Professor, Departments of Medicine, Physiology, Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, Division of Digestive Diseases, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA

Dr. Mayer has pursued his career long interest in elucidating bidirectional communication within the brain/gut axis. In particular, his research interest is focused on identifying and characterizing brain circuits concerned with the encoding and modulation of pain and emotional stimuli in health and in various patient populations with chronic idiopathic pain syndromes, including irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Using a wide range of investigative techniques (fMRI, PET, ERP, connectivity modeling, genetic imaging and pharmacologic imaging), Dr. Mayer aims to identify the interactions between genetic and environmental factors, including early life events and stress on the responsiveness of arousal and pain modulation circuits, identify possible alterations in specific signaling pathways within these circuits (including those triggered by NK1, CRF1 and HTR3 G protein-coupled receptors) and identify structural differences within affected brain regions. Dr. Mayer also evaluates the effect of candidate drugs on symptoms, perception and brain activity in patients with functional GI disorders and has embarked on epidemiological and health outcomes studies in these patients. More recently, Dr. Mayer collaborating with Drs. Chang, Jacobs and Labus is demonstrating the influence of the intestinal microbiota on the activity of brain regions that control central processing of emotion and sensation and is a major proponent of the notion that disorders in function of the brain-gut-microbiome axis plays a central role in the pathogenesis of IBS and other disorders. In the proposed new Center at UCLA

emayer@mednet.ucla.edu
310-206-0192

US MAILING ADDRESS:
Emeran A. Mayer
UCLA Med-Div of Digestive Dis, UCLA Oppenheimer Center for Neurobiology of Stress
BOX 957378, 42-210 CHS
Los Angeles, CA 90095-7378