Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Medical School
Twin Cities
Award Year
2020
University Award
McKnight Land-Grant Professorship
No Monument Location
Engineering Brain Networks to Treat Mental Illness
Alik Widge is a psychiatrist, biomedical engineer, and neuroscientist. He develops treatments that change brain activity to reverse the symptoms of mental illnesses such as depression, addiction, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder. He uses electrical stimulation to change how brain regions communicate with each other, directly targeting the causes of mental illness. His lab spans the translational spectrum from prototyping in animals, to pilot tests in neurosurgical volunteers, to clinical trials and biomarker studies.