Listen to Dr. Allie Sharma in conversation with Dr. John Krystal, a psychiatrist and expert on the neurobiology and treatment of psychiatric disorders who is best known for leading the discovery of the rapid antidepressant effects of ketamine in depressed patients, as they speak about the connection between depression and ketamine, the origin story of how anti-depressant effects of ketamine were discovered, root causes of depression, how ketamine and esketamine work in the brain, and more.
Listen to Dr. Allie Sharma in conversation with Dr. John Krystal, a psychiatrist and expert on the neurobiology and treatment of psychiatric disorders who is best known for leading the discovery of the rapid antidepressant effects of ketamine in depressed patients, as they speak about the connection between depression and ketamine, the origin story of how anti-depressant effects of ketamine were discovered, root causes of depression, how ketamine and esketamine work in the brain, and more.
Dr. Krystal’s work links psychopharmacology, neuroimaging, molecular genetics, and computational neuroscience to study the neurobiology and treatment of disorders including alcohol use disorder, depression, PTSD, and schizophrenia. Within Yale, he chairs the Department of Psychiatry, serves as Chief of Psychiatry for the Yale-New Haven Health System, co-leads the Yale Center for Clinical Investigation (CTSA), and co-directs the NIAAA Center for the Translational Neuroscience of Alcohol.
In addition to his roles at Yale, he serves as editor of Biological Psychiatry, Vice-President of the Scientific Council for the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, as a Scientific Advisory Board member of Aligning Research to Impact Autism, and in numerous other advisory capacities for government agencies, academia initiatives, private foundations, and pharmaceutical/biotechnology companies. He also co-founded Freedom Biosciences, a company devoted to addressing the limitations of current rapid-acting antidepressants.
Dr. Krystal previously co-chaired (2018-2024) the Forum on Neuroscience and Nervous System Disorders of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. He also served on the Department of Defense Psychological Health Advisory Committee, the National Advisory Councils for the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and the NIMH Board of Scientific Counselors (chair, 2005-2007). He has led the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (president, 2012), and International College of Neuropsychophamacology (president, 2016-2018).
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