Robert N. Pechnick, PhD

Associate Director of Research, Psychiatry & Behavioral Neurosciences
Email:pechnickr@cshs.org
Phone:(310) 423-6206
Fax:(310) 423-0888

Academic Appointments

Professor, Psychiatry

Awards and Activities

Award for Excellence in Education, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA2008
Medical Student Teaching Award, UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences2006
Copping Excellence in Basic Science Teaching Award, LSU Medical Center1999
Society for Neuroscience1982
College on Problems of Drug Dependence1985
American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics1985

Research Focus

The overall goal of this laboratory is to understand the fundamental molecular mechanisms underlying mental illness and drug abuse, and use this information to development new and more effective treatments for these disorders.

Research Contributions

Contributed to the knowledge base on the effects of drugs of abuse on neuroendocrine function. Developed a new animal model to study nicotine depencence. Discovered a mechanism by which antidepressant drugs stimulate neurogenesis in the hippocampus.

Current investigations include:

Effects of prenatal nicotine exposure on nicotine self-administration in the adult; effects of modafinil on methamphetamine self-administration; effects of viral-mediated GDNF expression on cocaine self-administration; mechanisms underlying the differential response to antidepressants in adolescents and adults; viral-mediated CRH hyper-expression as a new model of depression; mechanisms underlying chemotherapy-induced neurocognitive deficits.

Selected Publications

  1. Pechnick RN, Zonis S, Wawrowsky K, Pourmorady J, Chesnokova V: p21Cip1 restricts neuronal proliferation in the subgranular zone of the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A., 105(4): 1358-63, 2008
  2. Liu X, Caggiula AR, Yee SK, Nobuta H, Sved AF, Pechnick RN, Poland RE: Mecamylamine attenuates cue-induced reinstatement of nicotine-seeking behavior in rats. Neuropsychopharmacology, 32(3): 710-8, 2006
  3. Pechnick RN, Kariagina A, Hartvig E, Bresee CJ, Poland RE, Chesnokova VM: Developmental exposure to corticosterone: behavioral changes and differential effects on leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF) and corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) gene expression in the mouse. Psychopharmacology (Berl.), 185(1): 76-83, 2006
  4. Liu X, Caggiula AR, Yee SK, Nobuta H, Poland RE, Pechnick RN: Reinstatement of nicotine-seeking behavior by drug-associated stimuli after extinction in rats. Psychopharmacology (Berl.), 184(3-4): 417-25, 2005
  5. Pechnick RN, Poland RE: Comparison of the effects of dextromethorphan, dextrorphan, and levorphanol on the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal axis. J. Pharmacol. Exp. Ther., 309(2): 515-22, 2004
  6. Pechnick RN, Chesnokova VM, Kariagina A, Price S, Bresee CJ, Poland RE: Reduced immobility in the forced swim test in mice with a targeted deletion of the leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF) gene. Neuropsychopharmacology, 29(4): 770-6, 2004
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