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Date:
Wednesday, November 9, 2022
Location:
Luskin Conference Center
425 Westwood Plaza
Los Angeles, CA 90095
Directions & Parking Information
In November 2022, we held our first annual UC Neuromodulation Consortium (UCNC) Conference at the Luskin Conference Center located on the UCLA campus. The UCNC brings together experts from UCLA, UCSD, and UCSF to discuss the latest clinical and research advances in using brain stimulation techniques.
This year’s conference focused on advances in the use of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS). Our speakers discussed novel approaches to the treatment of depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and chronic pain. In addition, special presentations focused on TMS strategies to achieve more rapid remission from depression, as well as treatment of suicidal ideation. Topics included:
Zafiris ‘Jeff’ Daskalakis is the Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at UC San Diego. He was formerly the Temerty Chair and Chief of the General Adult Psychiatry at CAMH. His research focusses on neurophysiological and treatment studies using transcranial magnetic brain stimulation (rTMS) and magnetic seizure therapy (MST). He has established Canada’s first TMS clinical training program and he holds or has held numerous federal operating grants and awards, including grants from the NIH and CIHR. He has received over $60 million in research funding as PI, has over 480 peer-reviewed publications, and is an editorial board member for Biological Psychiatry and he is an Associate Editor for Clinical Neurophysiology. He is also a member of the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation (formerly NARSAD) Scientific Council.
Zafiris J. Daskalakis, MD, PhD
Dr. Igor and JoAnn Grant Chair in Psychiatry
Professor and Chair
Department of Psychiatry
School of Medicine
UC San Diego
Biomedical Sciences Building
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla, California 92093-0603
Voice: (858) 534-5821
Fax: (858) 534-7653
e-mail: zdaskalakis@health.ucsd.edu
Cory R. Weissman, MD, is a board-certified psychiatrist whose focus is providing care for patients with treatment-resistant mental illness. He has experience treating patients with severe mood, psychotic and substance use disorders in inpatient and outpatients settings. He believes that advancements in neuroscience will help progress and personalize interventional treatments in order to lead to better and faster outcomes for patients struggling with severe illness.
Dr. Weissman has clinical and research interests in interventional psychiatry. During his fellowship, he developed expertise in the delivery of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), and magnetic seizure therapy (MST). He continues to develop his clinical skills in a variety of interventional treatments while also now completing a PhD in pharmacology and toxicology.
Dr. Weissman serves as an assistant professor and medical director of interventional psychiatry at UC San Diego within the interventional psychiatry clinic. His current research focus is on the development of novel treatments for suicidality in patients with severe mental illness. He has published on the use of rTMS and MST for patients with treatment-resistant major depressive disorder (TRD) and co-morbid suicidality.
Dr. Weissman is excited about the promise of psychedelic compounds and other interventional pharmacologic agents as psychiatric treatments. He has published on the potential role of psychedelics as treatments for suicidality, and hopes to continue this line of work within the UC San Diego interventional psychiatry program.
Andrew Krystal is a pioneer in the application of computational modeling to the study of biomarker development using EEG in patients with depression and sleep disorders and application of biomarkers in treatment development clinical trials. He also has extensive experience in clinical and research personalization of therapies for the treatment of patients with mood disorders. He has been the principal investigator of more than 50 single-site and multi-site clinical trials.
Dr. Lee established and serves as director of the OCD Clinical-Translation Program at UCSF in 2020. He also established the TMS and Neuromodulation Clinic where he is a staff psychiatrist and provides deep brain stimulation (DBS) as treatments for severe, refractory OCD. Dr. Lee also direccts a translational research lab focused on understanding the neural networks underlying OCD and points of intervention for neuromodulatory intervention using TMS and DBS. These include imaging and electrophysiological studies using long-term chronic brain recordings with DBS device to identify biomarkers of psychiatric symptoms and dynamics over time. Overall, the goal of his research is to identify novel neuromodulatory strategies to treat OCD and related disorders through personalized targeting and understanding the brain’s response to therapy.
Dr. Corlier has completed a B.Sc. degree in Psychology at the University of Bremen, Germany, followed by a dual M.Sc. degree in Brain and Mind Sciences at University College London, UK and Sorbonne Universities in Paris, France. She obtained her Ph.D. at Sorbonne Universities in the domain of Cognitive Neurophysiology where she worked with local field potential and multi-unit recordings in human subjects. She subsequently completed her postdoctoral training in the UCLA Neuromodulation Division where she has recently joined the faculty. Dr. Corlier’s research interests include the use of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) for the treatment of chronic pain and depression, and TMS-EEG mechanisms.
Andrew F. Leuchter, MD, is a Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, and Director of the Neuromodulation Division at the Semel Institute. Dr. Leuchter is a graduate of Stanford University and the Baylor College of Medicine who joined the UCLA faculty in 1986.
An expert on the treatment of mood disorders, Dr. Leuchter directs the Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) Clinical and Research Service. This is one of the largest academic TMS program in the country, which performs more than 7,000 treatments each year for patients with depression, pain, and other neuropsychiatric illness. He performs research to enhance TMS treatment effectiveness, as well as clinical trials to improve treatment of depression, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Dr. Leuchter’s research aims to develop novel treatment strategies and uses brain-imaging techniques, such as quantitative electroencephalography (qEEG) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to examine brain function and predict which treatments are most likely to benefit individual patients.
Dr. Leuchter has authored over 200 scientific articles on topics including neuromodulation for the treatment of depression, EEG biomarkers to guide treatment of neuropsychiatric illness, and theories of antidepressant action. He teaches internationally on TMS and other neuromodulation methods, and received the 2019 Outstanding Research Mentor Award from the Semel Institute.