(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) -- Cameron Carter, UC Davis professor of psychiatry and Psychology, and Director of the UC Davis Imaging Research Center, will speak at UC San Francisco's Clinical Neuroscience Symposium on Thursday, March 24, along with specialists from UCLA, UCSD and UCSF. The theme at the gathering is More Than an Ounce of Prevention: Assessing and Treating Adolescents with High Risk Mental States.

UC Davis is a leading research institution in this area. Carter directs the Early Diagnosis and Preventive Treatment Clinic at UC Davis, where patients are evaluated and treated for early onset of schizophrenia. The clinic also assesses patients at risk of developing symptoms of schizophrenia, providing early intervention, targeted medication and other services if individuals are eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia.

In addition, the clinic provides education and outreach to the community. These programs include training for psychiatry residents, social work and psychology interns, and continuing medical education about treatment advances in early schizophrenia.

Carter is also a researcher in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, where doctors are using cognitive neuroscience and brain imaging to study schizophrenia.

"Our work in studying schizophrenia is distinguished in some ways by our emphasis on studying very specific cognitive processes and the neural systems that support them using state of the art approaches from cognitive and affective neuroscience and functional neuroimaging" said Carter.

UC Davis researchers continue to study and develop new ways to diagnose and treat schizophrenia, a chronic, severely debilitating mental illness that affects 1% of the population and accounts for 10 percent of the permanently and totally disabled people supported by government disability assistance. Schizophrenia affects males and females equally and patients typically begin to show symptoms in their late teens and young adult years. Intermittent episodes of psychosis generally respond to treatment and alternate with periods of relative remission. However, persistent cognitive, social and occupational disability are devastating for patients and for their families.

Advances in Carter's research will be discussed at the symposium at UC San Francisco in LP-190 at 2 p.m. Speakers from three other UC campuses will also discuss research and clinical approaches to schizophrenia and other mental disorders. The symposium is open to the public.


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UC Davis Health System is an integrated, academic health system encompassing UC Davis School of Medicine, the 576-bed acute-care hospital and clinical services of UC Davis Medical Center, and the 800-member physician group known as UC Davis Medical Group.