Assistant Professor
Department of Psychiatry
Research Imaging Center
The University of Texas
Health Science Center at San Antonio
Biographical Sketch
Dr. Acheson is an Assistant Professor with a joint appointment in the Department of Psychiatry and the Research Imaging Center at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UTHSCSA). He completed his graduate training at the University of Buffalo, The State University of New York (SUNY) studying the effects of brain lesions and pharmacological and genetic manipulations on decision-making and impulse control in rodents. Building on this work, Dr. Acheson completed postdoctoral training at the University of Chicago, where he completed human studies on the effects of pharmacological and physiological manipulations on decision-making and impulse control. To broaden his expertise to include neuroimaging, Dr. Acheson recently completed additional postdoctoral training at UTHSCSA, examining brain activation differences in young adults with and without a family history of alcoholism. He also developed behavioral tasks to study neural substrates of impulsive decision-making using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Because of his interest in translational research and imaging, Dr. Acheson recently joined the Neurobehavioral Research Laboratory and Clinic (NRLC) team.
Throughout his career Dr. Acheson's primary interest has been the examination of the neural substrates of decision-making and impulse control. He is particularly interested in understanding how these substrates function differentially in drug-abusing and other impulsive populations, either as a result of baseline differences or as consequences of drug use or other influences. Currently, Dr. Acheson is working to apply neuroimaging techniques to ongoing studies at the NRLC by measuring brain regions activated by the behavioral measures employed by the NRLC team.
Areas of Interest
- Neural Substrates of Decision-Making and Impulse Control
- Neural and Cognitive Alterations in Drug Abusers and Vulnerable Populations
- Translational Measures of Decision-Making and Impulse Control
- Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)
- Positron Emission Tomography (PET)
Education
| 2004 | Ph.D. | Behavioral Neuroscience | University of Buffalo, SUNY |
| 2006 | Fellowship | Behavioral Pharmacology | University of Chicago |
| 2007 | Fellowship | Behavioral Neuroscience/Neuroimaging | UTHSCSA |
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