Godfrey D Pearlson, MA, MBBS
Dr. Pearlson's medical school training was in the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in England . Following this he completed a graduate degree in philosophy at Columbia University in New York and was successively a resident, postdoctoral fellow and faculty member at Johns Hopkins University Department of Psychiatry under Dr. Paul McHugh, where he was ultimately Professor of Psychiatry and founding director of the division of Psychiatry Neuroimaging.
Dr. Pearlson is currently founding director of the Olin Neuropsychiatry Research Center, a 50-person organization consisting of 4 component labs. The Center specializes in the translational neuroscience of major mental illness, including dementias, mood disorders, substance abuse, schizophrenia and psychotic bipolar disorder, PTSD, autism and other conditions spanning childhood to old age.
The center includes two 3-Tesla research-dedicated MRI scanners and scans over 1200 individuals annually, all of whom are genotyped. It has a fully equipped psychophysiology lab and a bio-bank for specimen storage. The Center also specializes in the importation of virtual reality (VR) paradigms into the functional MRI environment to yield ecologically valid "virtual environments" to study complex behaviors in the scanner such as automobile driving.
Dr. Pearlson's research uses neuroimaging as a tool to address a broader array of questions regarding the neurobiology of major mental disorders, primarily psychosis and substance abuse. Important "firsts" include showing that structural and functional brain changes associated with schizophrenia can also occur in psychotic bipolar disorder, the relationship of structural and functional abnormalities in the superior temporal gyrus with hallucinations in schizophrenia, using VR to explore complex behaviors in the MRI scanner (or example simulated driving) to assess disruptive effects of abused substances and the first demonstration of human in-vivo cocaine-mediated dopamine release using PET ligands. As part of the BSNIP consortium, his lab contributed towards a reconceptualization of psychotic illness based on biological, rather than clinical syndromic criteria.
Dr. Pearlson is an former NIMH MERIT awardee and is PI on multiple R01 grants from NIAAA, NIDA and NIMH. He has been awarded a NARSAD Distinguished Investigator award and a Michael visiting professorship from the Weizmann Institute. He has published >600 peer-reviewed research articles, with an H-index of 78. He is also co-founder of the annual BrainDance competition for high school and college students across New England. These competitive awards encourage students to gain knowledge about psychiatric diseases and to develop a more tolerant and realistic perspective towards people with severe psychiatric problems.
Dr. Pearlson was awarded the 2015 Stanley Dean Award for Schizophrenia Research from the American College of Psychiatrists and in 2015 was inducted into the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars (distinguished alumni).
Current important intra-departmental collaborations are with Drs. Krystal (CTNA), Gelernter and Potenza.
