Amit Etkin, MD, PhD

Psychiatrist

Bio:   Amit Etkin, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, and an Investigator in the VA Sierra-Pacific Mental Illness Research Education and Clinical Center (MIRECC) at the Palo Alto VA. Dr. Etkin received his MD/PhD at Columbia University with Nobel laureate Eric Kandel, completed his psychiatry residency and concurrent postdoc at Stanford University with Alan Schatzberg, and joined the faculty at Stanford in 2009. He has been awarded the BRAINS (Biobehavioral Research Award for Innovative New Scientists) R01 Award from the National Institute of Mental Health and a Dana Neuroscience Scholar Award from the Dana Foundation, and is an Associate Editor at Neuropsychopharmacology. The overarching aim of the Etkin lab is to understand the neural basis of emotional disorders and their treatment, and to leverage this knowledge to develop novel treatment interventions. The lab’s work is organized around the neuroscientific study of emotion and its regulation in healthy subjects and individuals with psychiatric disorders. Ongoing work includes basic neuroscience of emotional and cognitive neurocircuitry, cross-sectional neuroimaging of a range of psychiatric disorders (anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder), investigation of the neural mechanisms of psychotherapeutic, pharmacological and brain stimulation treatments for these disorders, and trials of neuroscience-based brain training interventions developed in the lab. Additional work using concurrent transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) with fMRI is used to understand how activity in one brain region causally translates into activation in interconnected regions and networks, and how communication within defined neural circuits can be more specifically manipulated by repetitive TMS protocols, both in healthy subjects and patients.

Outpatient Psychiatry Clinic

Professional Education

  • Residency: Stanford University Medical Center (2010) CA
  • Medical Education: Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons (2006) NY
  • Board Certification: Psychiatry, American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (2011)
  • Board Certification, American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, Psychiatry (2011)
  • MD, Columbia University (2006)
  • PhD, Columbia University, Neurobiology (2005)
  • MPhil, Columbia University (2003)
  • BS, Mass. Institute of Technology (1997)

Honors & Awards

  • Phi Beta Kappa, MIT (1997)
  • PhD awarded with distinction, Columbia University (2005)
  • Clifford Yorke Young Investigator Award, International Neurospsychoanalysis Society (2006)
  • Career Development Travel Award, Anxiety Disorders Association of America (2006)
  • Travel Award, Society of Biological Psychiatry (2008)
  • Resident Psychiatric Research Scholar Award, APIRE/Janssen (2008)
  • Outstanding Resident Award, NIMH (2008)
  • Resident Research Award, APA/Lilly (2010)
  • Travel Award, ACNP (2010)
  • Biobehavioral Research Awards for Innovative New Scientists (BRAINS) R01 Award, NIMH (2010)
  • Fellow, Kavli-National Academy of Science "Frontiers of Science" (2011-2013)
  • Dana Neuroscience Scholar award, Dana Foundation (2012)
  • Chairman's Award for Advancing Science, Stanford University (2014)

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