James B Lohr MD

Interviewed Winter 2000

Archived Profiles

Dr. James B. Lohr is Professor and Vice Chair, Clinical Affairs, Deparment of Psychiatry UCSD Associate Director, VISN-22 MIRECC and Executive Director, UCSD Psychopharmacology Research Initiatives Center of Excellence. Born and raised in Chicago, Lohr originally planned to become a concert pianist. Though he still plays on occasion, he more often spends his free time with his grandchildren or cooking ethnic foods ranging from Greek to Thai. Lohr lives in San Diego with his wife, Melodie, a nurse practitioner.

Once a young Jim Lohr set his career sites on science, the decision to study psychiatry came easily.

“I had always been interested in science, especially brain science, which is incredibly fascinating and complex," Lohr said. "Though I considered neurology and neuro-surgery, I liked psychiatry better and found I enjoyed working with psychiatric patients.”

In many ways, the field also offered nearly unlimited opportunities for learning, discovery and advancement of the field.

“I was intrigued by the possibilities of learning more about what goes on in the healthy brain as well as what goes wrong,” he said.

After finishing medical school at the University of Chicago in 1980, Lohr completed his internship and residency in Pittsburgh, followed by a three-year neuropsychiatry fellowship at the National Institute of Mental Health which led to his current joint positions at the VA in San Diego and UCSD where his research includes using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study brain function in mentally ill individuals. Funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and the VA's Mentally Ill Research, Education and Clinical Center, or MIRECC, the studies use MRI equipment to monitor brain activity of research subjects as they complete various motor tasks.

“We are using the motor system as a tool to study psychotic illness as a whole,” Lohr said.

Comparative measurements of activity in the left and right hemispheres of the brains of mentally ill and healthy subjects give scientists a “window” through which to study psychosis and its effects, he explained.

Many studies have found that schizophrenia, an illness involving impairment of a person's thinking abilities, shows greater abnormalities on the left side of the brain. Bipolar disorder, considered a disorder of emotions, appears to involve more of the brain's right hemisphere. Most research has viewed schizophrenia and bipolar disorder as two distinct illnesses. But this clear-cut distinction between these two disorders may have been faulty, Lohr speculated.

“One possibility we are investigating is whether schizophrenia and bipolar disorder actually have similar deep pathologies,” Lohr said. “The tendency to focus exclusively on one disorder or the other may be misguided," Lohr said. "Thinking and feeling are closely related, and on some level may even be the same.”

By studying differences and similarities in brain function among patients with various disorders, Lohr and his research team may end up developing new ways of conceptualizing, and possibly treating, mental illness. “We may find a deeper underlying connection between psychotic disorders, which could shed light on treatment and drug development,” Lohr said.

“Our knowledge of these disorders could become synthesized into a more coherent understanding of mental functioning.”