At every General Meeting you can join us LIVE on our Facebook page if you are not able to attend!
Dr. Jong Yoon will present about two new neuroimaging studies of schizophrenia being conducted at Stanford. Each study involves novel approaches for measuring brain differences that may serve as markers or clues to the mechanism of the condition. The first study is seeking to improve the way researchers can measure levels of GABA, the brain’s “stop signal” thought to be linked to schizophrenia. While past studies could not find a difference in GABA levels at rest, the new study is testing whether GABA levels may differ instead when the brain is active. The second study will utilize a new neuroimaging tracer that for the first time is capable of visualizing neural synapses in living brains. The study will use this tracer to conduct one of the first tests of the idea that overpruning of synapses is the mechanism that causes schizophrenia. This hypothesis has become one of the most compelling theories on the mechanisms giving rise to schizophrenia, but up until now researchers have lacked the ability to directly test this.
Dr. Yoon is an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, as well as a practicing physician at the Palo Alto VA. He received his BA at Swarthmore College and his MD from the New York University School of Medicine. Dr. Yoon has devoted his career to the study of schizophrenia, its causes, and its treatments. For his work, he has won the NARSAD Young Investigator Award as well as the David Mahoney Neuroimaging Award.
Please join us at 7 P.M. in the auditorium of Good Samaritan Hospital (basement of main building). At 7:15 there will be NAMI announcements followed by our speaker from 7:30–8:30.
Good Samaritan is located at 2425 Samaritan Dr., San Jose, CA.
Upcoming General Meeting Speakers
July/August: No General Meetings
September 10: TBD
