Mark S. George, M.D., the second recipient of the Falcone Prize, is Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at the Medical University of South Carolina, where he also directs the Center for Advanced Imaging Research and the Brain Stimulation Laboratory. He is one of the world's leading experts in the use of brain imaging and stimulation to understand depression and to devise new antidepressant treatments. In early research at the National Institute of Mental Health, Dr. George was one of the first scientists to expand the study of brain imaging technology for psychiatric disorders. He discovered specific brain changes during normal emotion, and began exploring brain changes in depression and mania. This led to his pioneering use of a noninvasive brain stimulation method, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), to probe neuronal circuits regulating mood, and to clinical trials of TMS in patients with treatment-resistant depression. This seminal work resulted in recent approval of TMS by the FDA for use within the United States.
About Dr. George's work, Dr. Post, chair of the prize selection committee wrote: "Dr. George is one of the true young pioneers of modern psychiatry. He has made seminal contributions to the development of new, nonconvulsive physiological interventions --rTMS (repeated transcranial magnetic stimulation) and VNS (vagus nerve stimulation) -- for the treatment of refractory unipolar and bipolar depression. He
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| Contact: Kristen Simone ksimone@narsad.org 516-829-0091 NARSAD, The Mental Health Research Association Source:Eurekalert |