Alasdair Barr
Associate Professor, Anesthesiology, Pharmacology & Therapeutics
Faculty of Medicine
UBC – BCMHARI
Phone: 604-875-2000 ext 4728
Email: [email protected]
Description of Research Program
The central focus of my research is mental health and addictions, with a particular emphasis on psychosis and the medications used in its treatment. My research program is based on a multidisciplinary and translational approach that spans from "bench to bedside," as I maintain strong and highly productive research programs in both clinical and related preclinical research.
Working in collaboration with some of Canada's finest researchers, I study "psychosis" from three different perspectives. These include idiopathic schizophrenia-spectrum disorders, psychostimulant drug-induced psychosis and (most recently) the post-operative delirium that occurs following cardiac surgery. Despite different etiologies and patient populations, these three conditions share many similarities in terms of symptoms and treatment, and all can be studied in a translational manner.
Research Information
Mental Illness / Substance
Depression, Psychostimulants, Schizophrenia
Area of Research
Animal models, Biological mechanisms, Brain morphology, Clinical trials, Cognition, Drug development, Drug dosing, Drug side-effects Neuropsychiatry/ Neuropsychology, Neurotransmitters
Keyword Terms
Antipsychotic drugs, Cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia, Psychostimulant addiction, Synaptic dysfunction in mental illness
Selected Publications
View Complete List of Publications
Barr AM, Honer WG, Johnson JL, Wu TKY, Procyshyn RM., A comparison of antipsychotic drug Defined Daily Doses versus Chlorpromazine Equivalent doses in patients with or without extrapyramidal motor symptoms. J Clin Psychopharmacol: In Press
Barr AM, Procyshyn RM. Methamphetamine. In Drug abuse & addiction in medical illness (ed JC Verster). Humana Press, Totawa NJ, In Press.
Boyda HN, Tse L, Procyshyn RM, Honer WG, Barr AM. Preclinical models of antipsychotic drug-induced metabolic side effects. Trends Pharmacol Sci: In Press
Boyda HN, Tse L, Procyshyn RM, Wong D, Wu TK, Pang CC, Barr AM, A parametric study of the acute effects of antipsychotic drugs on glucose sensitivity in an animal model. Prog Neuropsychopharmacol Biol Psychiatry: 2010 34: 945-54
Procyshyn RM, Honer WG, Wu TKY, Ko RWY, McIsaac SA, Young AH, Johnson JL, Barr AM. Persistent antipsychotic polypharmacy and excessive dosing in the community psychiatric treatment setting. J Clin Psychiatry: 2010; 71:566-73
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