Saturday Science Lecture on 17 February Titled
"Schizophrenia: The Broken Brain and How to Fix It"

12 February 2007 —A free public lecture titled "Schizophrenia: The Broken Brain and How to Fix It" will be given on Saturday, 17 February 2007, by Robert Levenson, professor of pharmacology in the Penn State College of Medicine. The lecture will take place from 11:00 a.m. to about 12:30 p.m. in 100 Thomas Building on the Penn State University Park campus. The event is the fourth of five weekly lectures in the 2007 Penn State Lectures on the Frontiers of Science, an annual series designed as a free minicourse for the enjoyment and education of residents in Central Pennsylvania communities. The theme of the series this year is "Broken Brains: New Research on Brain Disease Is Revealing How the Healthy Mind Works."

Levenson’s lecture will examine how neuropharmacology has helped define the circuitry within the brain that goes haywire in schizophrenia. Very little currently is known about the underlying causes of schizophrenia. However, by focusing on how antipsychotic drugs work, researchers have achieved fundamental insight into some of the signaling processes that must be maintained for normal brain function and that become dysfunctional in schizophrenia. "Antipsychotic drugs recently have gained a great deal of notoriety due to their adverse side effects," Levenson says. "Although these side effects often have hampered treatment modalities, understanding their basis has spawned the development of new types of drugs with improved therapeutic efficacy."

Levenson has focused his research on understanding the molecular regulation of dopamine signaling and the causes of schizophrenia. He has been carrying out research in schizophrenia since the early 1990s, when he was encouraged to enter the field by the eminent Yale neuroscientist Patricia Goldman-Rakic. In collaboration with Drs. Goldman-Rakic and Clare Bergson, then a postdoctoral fellow, Levenson’s lab began a series of seminal experiments that revealed how the neurotransmitter receptors that were the targets of antipsychotic drugs were organized and regulated in the normal and the schizophrenic brain. In recognition of this work, Levenson was named a Distinguished Investigator of the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD). In addition to his position as professor of pharmacology at Penn State, Levenson is also a senior member of the Yale Center for Neuroscience Research of Mental Disorders.

Levenson's work was recognized with a Basil O'Connor Award from the March of Dimes in 1984, a Swebilius Cancer Award from the Yale University School of Medicine in 1984, an Established Investigator award from the American Heart Association in 1986, a John and Samuel Bard Award in Medicine and Science from Bard College in 2003, and an Essel Foundation Award from the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression in 2003.

Levenson received a bachelor's degree in biology from Bard College in 1967 and studied medicine at the University of Florence, Italy, from 1967 to 1970. He received a master's degree in biology from New York University in 1971 and a doctoral degree in developmental biology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1976. He was a postdoctoral fellow and research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1976 to 1983. He was on the faculty of the Department of Cell Biology at the Yale University School of Medicine from 1983 to 1994 and held a joint appointment as associate professor of neurobiology from 1993 to 1994. He joined Penn State as professor of pharmacology in the Penn State College of Medicine in 1994.

Levenson is a Fellow of the American Cancer Society and a Fellow of the Leukemia Society of America. He served on the Scientific Review Committee for the Pew Memorial Trust in 1985; the New England Regional Research Peer Review Committee for the American Heart Association from 1987 to 1989; and was an ad hoc member of the Physical Biochemistry Study Section of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1996. He was a consultant to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) for Programs of Excellence in Molecular Biology in 1989 and 1995, for Molecular Mechanisms Controlling Myocardial Growth and Hypertrophy in 1986; and for Molecular Characterization of Ion Channels in the Myocardial Sarcolemma in 1987. He was a member of the Special Review Committee on Signal Transduction in Cardiopulmonary Cells for the NIH/NHLBI in 1997. He currently is a consultant to the Department of Veterans Affairs; The Wellcome Trust; the Medical Research Council of Canada; and the Ontario Mental Health Foundation.

The 2007 Penn State Lectures on the Frontiers of Science are a free minicourse consisting of five consecutive lectures focused on recent research on the structure and function of the human brain. Audience members who attend the consecutive lectures will gain an understanding of how the study of brain disease is helping researchers to make new discoveries about normal brain function. The lecture series is sponsored by the Penn State Eberly College of Science, with additional financial support provided by Pfizer Inc. The final lecture in the series is:

• • "Brain Repair: Hopes and Challenges" by Gong Chen, assistant professor of biology at Penn State, in 112 Kern Building on 24 February.

Thomas Building is located at the intersection of Pollock and Shortlidge Roads on the Penn State University Park Campus. Free parking is available in the Eisenhower Parking Deck behind Eisenhower Auditorium.

For more information or access assistance, contact the Eberly College of Science Office of Public Information by telephone at (814) 863-0901, by e-mail at science@psu.edu, or click on the web link at http://www.science.psu.edu/alert/frontiers/.

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