Joshua Gordon, M.D., Ph.D.
New York State Psychiatric Institute & New York Presbyterian Hospital
Dr. Gordon is a psychiatrist and neuroscientist who combines laboratory-based studies examining mouse models of human psychiatric illness with clinical practice and teaching in general psychiatry. He earned his B.A. degree in Biology from Washington University in St. Louis in 1989, and completed a joint M.D./Ph.D. program at UCSF in 1997. He did his Residency at Columbia University/NYS Psychiatric Institute from 1997-2001, and a Research Fellowship there from 2001-2004. He has taught and researched as an Assistant Professor at Columbia University’s Department of Psychiatry since 2004. Since 2008, he has also directed Neuroscience Education for Columbia’s Psychiatric Residency Training Program. He has received several awards and grants for his research, including an IMHRO Rising Star Award, two NARSAD Young Investigator awards, and APA-GlaxoSmithKline Young Faculty award, and four grants from the National Institute of Mental Health.
Dr. Gordon’s particular expertise is in neurophysiology, or the study of patterns of electrical activity in the brain that underlie behavior. Dr. Gordon’s laboratory investigates the how the genes that cause psychiatric illness impact on brain function to cause the symptoms of the disease. The long-term goal of such research is to identify abnormal patterns of brain activity and novel drug targets that could be used to normalize these patterns. In the research sponsored by HDRF, Dr. Gordon and his colleagues are utilizing various pharmacogenetic, optogenetic, and neurophysiological technologies to probe the neural circuits underlying depression-like behavior in genetic mouse models of depression.