Principal Investigator:  Robert Hendren, D.O.

Dr. Hendren is the principal investigator on nine (9) industry-sponsored clinical drug trials and one investigator-initiated "innovative treatment trial". Pediatric studies include a placebo control trial of aripiprazole for biplolar disorder and for schizophrenia and an extension study; a placebo controlled study of quetiapine for bipolar disorder or for schizophrenia and an extension study, a placebo controlled study of escitalopram for depression and an extension study and sertraline for PTSD. An FDA and IRB approved placebo cross over study of subcutaneous methyl cobalamine (B12) in young children with autism is ongoing and funded from a small MIND Institute grant. A NICAM grant application is in preparation.

Principal Investigator:  Robert Hendren, D.O.

A pilot study using genetic microarrays for children with autism to find differential patterns between those who respond favorably to risperidone is currently underway funded by a small grant from the M.I.N.D. Institute.

Principal Investigator:  Richard J. Maddock, M.D.

The panic response is an "alarm" mechanism which may have adaptive value in the face of threat.  However, in patients with panic disorder, this response repeatedly occurs at inappropriate times.  The regulatory web that governs this neurobiological process appears to be disordered.  Current research in my laboratory attempts to elucidate the nature of this dysfunction using a variety of neuroscience methods, including cognitive, metabolic and pharmacological challenge studies and functional neuroimaging.  The most consistent cognitive finding in panic disorder is that such patients exhibit longer response latencies to emotionally salient words on various cognitive tasks, including color naming and lexical decision tasks.  FMRI studies in our lab have shown that emotionally salient words consistently activate the retrosplenial region of the posterior cingulate gyrus, and the right amygdala in normal subjects.  Differences in the brain response to such stimuli in panic patients may suggest brain regions implicated in the pathogenesis of panic disorder.  Comparative studies in panic disorder patients are undergoing data analysis.  Several lines of evidence suggest that panic patients respond abnormally to metabolic challenges which affect the regulation of pH, including sodium lactate infusions and CO2 inhalation.  In our lab we have shown that panic patients consistently have an exaggerated systemic lactic acid response to alkalosis.  More recently, Dager and colleagues have reported the same abnormality within the brains of panic patients.  Magnetic resonance spectroscopy studies of brain energy metabolism and pH regulation in response to metabolic challenges in panic patients are being planned to test competing models of the mechanism of this metabolic abnormality.