The Department of Psychiatry at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has received a five-year grant of over $9.3 million to form a new Silvio O. Conte Center for the Neuroscience of Mental Disorders to study the onset of schizophrenia. The new center brings together a diverse group of experts from four universities to conduct comprehensive studies of brain development in the earliest stages of life through early adulthood, when the disease is typically diagnosed.

The UNC Conte Center is one of 20 centers in the United States and one of only two named this year. Conte Centers are funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and were created to honor former U.S. Representative Silvio O. Conte, a longtime advocate for scientific research on brain diseases who died in 1991.

Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, the Thad & Alice Eure Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry, Pharmacology and Radiology at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Medicine, is the principal investigator for the UNC Conte Center. Dr. Anthony LaMantia, associate professor of cell and molecular physiology, and Dr. John Gilmore, professor of psychiatry, are co-principal investigators. They have assembled a multidisciplinary team of scientists from UNC, Duke University, Harvard University and the University of Washington to conduct the Center's research. This team is comprised of experts in many scientific fields, including adult and child psychiatry, medical genetics, obstetrics and gynecology, neonatology, radiology, computer science and biostatistics.

"The essential and distinctive aspect of this Center is that it unites the intellectual resources of four great universities and the expertise of individuals from diverse scientific disciplines," said Dr. Lieberman. "Through our collective findings, we hope to explain how certain behavioral and neurobiological factors transform apparently normal individuals to persons with the symptoms of schizophrenia. This could lead to more effective t
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Contact: Sheryl McKelvey
sheryl_mckelvey@med.unc.edu
919-843-3784
University of North Carolina School of Medicine
22-Oct-2002

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