Faculty

• Robert L. Balster
• Patrick M. Beardsley
• Thomas Eissenberg
• Robert J. Hamm
• Thomas H. Leahey
• Aron H. Lichtman
• Joseph H. Porter

Robert L. Balster

My field of research encompasses the fields of behavioral sciences and pharmacology. Behavioral pharmacologists are interested in the effects of drugs of abuse on behavior and developing models for studying phenomena relevant to drug abuse in the laboratory where we focus on specific variables that determine how drugs act. Most of my research utilizes animal models, including a model called drug discrimination in which animals are trained to feel the effects of drugs and report their ability to discriminate active from placebo injections. We also study voluntary drug taking by animals, which shows remarkable similarities to drug taking in humans. Some of our research focuses on how drugs produce these effects in the brain. In addition to learning more about the neurobehavioral basis of addition, practical applications of this research have included the evaluation of new drugs for abuse potential and research on the development of new medications to treat drug abuse. Current primary interests include studies of the psychotomimetic drug phencyclidine (PCP) and abused inhalants. I also am active in the application of the scientific information to the development of drug abuse policy.

Robert L. Balster obtained his Ph.D. in Research Psychology at the University of Houston, completed post-doctoral training in Psychiatry and Pharmacology at the University of Chicago and came to VCU in 1973. He currently is director of the Institute for Drug and Alcohol Studies and professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology and became affiliate research professor of Psychology in 1991. He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and past chair of the APA Board of Scientific Affairs. He also is past president of the College on Problems of Drug Dependence.

Patrick M. Beardsley

The way in which a drug can control or modify behavior is dependent upon several different factors. The identification of these controlling factors and their interrelationships with the direct pharmacological actions of drugs is the domain of the science of behavioral pharmacology. My field of research is concerned with these questions of behavioral pharmacology. In particular, I am interested in answering questions entailing the nature of the controlling determinants involved in drug abuse disorders and the underlying neuropharmacological mechanisms mediating them. I use a variety of laboratory animal models in my behavioral pharmacology research. Most of these models have close parallels to human experimental procedures or clinical phenomena. These models include physical dependence, self-administration, locomotor activity, and drug discrimination procedures. Physical dependence, self-administration, and drug discrimination procedures closely parallel withdrawal phenomena, abuse of illicit drugs, and the subjective effects (intoxication) produced by drugs, respectively. Much of my research effort uses these types of procedures for evaluating new medications to treat abuse disorders. I am currently involved with studies involving heroin, cocaine and phencyclidine (PCP).

Patrick M. Beardsley obtained his Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from the University of Minnesota and completed post-doctoral training at the Addiction Research Foundation in Toronto, Canada, and at the VCU Medical Center, Richmond, Va. He worked for several years supervising drug development research in pharmaceutical companies both in the U.S. and in Europe. He is currently a professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology and is president of the International Study Group Investigating Drugs as Reinforcers.

Thomas Eissenberg

My research focuses on understanding and treating drug abuse. Drug abuse can be conceptualized as a behavior that is maintained by several factors including the pharmacology of the drug and the environment in which drug use has occurred. My students and I use humans as subjects to examine how these various factors interact to influence drug self-administration in a controlled laboratory setting. This work can include the administration of drugs of abuse, the administration of putative drug abuse pharmacotherapies, and/or the manipulation of stimuli that are associated with drug use. For example, current research in the human behavioral pharmacology of nicotine involves the administration of various treatment agents (such as nicotine delivered via a patch or spray) to smokers while measuring cigarette self-administration. Other studies examine the extent to which smoking-related stimuli influence cigarette self-administration. The long-term goal of this research is understand the relative influence of the factors that initiate and maintain drug abuse in order to aid the development of pharmacologic and behavioral interventions that effectively treat drug abusers.

Thomas Eissenberg, professor, received his undergraduate education in Psychology and English at Grinnell College (1987). He earned his Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology at McMaster University ( Canada) in 1994 and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Human Behavioral Pharmacology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1996. He joined the Department of Psychology and Institute for Drug and Alcohol Studies in 1997, and holds affiliate appointments in the departments of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Psychiatry, and Internal Medicine.

Robert J. Hamm, Emeritus Faculty

In the U.S. there are approximately 500,000 head injuries each year, and head injury is a leading cause of death and disability for persons under 40 years of age. Using an animal model, my research is focused on understanding the pathobiology of traumatic brain injury, with an emphasis on receptor-mediated alterations in neuronal signaling that are produced by the injury. At present, we are investigating the effects that various pharmacological and environmental interventions have on neuronal plasticity and recovery of function after injury. In collaboration with colleagues in the departments of Anatomy, Pharmacology and Toxicology, and Neurosurgery, we employ a multidisciplinary neuroscience approach to addressing our research questions. In addition to assessing an intervention’s effects on improving behavioral recovery after injury, we also employ molecular biology techniques (including immunohistochemistry and radioimmunoassay) to investigate changes in neurotrophic factors, neurotransmitter proteins and cell adhesion molecules. The long-term goal of this research is to increase our understanding of how the nervous system responds to injury and how we can enhance its regenerative capacity in order to reduce the disabilities that follow traumatic brain injury.

Robert J. Hamm, professor, received his undergraduate education at Kent State University (1968). He earned his master’s (1972) and Ph.D. (1974) at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale in the field of Physiological Psychology.

Thomas H. Leahey, Emeritus Faculty

I was trained in cognitive psychology with an emphasis on cognitive development. I still supervise students interested in cognition and social cognition. For example, we are currently conducting studies in autobiographical memory of attitude change: (1) To what degree are people aware that their attitudes have changed over time? and (2) autobiographical memory among senior psychology students of experiments in which they participated as freshmen. However, my main research area is in history and philosophy of psychology. In history, my focus is on the birth of scientific psychology in the 19th century, and its development in the early 20th century. My main philosophical interest is related to what degree can psychology be regarded as a science, especially if we accept the idea that mind — the ostensible object of psychological inquiry — is itself an historically constructed object. I also have interests in the field of evolutionary psychology, in which I offer a seminar.

Thomas H. Leahey received his Ph. D. in cognitive psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1974, and since then has been at VCU. He is author of “A History of Psychology” and is co-author (with R. J. Harris of Kansas State University) of “Learning and Cognition.” He is a past president of Division 24 (Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology) of the APA.

Aron H. Lichtman

The recent identification of cannabiniod receptors distributed heterogeneously throughout the central nervous system and the isolation of endogenous cannabinoids suggest the existence of a cannabinoid neuronal system. Therefore, a major goal of my research is to elucidate the function of this putative endogenous system and the mechanisms by which the synthetic and naturally occurring cannabiniod agonists interact with it. The first aim of this project is to identify brain regions that mediate the antinociceptive, cognitive and motor effects of the cannabinoids. We have focused on the periiaqueductal gray, the hippocampus and the striatum; each of these brain areas contains a high concentration of cannabiniod receptors and plays a role in pain processing, cognition and locomotion, respectively. A second goal of this project is to examine the impact of chronic cannabiniod administration in neonatal and juvenile rats on behavioral indices and to examine the underlying cellular changes in the relevant brain areas that underlie the acute effects of the cannabinoids as well as tolerance and dependence.

Aron H. Lichtman, professor, received his undergraduate education in Psychology at Rutgers College (1984). He earned his Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology at Dartmouth College in 1989 and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Pharmacology and Toxicology at Virginia Commonwealth University in 1993.

Joseph H. Porter

My research interests are focused in the field of behavioral pharmacology. I utilize a number of different animal models to study the effects of drugs on behavior and also to determine the mechanisms of action of drugs. One of my primary research interests has been the behavioral pharmacology of antipsychotic drugs used to treat schizophrenia. Typical antipsychotics, such as haloperidol, are effective in relieving the positive symptoms of schizophrenia, but have a very high incidence of producing extrapyramidal motor side effects in most patients. In recent years, the development of the atypical antipsychotic clozapine has lead to a renewed search for new antipsychotics that not only relieve the positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia, but also have a very low incidence of motor side effects in patients. In my laboratory, one of the most important animal models we use is drug discrimination. In this procedure animals are trained to discriminate between the subjective effects of a drug injection and a placebo injection in either a two or three lever operant procedure. This procedure allows us to “"ask” the rat if other drugs are more like the training drug or the placebo, and also allows us to explore the underlying neural mechanisms for the behavioral effects of these drugs. Other animal models used in my lab include a variety of operant procedures, alley way studies, motor activity studies and the paw test (a modified test of catalepsy). In addition to the study of atypical antipsychotics, other research interests include research on antidepressants, anxiolytics and drugs of abuse (e.g., methadone).

Joseph H. Porter obtained his Ph.D. in Biopsychology at the University of Georgia in 1974 and came to VCU in 1975. He currently is a professor in the Biopsychology Program and holds an affiliate faculty appointment in the Department of Biology. He served as the program’s director from 1987 to 1997 and was the associate chair for the Department of Psychology from 1985 to 1987.