Daniel H. Silverman

Research Description:

The two major goals of our research program are 1) to explore in living human brain the interactions and neurologic bases of memory, mood, and clinical disorders having neuropsychiatric symptoms (including dementia, depression, and hormonal effects), and 2) to develop noninvasive methodologies with which to optimize management of breast and other cancers. These apparently disparate objectives are united through use of low-level radioactive biochemicals to characterize and map in the human body the distribution of processes having pressing relevance to patients seen in Nuclear and Internal Medicine. Both lines of research involve extensive application of positron emission tomography. With a focus ranging from molecular processes to human behaviors, our research activities correspondingly span the ‘bench to bedside’ spectrum from biochemical work in vitro, to monitoring and impacting upon progress of patients in the Ahmanson Biological Imaging Clinic.