It is once again time for us to assemble in order to advance the frontiers of our understanding of how the brain manages behavior in order to better serve people struggling with mental illness. As I have written many times in these pages, although our psychiatric treatments are better than no treatments, they continue to leave a lot to be desired, yet we struggle to move past our current tendency for 'me too' drugs and therapies. A paradigm shift is needed and no group is better positioned to provide that shift than SOBP. As our president, John Csernansky noted in his article in September: "One of the great strengths of our Society is the scientific breadth and depth of our members." Consequently, couple this expertise with the city that never sleeps, friendly conversation, and liberal libations and we are ideally positioned to tackle this problem.

Consistent with this goal, the topic of this year's meeting is "Accelerating Scientific Translation." From the new RDoCS model to pleas from mental health groups to our musings in this newsletter, it is clear that the major task facing us today is moving advances that have been made in neuroscience into the clinic. To that end, this year's program features plenary sessions and symposia specifically to challenge us to develop new scientific strategies toward that goal. On Thursday morning May 8, Eric Strain will present the science of buprenorphine development from the lab to clinical use, followed by Joseph Moskel discussing the development of a novel glutamatergic antidepressant (an elusive 'grail' in the world of affective disorders to be sure). Kathy Wisner will then help frame considerations of how we address depression in women who are pregnant, followed by a panel discussion with the speakers, Husseini Manji and myself. We are looking forward to a lively discussion not only in these specific areas but more generally toward how we think about translational science. Friday's plenary session will explore the development of deep brain stimulation for depression by Helen Mayberg, the advancement of the role of biomarkers in Alzheimer's disease prevention studies by Randall Bateman, and an interesting novel discussion on human connectomes as it might relate to translational neuroscience by David van Essen. These innovative research pioneers bring interesting new perspectives for the rest of us as we think about moving our work from bench (or MRI suite) to bedside. The final plenary day addresses prevention of emerging mental illness by Patrick McGorry, and secondary prevention of PTSD by Arieh Shalev. Clearly, prevention of mental illness is likely to produce superior outcomes than chasing it after neuropathology is entrenched and both of these internationally regarded investigators are leading a path toward this elusive goal. Finally, Christopher Austin will discuss the new National Center for Advancing Translational Science (NCATS) and how this new NIH structured is poised to help us from getting lost in translation!

So, if you haven't already, please plan to join us in New York from May 8-10 to help enliven our discussions. Details are provided elsewhere in this newsletter as well as on our SOBP website. I look forward to seeing you there and thinking big thoughts together!

Best Wishes

UC Health Vice President for Research

Professor and Chair, Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Neuroscience