Kerry J. Ressler, MD, PhD

Mc Lean Hospital

  • Chief Scientific Officer

  • Chief, Division of Depression and Anxiety Disorders

  • James and Patricia Poitras Chair in Psychiatry

  • Director, Neurobiology of Fear LaboratoryHealth Care Without Harm & Practice Greenhealth

Harvard Medical School

  • Professor of Psychiatry

Dr. Kerry J. Ressler, MD, PhD, holds the esteemed positions of Chief Scientific Officer and James and Patricia Poitras Chair in Psychiatry at McLean Hospital, along with being a Professor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He has previously served as the President of the Society for Biological Psychiatry, and his accomplishments in the field are underscored by his membership in the National Academy of Medicine and his tenure as an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

At the core of Dr. Ressler’s research is a translational approach that bridges molecular neurobiology in animal models with human genetic research, focusing primarily on emotion, fear, and anxiety trauma-related disorders. He has contributed extensively to the field, with over 350 500 published manuscripts that explore a spectrum of topics, from the fundamental molecular mechanisms underpinning fear processing to in-depth examinations of how emotion is encoded in the amygdala, across both animal models and human patients. He was founder of the Grady Trauma Project, and he is co-lead of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortia PTSD working group and the multisite AURORA project for understanding biomarkers and trajectories of PTSD development. Dr. Ressler’s comprehensive research continues to shape our understanding of the intricacies of emotion and the brain, providing valuable insights into psychiatric disorders.

More from Kerry Ressler

Neurobiology of PTSD: From Brain to Mind

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a maladaptive and debilitating psychiatric disorder characterized by an extreme sense of fear at the time of trauma occurrence, with characteristic re-experiencing, avoidance, and hyperarousal symptoms in the months and years following the trauma. PTSD can occur in up to 25% of subjects who have experienced severe psychological trauma, such as combat veterans, refugees, and assault victims. Why are some people resilient, whereas others develop debilitating PTSD? Notably, PTSD is among the most likely of psychiatric disorders to be understood from the perspective of environmental influences interacting with genetic vulnerability, since diagnosis requires a specific, highly traumatizing, fear-evoking experience. In addition, a large amount of evidence now supports a model in which PTSD can be viewed, in part, as a disorder of fear dysregulation. This is particularly exciting because the neural circuitry underlying fear behavior in mammals is among the most well-understood behavioral circuits in neuroscience. Further, the study of fear behavior and its underlying circuitry has led to rapid progress in understanding learning and memory processes. By combining molecular-genetic approaches with a mechanistic understanding of fear circuitry, great progress is possible in the understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of PTSD. This book examines the basic neural mechanisms that mediate complex responses and adaptations to psychological trauma; it describes what is currently known about how these biological processes are impaired in individuals with PTSD, and how environmental exposure to trauma interacts with the brain to create the syndrome of PTSD.