Associate Professor
Department of Psychology
McGill University
Stewart Biological Sciences Building
1205 Dr Penfield Ave
Montreal, Qc, Canada
H3A 1B1
Phone: (514) 398-4916
Fax: (514) 398-4896
Email: Gillian at hebb dot psych dot mcgill dot ca
Note: Please replace at with @ and dot with . for the above email
address (written this way to prevent use by spammers).
Laboratory Homepage: www.psych.mcgill.ca/labs/odriscolllab
Special link: Dr. Philip S. Holzman (1922-2004): In Memoriam
***Poster Session 2005***: Abstracts and Abstract Submission form
I did my undergraduate degree at Wellesley College, and spent my junior year in France at the Université Aix-Marseille. After graduation, I began doing research at Mass. Mental Health Center, where I first became interested in schizophrenia and its biological basis. I received my Ph.D. in Psychology from Harvard University in 1993, where my advisor was Philip Holzman. I did a post-doctoral fellowship at the Vision Sciences Laboratory at Harvard before joining the faculty at McGill in 1995.
Contents:
Awards & Honours | Research Interests |
Teaching | Selected Publications
Awards and Honours:
McGill University Dawson Scholar 2002-2007 National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia & Depression (NARSAD) Young Investigator Award 1995 International Congress on Schizophrenia Research Young Investigator Award 1995 Biennial Winter Workshop on Schizophrenia Research Young Scientist Award 1994 Sackler Foundation for Psychobiology Fellowship Award 1991 Stanley Foundation Fellowship Award 1990 Radcliffe College President's Travel Award 1990 Wellesley College Durant Scholar 1985 Wellesley College Slater Foreign Study Award 1983
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Research Interests:
My principal interests are in the biological basis of schizophrenia. One of the ways we try to better understand schizophrenia is by examining populations at elevated risk of developing the disorder. For example, a large proportion of schizophrenic patients and their healthy first-degree relatives have abnormal smooth pursuit eye movements, something that is uncommon in the general population. These abnormalities are thought to reflect genetically coded differences in brain function. I am investigating differences in brain structure and function between people who have markers of risk for schizophrenia and those who do not. The long-term goal of this research is to better understand the path from risk for schizophrenia to the development of the disorder.
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Teaching:
I teach a graduate seminar on schizophrenia (731) in our Clinical Psychology Ph.D. program. It covers a broad spectrum of topics on schizophrenia, from the epidemiology of the disorder, course and outcome, to basic research on the neural basis of schizophrenia, to current pharmacotherapies and psychosocial treatments.
In the Winter 2003 term, I taught Psyc-483: Advanced Honours Seminar II for students in their final year of Honours Psychology. In the course, the students presented designs for clinical research studies, practiced SCID interviewing, read scientific and first-hand accounts on the topics of schizophrenia, autism, eating disorders, and scientific methods, and debated some "hot topics" including pedophilia as a DSM-IV disorder, forced medication for schizophrenics and surgery for transsexual infants.
For several years, I also taught a full-year undergraduate research course (450D) to final year students who are doing a thesis in Psychology in their last year. For more information, check out the website www.psych.mcgill.ca/courses/450.
Honours Students: visit the PSYC-483 Homepage
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Selected Publications:
O'Driscoll GA, Dépatie L, Holahan ALV, Savion-Lemieux T, Barr RG, Jolicoeur C, Douglas VI. Executive functions and methylphenidate response in subtypes of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Biological Psychiatry, in press.
Dépatie L, O'Driscoll GA, Wolff ALV, Atkinson V, Thavundayil JX, Ng Ying Kin N & Lal S. Nicotine and behavioral markers of risk for schizophrenia: A double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study. Neuropsychopharmacology, 2002, 27(6), 1056-1070. (view paper).
Gagnon D, O'Driscoll GA, Petrides M, Pike GB. The effect of spatial and temporal information on saccades and neural activity in oculomotor structures (Brain, 2002, 125, 123-139). (view if you have access to Brain online, otherwise email for a reprint.)
O'Driscoll GA, Florencio PS, Gagnon D, Wolff ALV, Benkelfat C, Mikula L, Lal S, Evans AC. Amygdala-hippocampal volume and verbal memory in first-degree relatives of schizophrenic patients. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, 2001, 107(2): 75-85.(view if you have access to Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging online, otherwise email for a reprint.)
O'Driscoll GA, Wolff ALV, Benkelfat C, Florencio PS, Lal S, Evans AC. Functional neuroanatomy of smooth pursuit and predictive saccades. NeuroReport, 2000, 11(6): 1335-1340.
O'Driscoll GA, Benkelfat C, Florencio PS, Wolff ALV, Joober R, Lal S, Evans AC. Neural correlates of eye tracking deficits in first-degree relatives of schizophrenic patients: a PET study. Archives of General Psychiatry, 1999, 56: 1127-34.
O'Driscoll GA, Holzman PS, Lenzenweger M. Antisaccade and smooth pursuit eye tracking and schizotypy. Archives of General Psychiatry, 1998, 55, 837-843.
O'Driscoll GA, Alpert NM, Matthysse SW, Levy DL, Rauch SR, Holzman PS. The functional neuroanatomy of antisaccade performance investigated with positron emission tomography. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 1995, 92, 925-9.
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