Peter Balsam, PhD

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Overview
Research

Overview

Most of our research investigates how time affects learning and behavior. The idea is that all of our actions and representations of the world are based on temporal knowledge. Many psychiatric and neurological diseases produce a disordered sense of time. Depressed people cannot anticipate good things in their future. Drug addicts are impulsive and have difficulty anticipating delayed consequences. Schizophrenics often have a disordered sense of time. Thus an understanding of the psychology of time and the brain mechanisms that underlie it are likely to provide new ways of approaching these problems. Temporal information processing is modulated by dopamine. Consequently, diseases that involve dysfunction in the dopamine systems (e.g. Parkinson's, schizophrenia, addiction, etc.) may be sensitively assayed by monitoring performance on timing tasks.
It is our lab's goal to translate our basic knowledge of cognitive/behavioral processes into essential tools for diagnosis, monitoring treatment efficacy and drug discovery.

Academic Appointments

Adjunct Professor of Medical Psychology (in Psychiatry)

Gender

Male

Research

The lab studies how time is encoded during learning and how it is used to flexibly guide behavior. We also study timing distortions associated with Psychiatric disorders.
Most of our research investigates how time affects learning and behavior. The idea is that all of our actions and representations of the world are based on temporal knowledge. Many psychiatric and neurological diseases produce a disordered sense of time. Depressed people cannot anticipate good things in their future. Drug addicts are impulsive and have difficulty anticipating delayed consequences. Schizophrenics often have a disordered sense of time. Thus an understanding of the psychology of time and the brain mechanisms that underlie it can provide new ways of approaching these problems. It is our lab’s goal to translate our basic knowledge of cognitive/behavioral processes into essential tools for diagnosis, monitoring treatment efficacy and drug discovery.

Selected Publications

Bailey, M.R., Jensen, G., Taylor, K., Mezias, C., Williamson, C., Silver, R., Simpson, E.H., Balsam, P.D: A novel strategy for dissecting goal-directed action and arousal components of motivated behavior. Behavioral Neuroscience in press
Parnaudeau, S., Taylor, K.T., Bolkan, S .S., Ward, R.D., Balsam, P. & Kellendonk, C.: Mediodorsal Thalamus Hypofunction Impairs Flexible Goal-Directed Behavior. . Biological Psychiatry 2015;77: 445-53
Gallistel, R.C. & Balsam, P.D : Time to rethink the neural mechanisms of learning and memory. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory 2014;108: 136-44.
Simpson, E.H., Waltz, J.A., Kellendonk, C., Balsam, P.D.: Schizophrenia in Translation: Dissecting Motivation in Schizophrenia and Rodents.. Schizophrenia Bulletin 2012;38: 1111-1117
Simpson, E.H., Kellendonk, C., Ward, R.D., Richards, V., Lipatova, O., Fairhurst, S., Kandel, E.R. and Balsam, P.D.: Pharmacologic rescue of motivational deficit in an animal model of the negative symptoms of schizophrenia.. Biological Psychiatry 2011;69: 928-35


For a complete list of publications, please visit PubMed.gov