Depression in Women: The Brain in Context

press release: This year University of Wisconsin Department of Psychiatry is launching the 25th annual Wisconsin Symposium on Emotion with a free public talk by Dr. David Rubinow, professor and chair of psychiatry at UNC-Chapel Hill, Director of the UNC Women’s Mood Disorders Program, and former Clinical Director of the National Institute of Mental Health.

Tuesday, April 9, 5:00 – 6:00pm, Health Sciences Learning Center Auditorium (HSLC 1306), 750 Highland Avenue, Madison 53705

* This talk is free and open to the public – no registration is necessary *

One could argue that the most important question we can ask about brain and behavior is the following: why is it that different people respond differently to the same stimulus? As much as we have learned about neuroscience over the past twenty-five years, largely consequent to some of the amazing tools that have been developed, it is overwhelmingly apparent that the brain, like other organs, responds very differently to a given signal as a product of context. This context includes past exposure, sex, current environment, genetic inheritance, and hormonal state. The role of context in the regulation of brain and generation of different behavioral responses is wonderfully illustrated by examining the role of reproductive steroid hormones – estrogen and progesterone – in depression that occurs in women during periods of reproductive change: the menstrual cycle, peripartum, and perimenopausal. In this presentation, I will describe some of the technologies that allow us to peer into the brain and will illustrate how the biology of sex hormones enables us to understand how context shapes the tremendous variability in health and behavior.

Dr. David Rubinow is the Assad Meymandi Professor and chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, School of Medicine. Prior to joining UNC, he was the clinical director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and chief of the Behavioral Endocrinology Branch. His research interests focus on neurobehavioral effects of gonadal steroids and how genetic variation contributes to differential behavioral response to changes in steroid signaling. Research methods used include administration of hormone super agonists and receptor blockers to manipulate the menstrual cycle and identify the central effects of gonadal steroids in isolation.These studies have demonstrated that, unlike mood disorders accompanying endocrinopathies, reproductive endocrine-related mood disorders represent abnormal responses to normal hormonal signals. Current NIH funded studies include investigations of continuous oral contraceptive administration in menstrual cycle-related mood disorders, estradiol effects on cardiovascular risk and mood dysregulation during the perimenopause, and biomarkers of postpartum depression. Additionally, the UNC Women’s Mood Disorders Program, which he directs, has the first and only NIH training fellowship in Women’s Mood Disorders. On the basis of his research, he was inducted into the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies in 2012. Dr. Rubinow is also the Director of the UNC Center for Innovation and Health Care System Transformation, which promotes the development of patient-centered innovations designed to address the current challenges facing our nation’s health care delivery system.