Towards Preventative Psychotherapeutics
to
Kafui Dzirasa, Ph.D.
A. Eugene and Marie Washington Presidential Distinguished Professor
Duke University, School of Medicine
Kafui Dzirasa is an American psychiatrist and Associate Professor at Duke University. He looks to understand the relationship between neural circuit malfunction and mental illness. He was a 2019 AAAS Leshner Fellow and was elected Fellow of the National Academy of Medicine in 2021.
While he was in college he met one of his childhood heroes who specialized in brain science. He was an undergraduate student at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where he received a Meyerhoff Scholarship. He switched from chemistry to chemical engineering at UMBC. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering in 2001. He joined Duke University with the intention of completing a PhD in biological engineering and designing neuroprosthetics. After visiting the schizophrenia ward at Duke University, Dzirasa switched to medicine. He earned a PhD in neurobiology in 2007 with Miguel Nicolelis. He was awarded the Duke University Somjen Award for Outstanding Dissertation Thesis. He was the first Black student to graduate with a doctorate in neurobiology from Duke. He completed his MD in 2009. His graduate work was supported by the Ruth K. Broad Biomedical Research Fellowship, the UNCF-Merck Graduate Science Research Fellowship and the Wakeman Fellowship. He was inspired to focus on mental illness after watching his family members suffer from bipolar disorder and completed his residency training in psychiatry in 2016.
Summary
Dr. Kafui Dzirasa will present a lecture exploring how brain activity patterns govern emotional states and stress resilience. Drawing from his work in neuroengineering and psychiatry, he will explain how brain oscillations — rhythmic patterns of neural activity — encode emotional information and how disruptions in these patterns are linked to mood disorders. He will highlight how mouse models can uncover the biological basis of stress resilience, including the identification of specific molecular and circuit-level adaptations. And he will discuss cutting-edge tools in neuroscience — such as optogenetics and closed-loop neuromodulation — that allow researchers to modulate brain circuits with precision, offering promising avenues for treating mental illness.
Learning Objectives:
- To explain two ways in which brain oscillations reflect emotions
- To describe two ways in which mice can be used to understand the biology of stress resilience
- To describe two ways in which brain circuits can be modulated with modern neuroscience tools
https://videocast.nih.gov/watch=55041
This page was last updated on Thursday, June 12, 2025