The principal aim of the Laboratory is to advance knowledge and understanding of the causes of serious brain disorders that impair affect, cognition and behavior and to improve their treatment. The disorders that are the principal focus of the Laboratory are schizophrenia, bipolar disorder (manic depressive illness), major depression and eating disorders.

A variety of strategies are implemented in pursuit of these objectives. These include molecular genetic approaches and brain imaging techniques such as SPECT, PET and MRI. To study the neuropsychopharmacology of drugs used to treat the target disorders, preclinical approaches, including in vivo microdialysis, various neurochemical techniques and behavioral strategies are applied. In addition to psychoactive drugs, the basic mechanisms of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) are a major focus of interest.

The Laboratory consists of a small core of staff members headed by Michael Newman, Ph.D., the Senior Research Scientist, and a number of associated investigators who are on the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry. All the associated investigators started their research careers under the mentorship of Prof. Lerer, now occupy senior positions in the Department of Psychiatry and continue their research under the aegis of the Biological Psychiatry Laboratory.

Support for the Laboratory is primarily from competitive, peer reviewed research grants. These have been awarded to staff members and associated investigators by Israeli, European, U.S. and various binational funding agencies. The Laboratory is indebted to its patrons who have donated and endowed funds to establish and expand various facilities and initiate new projects.

The Laboratory collaborates extensively with research groups who have similar interests, in Israel and overseas. In Israel, Prof. Lerer and others from the Laboratory were pivotal in establishing the Israel Consortium for Molecular Psychiatry, which is developing nationwide collaborations on the molecular genetics of a number of major psychiatric disorders. The Jerusalem Collaborative Depression Project, which has yielded a number of important publications, is another example. Among the overseas groups with whom the Laboratory collaborates, most noteworthy are joint efforts with the University of Bonn (Dr. Dieter Wildenauer) and the University of Toronto (Prof. Fabio Macciardi) on the genetics of schizophrenia, Columbia University, New York (Dr. Miron Baron) on the genetics of bipolar disorder, and the University of Chicago (Dr. Louis Van de Kar) on basic mechanisms of antidepressant action.