Nancy Coover Andreasen

Nancy Coover Andreasen
Born Lincoln, Nebraska
Fields Neuroscience,
Neuropsychiatry
Notable awards National Medal of Science

Nancy Coover Andreasen is an American neuroscientist and neuropsychiatrist. She currently holds the Andrew H. Woods Chair of Psychiatry at the University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine.

Early life

Andreasen was born in Lincoln, Nebraska. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Nebraska with majors in English, History, and Philosophy. Supported as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow to Harvard and a Fulbright Fellow to Oxfords she received a Ph.D. in English literature. She was a Professor of Renaissance Literature in the Department of English at the University of Iowa for 5 years.[1] She published scholarly articles on John Donne and her first book in the field of Renaissance English literature: John Donne: Conservative Revolutionary.[2][3]

Clinical

A serious illness after the birth of her first daughter piqued Andreasen's interest in medicine and biomedical research, and she decided to change careers to study medicine.[4][5] She attended medical school at the University of Iowa College of Medicine, graduated in 1970 and completed her psychiatry residency in 1973.[6] In 1974, she conducted the first modern empirical study of creativity that recognized some association between creativity and manic-depressive illness.[7][8]

Early in her career she recognized that negative symptoms and associated cognitive impairments had more debilitating effects than psychotic symptoms, like delusions and hallucinations. While psychotic symptoms represent an exaggeration of normal brain/mind functions, negative symptoms represent a loss of normal functions, for example, alogia the loss of the ability to think and speak fluently, affective blunting the loss of the ability to express emotions, avolition, loss of the ability to initiate goal-directed activity, and anhedonia, loss of the ability to experience emotions.[9] The papers describing these concepts have become citation classics, as determined by the Science Citation Index produced by the Institute for Scientific Information.[10] Andreasen is largely responsible for development of the concept of negative symptoms in schizophrenia, having created the first widely used scales for rating the positive[11] and negative symptoms of schizophrenia.[12] She became one of the world's foremost authorities on schizophrenia. She contributed to nosology and phenomenology by serving on the DSM III and DSM IV Task Forces, chairing the Schizophrenia Work Group for DSM IV.[13]

Andreasen pioneered the application of neuroimaging techniques in major mental illnesses, and published the first quantitative study of magnetic resonance imaging of brain abnormalities in schizophrenia.[14] Andreasen became director of the Iowa Mental Health Clinical Research Center and the Psychiatric Iowa Neuroimaging Consortium. She leads a multidisciplinary team working on three-dimensional image analysis techniques to integrate multi-modality imaging and on developing automated analysis of structural and functional imaging techniques. Software developed by this team is known as BRAINS (Brain Research: Analysis of Images, Networks, and Systems).[15]

She resumed research about the neuroscience of creativity in the 2000s.[16]

Honors

In 2000 President Clinton awarded her the National Medal of Science, America’s highest award for scientific achievement.[17] This award was given for

"her pivotal contributions to the social and behavioral sciences, through the integrative study of mind, brain, and behavior, by joining behavioral science with the technologies of neuroscience and neuroimaging in order to understand mental processes such as memory and creativity, and mental illnesses such as schizophrenia."[18]

She has received numerous other awards, including the Interbrew-Baillet-Latour Prize from the Belgian Academy of Science, the Lieber Schizophrenia Research Prize, and many awards from the American Psychiatric Association, including its Research Prize, the Judd Marmor Award, and the Distinguished Service Award. She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002.[19] She is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.[3] She was elected to serve two terms on the governing council of the latter organization.[3] She chaired two Institute of Medicine/National Academy of Sciences Committees that published influential reports.[20][21] She served as Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Psychiatry for 13 years.[22] She is past president of the American Psychopathological Association and the Psychiatric Research Society. She was the founding Chair of the Neuroscience Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.[3] She is a member of the Society for Neuroscience[3] and on the Honorary International Editorial Advisory Board of the Mens Sana Monographs.[23]

Experience of Sexism

She has spoken about her experiences of sexism. Early in her career she found that her articles were more likely to be accepted for publication when she used her initials instead of her first name.[24]

Personal life

She is the mother of two daughters. Suz Andreasen, a jewelry designer who lived in New York City, died from ovarian cancer. Robin Andreasen is a professor of Cognitive Science at the University of Delaware. She is married to Captain Terry Gwinn, a retired military officer who flew helicopter gunships for 3.5 tours during the Vietnam War.[25]

Selected bibliography

She has written three books for the general public:

She authored, co-authored, or edited twelve other scholarly books and over 500 articles.

References

  1. ↑ Who's Who in America. Nancy Coover Andreasen. 62nd ed. New Providence: Marquis Who's Who, 2008
  2. ↑ John Donne: Conservative Revolutionary: Princeton University Press, 1967
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Who's Who in the World. Nancy Coover Andreasen. 25th ed. New Providence: Marquis Who's Who, 2008
  4. ↑ This Week's Citation Classic. Current Contents:48,1993
  5. 1 2 Andreasen, NC. The Broken Brain: The Biological Revolution in Psychiatry. New York: Harper&Row, 1984
  6. ↑ Who's Who in American Education. Nancy Coover Andreasen. 8th ed. New Providence: Marquis Who's Who; 2007-2008
  7. ↑ N. J. C. Andreasen, A. Canter (March–April 1974). "The creative writer: psychiatric symptoms and family history". Comprehensive Psychiatry 15 (2): 123–121. doi:10.1016/0010-440X(74)90028-5. PMID 4822820.
  8. ↑ Andreasen NC. Creativity and mental illness: prevalence rates in writers and their first-degree relatives. Am J Psychiatry, 1987, 144:1288-92, 1987
  9. ↑ Andreasen NC. Negative symptoms in schizophrenia. Definition and reliability. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1982 Jul;39 (7):784-788
  10. ↑ This Week's Citation Classic. Current Contents: 48,1993
  11. ↑ Andreasen NC. The Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symptoms (SAPS. Iowa City, IA: The University of Iowa; 1984
  12. ↑ Andreasen NC. The Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS). Iowa City, Iowa: The University of Iowa; 1983
  13. ↑ Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV). Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Press, Inc.; 1994
  14. ↑ Andreasen NC, Nasrallah HA, Dunn VD, Olson SC, Grove WM, Ehrhardt JC, et al. Structural abnormalities in the frontal system in schizophrenia: A magnetic resonance imaging study. Arch Gen Psychiatry, 43:136-44, 1986
  15. ↑ Magnotta VA, Harris G, Andreasen NC, O'Leary DS, Yuh WT, Heckel D. Structural MR image processing using the BRAINS2 toolbox. Comput Med Imaging Graph, 26:251-64, 2002
  16. ↑ Lindsey Moon; Ben Kieffer (4 August 2014). "What Makes Someone a Creative Genius?". Iowa Public Radio. Retrieved 25 November 2014.
  17. ↑ Clinton Names A Diverse Group Of Researchers To Receive The 2000 National Medals Of Science, National Science Foundation
  18. ↑ The President's National Medal of Science: Recipient Details, National Science Foundation
  19. ↑ "Book of Members, 1780-2010: Chapter A" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 18 April 2011.
  20. ↑ Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research. Washington DC: The National Academies Press, 2004
  21. ↑ PTSD Compensation and Military Service. Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2007
  22. ↑ Freedman R. Nancy C. Andreasen, M.D., Ph.D.: Editor Emeritus Perfectus. Am J Psychiatry.163:3-4, 2006
  23. ↑ "Honorary International Editorial Advisory Board". Medknow. n.d. Retrieved 24 November 2014.
  24. ↑ Shankar Vedantam, (13 July 2006). Male Scientist Writes of Life as Female Scientist: Biologist Who Underwent Sex Change Describes Biases Against Women. Washington Post
  25. ↑ Nancy Andreasen (2009). "Meet Dr. Nancy Andreasen". Nancy Andreasen.
  26. ↑ Andreasen, NC. Brave New Brain: Conquering Mental Illness in the Era of the Genome. New York: Oxford University Press; 2001
  27. ↑ Rutter M. Clear view of a promising future. Science, 294:312,2001
  28. ↑ Andreasen NC. The Creating Brain: the Neuroscience of Genius. New York: Dana Press, 2005
  29. ↑ Snyder S. The creating brain: the neuroscience of genius. NEJM, 354:1539-40,2006

External links

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