NIMH’s Karen F. Berman, M.D. elected to National Academy of Medicine

October 31, 2016 • Press Release

At its annual meeting for 2016, the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) announced the election of 79 regular members, including the National Institute of Mental Health’s (NIMH)'s Karen F. Berman, M.D.One of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine, election to the Academy recognizes outstanding professional achievement and commitment to service.

Dr. Berman is a Senior Investigator and Chief of the NIMH Intramural Research Program’s Clinical and Translational Neuroscience Branch. After receiving her M.D. degree from St. Louis University, Dr. Berman completed a medical internship at Washington University in St. Louis, residency training in psychiatry at the University of California at San Diego, and a residency in nuclear medicine at the National Institute of Health (NIH)’s Warren G. Magnuson Clinical Center.

Board certified in both psychiatry and nuclear medicine, Dr. Berman and her colleagues use neuroimaging to map brain structure, function, and neurochemical mechanisms associated with neuropsychiatric illnesses such as schizophrenia, illnesses having genetic sources of cognitive dysfunction such as Williams syndrome, and other processes affecting cognition such as normal aging. She also studies the effects of gonadal steroid hormones on brain function. Her work has appeared in journals such as Nature Neuroscience, Neuron, the Journal of Clinical Investigation, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and the Journal of Neuroscience, among others.

Dr. Berman is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Society of Biological Psychiatry’s A.E. Bennett Award for Neuropsychiatric Research; the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD) Independent Investigator and Distinguished Investigator Awards; several NIH Bench to Bedside Awards; and the NIH Director’s Award for her outstanding pioneering research on Williams Syndrome.