founding director of the Olin Neuropsychiatry Research Center, a 50-person organization consisting of 5 component labs. The Center specializes in the translational neuroscience of major mental illness, including dementias, mood disorders, substance abuse (cannabis, alcohol, cocaine), schizophrenia and psychotic bipolar disorder, ADHD, autism spectrum and other conditions spanning childhood to old age.
The center includes two 3-Tesla research-dedicated MRI scanners and scans ~1200 individuals annually, all of whom are genotyped. It has a fully equipped psychophysiology lab, rTMS suite and a bio-bank for specimen storage. The Center also specializes in the importation of virtual reality (VR) paradigms into the functional MRI environment to yield ecologically valid "virtual environments" to study complex behaviors in the scanner such as automobile driving.
Dr. Pearlson's research uses neuroimaging as a tool to address a broader array of questions regarding the neurobiology of major mental disorders, primarily psychosis and substance abuse. Important "firsts" include showing that structural and functional brain changes associated with schizophrenia can also occur in psychotic bipolar disorder, the relationship of structural and functional abnormalities in the superior temporal gyrus with hallucinations in schizophrenia, using VR to explore complex behaviors in the MRI scanner (or example simulated driving) to assess disruptive effects of abused substances (cannabis, alcohol) and the first demonstration of human in-vivo cocaine-mediated dopamine release using PET ligands. As part of the B-SNIP consortium, his lab contributed towards a reconceptualization of psychotic illness based on biological, rather than clinical syndromic criteria.
Dr. Pearlson is an former NIMH MERIT awardee and is PI on multiple R01 grants from NIAAA, NIDA and NIMH. He has been awarded a NARSAD Distinguished Investigator award and a Michael visiting professorship from the Weizmann Institute. He has published >750 peer-reviewed research articles, with an H-index of 108. He is also co-founder of the annual BrainDance competition for high school and college students across New England. These competitive awards encourage students to gain knowledge about psychiatric diseases and to develop a more tolerant and realistic perspective towards people with severe psychiatric problems.
Dr. Pearlson was awarded the 2019 American Psychiatric Association Mentorship Award, the 2015 Stanley Dean Award for Schizophrenia Research from the American College of Psychiatrists and in 2015 was inducted into the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars (distinguished alumni).
Current important intra-departmental collaborations are with Drs. Krystal (CTNA), Gelernter and Potenza.
Appointments
Psychiatry
ProfessorPrimaryNeuroscience
ProfessorSecondary
Other Departments & Organizations
Education & Training
- MA
- Columbia University (1976)
- MBBS
- Newcastle University (1974)
Research
Overview
Large-scale, multi-disciplinary, multi-center, endophenotype-genotype investigations to study genetic determinants of pathologic conditions, including psychosis & alcoholism, as well as quantitative traits such as impulsivity and affective instability. Many of the data from these investigations are analyzed using multivariate statistical techniques such as parallel independent component analysis.
BSNIP:Bipolar Schizophrenia Network on Intermediate Phenotypes. A 3000-person study examining multiple endophenotypes in individuals with schizophrenia, psychotic bipolar disorder and schizoaffective disorder and their first-degree relatives that includes functional and structural imaging, EEG, cognitive and oculomotor testing and genotyping.
PARDIP:Psychosis and Related Domains- Intermediate Phenotypes. Similar to BSNIP, but conducted in non-psychotic bipolar patients and controls
BARCS:Brain and Alcohol Research in College Students. A longitudinal study that examines 2100 local college students for alcoholism risk and cannabis use using genotyping and multiple endophenotypes including EEG and structural/functional imaging over a 24-month period. This study includes regular Web-based reporting.of cannabis-impaired driving:
Neuroscience of cannabis-impaired vehicle driving: this NIDA-supported research examines the evolution over time of acute effects of various doses of smoked marijuana versus placebo on realistically simulated motor vehicle driving and various neurocognitive paradigms, both inside and outside the MRI scanner, along with biological measures of THC and metabolites inblood and saliva.
Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)
Academic Achievements & Community Involvement
News & Links
Media
- Various electrophysiological abnormalities were investigated in BSNIP including the P 300 evoked potential, responses to paired acoustic stimuli and resting state EEG patterns. All were analyzed using parallel independent component analysis, similar to the example above and resulting biological pathways implicated by the gene components compared for overlap among all three electrophysiological measures. Interestingly, a relatively small number of processes was implicated including development migration and maturation of cortical neurons, and neuronal signal generation and amplification. These findings strongly support a neurodevelopmental model of psychotic illnesses.
- Illustration from a PNAS paper, describing results from BSNIP (see above), using parallel independent component analysis.Figure shows SNP components related to functional MRI default mode components that distinguished psychotic patients from healthy controls.results show the functional significance in terms of gene ontology/biologic implications of putative psychosis risk genes related to abnormal functional brain activity patterns in individuals with psychotic illnesses. He
News
- August 29, 2024
Yale Researchers Awarded $20.6M Grant for Wide-Ranging Study of Mental Illness
- February 26, 2024
Steele, Kober, Pearlson Awarded CTNA Grant
- August 30, 2023
Marijuana: Rising THC Concentrations in Cannabis Can Pose Health Risks
- June 08, 2023
Pearlson Speaks on Cannabis, Psychosis at 19th Annual Flor-Henry Lectures