GOLDSTEIN RECEIVES JACOB P. WALETZKY AWARD
SAN DIEGO — The Society for Neuroscience (SfN) has awarded Rita Z. Goldstein, PhD, of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai with the Jacob P. Waletzky Award. Established in 2003 and supported by the Waletzky family, the award includes $25,000 and is given to a scientist who has conducted research or plans to conduct research in the area of substance abuse and the brain and nervous system. The prize was awarded at Neuroscience 2013, SfN’s annual meeting and the world’s largest source of emerging news about brain science and health.
“We commend Dr. Goldstein on her prestigious award,” said Larry Swanson, PhD, president of SfN. “Her efforts will undoubtedly help to influence future work in the addiction arena as well as in other disorders of impulsivity and drive.”
Goldstein studies the mechanisms that underlie the recurring nature of drug addiction. Specifically, she is interested in how addiction changes the prefrontal cortex — a region involved in decision-making and control — and reward circuits. Goldstein found that people who are addicted to drugs show cognitive control and executive function deficits, and these deficits are associated with changes in the prefrontal cortex.
Goldstein earned her PhD from the University of Miami and completed postdoctoral fellowships at Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University under a training fellowship from the National Institutes of Health. She is currently a professor of psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
The Society for Neuroscience is an organization of nearly 42,000 basic scientists and clinicians who study the brain and nervous system.
