Dr. Robert Innis is Acting Director of the Mood & Anxiety Disorders Program and Chief of the Molecular Imaging Branch at the National Institute of Mental Health. He directs a research group which performs in vivo neurochemical imaging, primarily with PET (positron emission tomography) and with an emphasis on targets relevant to neuropsychiatric disorders.

      Dr. Innis graduated from Yale College (1974) and then received his MD (1978) and pharmacology PhD (1981) degrees from Johns Hopkins. After psychiatry residency training at Yale, he joined the faculty in 1984 and rose to the rank of Professor of Psychiatry and Pharmacology.

      Because PET was not available at Yale in the 1980s, Dr. Innis used SPECT for studies of receptors in the brain. His work on benzodiazepine receptor imaging clearly confirmed that SPECT was capable of quantitative measurements, with validation comparable to that in PET. His SPECT work expanded to include other neurotransmitter systems, including dopamine, serotonin, GABA, and acetylcholine.

      Dr. Innis has developed new radiotracers, including probes for the dopamine transporter. In fact, the dopamine transporter is a biological marker for Parkinson’s disease and SPECT imaging of the dopamine transporter was recently approved in several European countries to aid in the early diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease.

      Dr. Innis moved to NIMH in 2001 to direct a new Molecular Imaging Branch. Major goals of this new laboratory include the development of new PET tracers and the integration of PET with other neuroimaging methodologies, especially MRS (magnetic resonance spectroscopy).