This multidisciplinary research has been the flagship of our Center's geriatric educational activities during the past 10 years. We now request funding to extend the program for another 5 years. We will continue to focus our training on geriatric mood disorders because they constitute a major clinical and public health problem and offer a model for training in geriatric research. Since mood disorders interact with a variety of biological, behavioral and psychosocial factors, the program will provide rich opportunities for trainees to study complex research methodology. The trainees will be physicians or Ph.D. scientists. The typical duration of training will be 2 years. Training will rely on the teaching and research experience of a large multidisciplinary faculty with a history of productive scientific collaboration and strong personal ties for 20 years. The program will utilize the rich and diverse patient population of Cornell Institute of Geriatric Psychiatry, the training and research structures of an NIMH-supported Intervention Research Center and a number of collaborating laboratories. The multiple training programs of the Weill Medical College of Cornell University enrich the program's intellectual atmosphere and will serve as sources of recruitment and as teaching sites for the research fellows. The proposed program includes seven training components: Course of geriatric mood disorders, intervention research in nonpsychiatric populations, chronobiology and sleep disorders of aging, electrophysiology, psychiatric clinical service research, neuroimaging, geriatric clinical psychopharmacology. Each trainee will focus on one of these components for most of his/her training but the remaining components will be available for additional experience. The training program will rely on the preceptor-trainee relationship in which the preceptor assists the trainee to develop a research project, prepare an application for one of our three intramural competitive funding programs (exposure to review process) or other granting organizations, and collect, analyze and report research data. A core curriculum will be offered as well as formal courses, tutorials and a clinical experience tailored to the trainee's needs.
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