Duke Institute for Brain Sciences

Psychiatry Grand Rounds: Harriet De Wit, M.D.

University of Chicago

Determinants of Drug Preference: Translational Studies

Dr. de Wit is Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience at the University of Chicago. She obtained her PhD in Experimental Psychology from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, and has conducted research in human psychopharmacology of drug abuse for the past three decades. Dr. de Wit serves as Field Editor for the journal Psychopharmacology and Deputy Editor for Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. She is a consultant to the Food and Drug Administration, serves on scientific advisory boards at other institutions and is a member of a NIH study section.

In 1999 she received the Solvay Award for Outstanding Basic Psychopharmacological Research in Affective Disorders from the American Psychological Association, and in 2009 she received the Marian W. Fischman Memorial Lectureship Award from the College on Problems of Drug Dependence.

Dr. de Wit's research focuses on the physiological, subjective (i.e., mood-altering) and behavioral effects of drugs in healthy human volunteers. Current projects include studies investigating individual differences in responses to drugs, including genetic factors that influence drug responses, studies of the relations between acute stress and responses to drugs, and studies of impulsive behavior and risk-taking. The overarching goal of the research is to understand the mechanisms underlying drug-motivated behavior and substance abuse.

Objectives: • List three challenges of translational research in addiction, and summarize both the difficulties and benefits of measuring comparable phenotypes in humans and nonhumans. • Accurately describe methods that are used in laboratory-based drug challenge studies with humans, including measurement of subjective responses and behavioral effects. • Identify four factors that contribute to the etiology of drug use, and describe the consequences of use.

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