“We have to realize they are unable to maintain abstinence not for lack of desire but because their brain is damaged.”
Dean for Academic and Scientific Affairs and Director of the Friedman Brain Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
Dr. Nestler studies the molecular basis of addiction and depression in animal models, focusing on the brain pathways that regulate responses to natural rewards such as food, sex and social interaction. His research has established that drug- and stress-induced changes in genetic transcription factors and chromatin remodeling mechanisms in reward pathways mediate long-lived behavioral changes relevant to addiction and depression.
Before moving to Mount Sinai, Dr. Nestler was Chair of Psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas and the Director of the Abraham Ribicoff Research Facilities and the Division of Molecular Psychiatry at Yale.
