I’m a scientist I’m a chemical
engineering professor at UC Berkeley and
a classically trained chemical physicist
and when I was in college I was
fortunate to have a really good group of
friends we’d help each other out
whenever classes or life got tough now
to all my friends Mike was my go-to
person for a dose of optimism whenever I
needed it he’d be the first person to
suggest getting a beer instead of
spending the night sulking over that see
in nuclear physics it’s been over a
decade since my college days and Mike
remains to this day one of the most
consistently joyful and optimistic
people that I’ve ever met which is why
it was so surprising for me to hear that
in the spring of last year Mike took his
life how did someone like Mike who
epitomized all that is good and happy in
life choose suicide I was saddened by
his death but I was also really
frustrated did Mike even realize that he
lingered in a precarious mental health
state did his family know did his
friends know did his doctors know did
anyone know I hope you don’t have a Mike
in your life but maybe you have a
colleague a new mother who’s suffering
from postpartum depression maybe you
have a relative who started having
trouble remembering your recent
conversations now diagnosed with
dementia
maybe it’s your own teenage daughter
whose social drinking has become an
alcohol addiction or maybe it’s your
elementary schooler who after getting
that one last final warning about their
out-of-control Tantrums is now diagnosed
with attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder or ADHD it’s uncomfortable
to talk about mental health isn’t it
when a patient is diagnosed with cancer
or diabetes they’re presented with test
results glucose levels cytokine levels
as patients we see this proof of our
disease and so we accept our disease and
we fight it as do others but what about
mental health patients they can’t
possibly get a brain sample to prove
their disease so where does this leave
us well unlike cancer or diabetes mental
health medicine lacks a validation
biomarker based assay that can diagnose
and also validate treatments for
diseases these questionnaires replace
the routine blood tests that are done in
doctors offices which makes it difficult
to track progression of diseases such as
depression this also extends to the
validation of drugs that are used to
treat ailments such as depression for
example do you know how antidepressants
are tested preclinically to this day one
of the standard ways of testing a
candidate antidepressant drug is through
a test called the forced swim test in
this test a mouse is dosed with the
candidate antidepressant drug dropped
into a pool of water and monitored for
the amount of time it spends trying to
swim before eventually giving up so if
the mouse spends a relatively long
amount of time swimming it is deemed
less depressed and the drug is thought
to work fairly well if the mouse swims
for a short amount of time it is deemed
more depressed and the drug is thought
to be less effective this test
represents the level of preclinical
validation that goes into validating
drugs such as antidepressants that are
taken statistically speaking by over 10
percent of the people in this very room
this crudeness is unacceptable
it turns mental-health diagnosis and
treatment into a game of guess and test
until drugs or drug cocktails are
offered to patients until something
works well or at least well enough
this makes patients confused about what
they should expect from their treatment
regimens and it also makes them quicker
to lose faith and their physicians are
in the medical system if time after time
the drugs they’re trying just aren’t
working this also creates a divide and
how we as a society perceive mental
health what does it mean when somebody
is suffering from a mental health
condition should they get time off work
as would a cancer patient should you
send a get-well card this lack of
understanding scientifically drives a
lack of understanding socially and my
lab at UC Berkeley aims to change that
your decisions your movement and even
your mood are determined by small
molecules called neurotransmitters that
are shuttled between the cells of your
brain your brain uses these
neurotransmitters to communicate
anything from movement to learning to
mood it is thought that imbalances in
these neurotransmitter signals are what
lead to mental health disorders such as
depression or addiction but surprisingly
we don’t have a way of measuring
neurotransmitters in people when I
started my research lab at UC Berkeley I
chose to delve into this exciting but
really challenging area of measuring
brain chemistry research we do so with
the intent of being able to develop ways
of measuring neurotransmitters in the
brain and perhaps being able to better
test our drugs my lab has developed
these tiny nanoscale probes that now
light up in the presence of
neurotransmitters we do this by taking
nano materials which are 50 thousand
times smaller than the width of a human
hair and slowly functionalizing them
until they learn to respond to
neurotransmitters kind of like how you
can train a dog to fetch a ball we’ve
now used these neuro transmitters
to measure brain chemistry and also we
started testing with these probes how
different drugs might affect brain
chemistry such as antidepressants and
antipsychotics we’re also building new
microscopes so that we might be able to
monitor brain chemistry non-invasively
and now we’re testing what the effects
of cell death are in for example
Parkinson’s or Huntington’s disease
which are neurodegenerative disorders
our broader goal for this type of
research is to modernize how we perceive
mental health and mental health medicine
by being able to more quantitatively
validate the progression of these
diseases for example imagine if we could
tell you whether that new drug
prescribed to your ADHD afflicted
preschooler worked within 20 minutes
instead of having to wait weeks or even
months to see if their behavior improved
my broader vision is for this type of
research to modernize psychiatric
medicine if we can catch the progression
of something like diabetes with routine
doctor’s visits and blood tests we
should be able to do the same for
disorders of the brain we must modernize
our medicines that we treat disorders of
the mind with the swiftness and
precision that we use for disorders of
the body that said mental health remains
a societal challenge – and not one of us
in this room will go through life
without hiccups in our mental health
there is nothing more humbling for me
than to speak about the shortcomings of
my own research field to the people that
it would affect the most but until we
figure this out at the scientific level
there are a few things that you can do
first just because we don’t have a
biomarker base based test for mental
health doesn’t mean that mental health
isn’t real mental health is very much
real so monitor your own mental health
more closely second be aware of others
mental health as well offer the same
courtesy and empathy that you would to
your colleague whose post par
depression as you would if she instead
had cancer and lastly not there are many
of us working at the frontiers of
neuroscience medicine and engineering to
modernize how we’re approaching mental
health diagnosis and treatment while we
figure this out at the scientific level
we can also work to figure this out at
the societal level and this is where you
come in don’t turn a blind eye to your
partner if their moods change suddenly
don’t ignore your friends jokes about
suicidal thoughts
don’t tell your daughter it’s just a
phase if she says she feels pangs of
anxiety don’t bully the quiet kid at
school don’t bully any kid at school and
don’t tell yourself to just toughen up
if you’re going through something really
difficult seek the help you need and
also be the help that others may need my
personal hope is that your understanding
of how larger the challenge this is both
scientifically and socially will
motivate your broader acceptance and
compassion for people like my friend
Mike who are suffering from challenges
to their mental health thank you for
listening
[Applause] [Music]
engineering professor at UC Berkeley and
a classically trained chemical physicist
and when I was in college I was
fortunate to have a really good group of
friends we’d help each other out
whenever classes or life got tough now
to all my friends Mike was my go-to
person for a dose of optimism whenever I
needed it he’d be the first person to
suggest getting a beer instead of
spending the night sulking over that see
in nuclear physics it’s been over a
decade since my college days and Mike
remains to this day one of the most
consistently joyful and optimistic
people that I’ve ever met which is why
it was so surprising for me to hear that
in the spring of last year Mike took his
life how did someone like Mike who
epitomized all that is good and happy in
life choose suicide I was saddened by
his death but I was also really
frustrated did Mike even realize that he
lingered in a precarious mental health
state did his family know did his
friends know did his doctors know did
anyone know I hope you don’t have a Mike
in your life but maybe you have a
colleague a new mother who’s suffering
from postpartum depression maybe you
have a relative who started having
trouble remembering your recent
conversations now diagnosed with
dementia
maybe it’s your own teenage daughter
whose social drinking has become an
alcohol addiction or maybe it’s your
elementary schooler who after getting
that one last final warning about their
out-of-control Tantrums is now diagnosed
with attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder or ADHD it’s uncomfortable
to talk about mental health isn’t it
when a patient is diagnosed with cancer
or diabetes they’re presented with test
results glucose levels cytokine levels
as patients we see this proof of our
disease and so we accept our disease and
we fight it as do others but what about
mental health patients they can’t
possibly get a brain sample to prove
their disease so where does this leave
us well unlike cancer or diabetes mental
health medicine lacks a validation
biomarker based assay that can diagnose
and also validate treatments for
diseases these questionnaires replace
the routine blood tests that are done in
doctors offices which makes it difficult
to track progression of diseases such as
depression this also extends to the
validation of drugs that are used to
treat ailments such as depression for
example do you know how antidepressants
are tested preclinically to this day one
of the standard ways of testing a
candidate antidepressant drug is through
a test called the forced swim test in
this test a mouse is dosed with the
candidate antidepressant drug dropped
into a pool of water and monitored for
the amount of time it spends trying to
swim before eventually giving up so if
the mouse spends a relatively long
amount of time swimming it is deemed
less depressed and the drug is thought
to work fairly well if the mouse swims
for a short amount of time it is deemed
more depressed and the drug is thought
to be less effective this test
represents the level of preclinical
validation that goes into validating
drugs such as antidepressants that are
taken statistically speaking by over 10
percent of the people in this very room
this crudeness is unacceptable
it turns mental-health diagnosis and
treatment into a game of guess and test
until drugs or drug cocktails are
offered to patients until something
works well or at least well enough
this makes patients confused about what
they should expect from their treatment
regimens and it also makes them quicker
to lose faith and their physicians are
in the medical system if time after time
the drugs they’re trying just aren’t
working this also creates a divide and
how we as a society perceive mental
health what does it mean when somebody
is suffering from a mental health
condition should they get time off work
as would a cancer patient should you
send a get-well card this lack of
understanding scientifically drives a
lack of understanding socially and my
lab at UC Berkeley aims to change that
your decisions your movement and even
your mood are determined by small
molecules called neurotransmitters that
are shuttled between the cells of your
brain your brain uses these
neurotransmitters to communicate
anything from movement to learning to
mood it is thought that imbalances in
these neurotransmitter signals are what
lead to mental health disorders such as
depression or addiction but surprisingly
we don’t have a way of measuring
neurotransmitters in people when I
started my research lab at UC Berkeley I
chose to delve into this exciting but
really challenging area of measuring
brain chemistry research we do so with
the intent of being able to develop ways
of measuring neurotransmitters in the
brain and perhaps being able to better
test our drugs my lab has developed
these tiny nanoscale probes that now
light up in the presence of
neurotransmitters we do this by taking
nano materials which are 50 thousand
times smaller than the width of a human
hair and slowly functionalizing them
until they learn to respond to
neurotransmitters kind of like how you
can train a dog to fetch a ball we’ve
now used these neuro transmitters
to measure brain chemistry and also we
started testing with these probes how
different drugs might affect brain
chemistry such as antidepressants and
antipsychotics we’re also building new
microscopes so that we might be able to
monitor brain chemistry non-invasively
and now we’re testing what the effects
of cell death are in for example
Parkinson’s or Huntington’s disease
which are neurodegenerative disorders
our broader goal for this type of
research is to modernize how we perceive
mental health and mental health medicine
by being able to more quantitatively
validate the progression of these
diseases for example imagine if we could
tell you whether that new drug
prescribed to your ADHD afflicted
preschooler worked within 20 minutes
instead of having to wait weeks or even
months to see if their behavior improved
my broader vision is for this type of
research to modernize psychiatric
medicine if we can catch the progression
of something like diabetes with routine
doctor’s visits and blood tests we
should be able to do the same for
disorders of the brain we must modernize
our medicines that we treat disorders of
the mind with the swiftness and
precision that we use for disorders of
the body that said mental health remains
a societal challenge – and not one of us
in this room will go through life
without hiccups in our mental health
there is nothing more humbling for me
than to speak about the shortcomings of
my own research field to the people that
it would affect the most but until we
figure this out at the scientific level
there are a few things that you can do
first just because we don’t have a
biomarker base based test for mental
health doesn’t mean that mental health
isn’t real mental health is very much
real so monitor your own mental health
more closely second be aware of others
mental health as well offer the same
courtesy and empathy that you would to
your colleague whose post par
depression as you would if she instead
had cancer and lastly not there are many
of us working at the frontiers of
neuroscience medicine and engineering to
modernize how we’re approaching mental
health diagnosis and treatment while we
figure this out at the scientific level
we can also work to figure this out at
the societal level and this is where you
come in don’t turn a blind eye to your
partner if their moods change suddenly
don’t ignore your friends jokes about
suicidal thoughts
don’t tell your daughter it’s just a
phase if she says she feels pangs of
anxiety don’t bully the quiet kid at
school don’t bully any kid at school and
don’t tell yourself to just toughen up
if you’re going through something really
difficult seek the help you need and
also be the help that others may need my
personal hope is that your understanding
of how larger the challenge this is both
scientifically and socially will
motivate your broader acceptance and
compassion for people like my friend
Mike who are suffering from challenges
to their mental health thank you for
listening
[Applause] [Music]
Please follow and like us: