René Sylvain Kahn (born 1954) is a

neuropsychiatrist Neuropsychiatry or Organic Psychiatry is a branch of medicine that deals with psychiatry as it relates to neurology, in an effort to understand and attribute behavior to the interaction of neurobiology and social psychology factors. Within neurop ...

and the Esther and Joseph Klingenstein Professor and System Chair of Psychiatry at the

Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS or Mount Sinai), formerly the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, is a private medical school in New York City. It is the academic teaching arm of the Mount Sinai Health System, which manages eight ...

the United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

, a position he has held since 2017. He previously served as Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Brain Center Rudolf Magnus at the

University Medical Center Utrecht The University Medical Center Utrecht (UMCU; Dutch: ''Universitair Medisch Centrum Utrecht'') is the main hospital of the city of Utrecht, Netherlands. It is affiliated with the Utrecht University. Since the foundation of the university in 1636 an ...

the Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

. Kahn is recognized for his research on the

neurobiology Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, development ...

schizophrenia Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social withdra ...

. He served as a former president of the

Schizophrenia International Research Society The Schizophrenia International Research Society is an academic organization with a global scope, devoted to the study of schizophrenia and related disorders. See also * ''Schizophrenia Bulletin ''Schizophrenia Bulletin'' is a peer-reviewed medic ...

and was elected to the

Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences ( nl, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, abbreviated: KNAW) is an organization dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands. The academy is housed ...

in 2009. He received the

Neuropsychopharmacology Neuropsychopharmacology, an interdisciplinary science related to psychopharmacology (study of effects of drugs on the mind) and fundamental neuroscience, is the study of the neural mechanisms that drugs act upon to influence behavior. It entails ...

Award from the

European College of Neuropsychopharmacology The European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) is a pan-European, non-profit scientific association that serves as a platform to exchange and promote research in the field of neuropsychopharmacology. The ECNP “is committed to ensuring t ...

in 2014. He was awarded a knighthood in the Order of the Netherlands Lion in 2018. As of 2020, he was principal or co-principal investigator of more than 40 grants, written 39 books and book chapters and published more than 1000 peer-reviewed articles.

Biography

Kahn studied medicine from 1972 to 1979 at the

University of Groningen The University of Groningen (abbreviated as UG; nl, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, abbreviated as RUG) is a Public university#Continental Europe, public research university of more than 30,000 students in the city of Groningen (city), Groningen in ...

, and then specialized in psychiatry and

neurology Neurology (from el, wikt:νεῦρον, νεῦρον (neûron), "string, nerve" and the suffix wikt:-logia, -logia, "study of") is the branch of specialty (medicine), medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of co ...

at the

University of Utrecht Utrecht University (UU; nl, Universiteit Utrecht, formerly ''Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht'') is a public research university in Utrecht, Netherlands. Established , it is one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands. In 2018, it had an enrollme ...

and the

Academic Medical Center An academic medical centre (AMC), variously also known as academic health science centre, academic health science system, or academic health science partnership, is an educational and healthcare institute formed by the grouping of a health profes ...

, respectively. He is a registered neuropsychiatrist since 1986. In 1990 he obtained his Ph.D. with professors

Herman van Praag Herman Meïr van Praag (born 17 October 1929) is a Dutch psychiatrist. He was a professor of psychiatry at the University of Groningen, Utrecht University, Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Maastricht University. Van Praag is considered the ...

and

David de Wied David de Wied (12 January 1925 – 21 February 2004, aged 79) was a Dutch professor of pharmacology at the University of Utrecht. Due to the necessity of hiding as a Jew during the Second World War, De Wied only started in 1947 studying medicine ...

as mentors at the University of Utrecht on the thesis ''

Serotonin Serotonin () or 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) is a monoamine neurotransmitter. Its biological function is complex and multifaceted, modulating mood, cognition, reward, learning, memory, and numerous physiological processes such as vomiting and vas ...

Receptor Hypersensitivity in

Panic Disorder Panic disorder is a mental disorder, mental and Abnormal behavior, behavioral disease#Disorder, disorder, specifically an anxiety disorder characterized by reoccurring unexpected panic attacks. Panic attacks are sudden periods of intense fear th ...

: an Hypothesis''. Kahn served in the

Royal Netherlands Army The Royal Netherlands Army ( nl, Koninklijke Landmacht) is the land branch of the Netherlands Armed Forces. Though the Royal Netherlands Army was raised on 9 January 1814, its origins date back to 1572, when the was raised – making the Dutc ...

as a first lieutenant in 1980 and 1981. Following residencies in the Netherlands, he attended the

Albert Einstein College of Medicine Albert Einstein College of Medicine is a research-intensive medical school located in the Morris Park neighborhood of the Bronx in New York City. Founded in 1953, Einstein operates as an independent degree-granting institution as part of t ...

in New York City for a research fellowship in biological psychiatry. From there he completed psychiatry residencies at Mount Sinai Hospital and then acted as the chief of the psychiatry research unit at the Bronx VA Hospital. In 1993 he returned to the Netherlands be the chair of psychiatry at the University Medical Center. He led the Brain Center

Rudolf Magnus Rudolf Magnus (2 September 1873, Brunswick – 25 July 1927, Pontresina) was a German pharmacologist and physiologist. He studied medicine, specialising in pharmacology, in Heidelberg, where he became associate professor of pharmacology in 190 ...

—a multi-discipline center for research in fundamental neuroscience, psychiatry, neurology, neurosurgery and rehabilitation medicine—for over 10 years, until 2017.

Honors and awards

Fulbright Scholarship The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...

(1985) * Chairman of the Dutch Association for Psychiatry (2003–2006) * Treasurer and Vice-President of the

(2002–2007) * Honorary Lifetime Professor at

Jilin University Jilin University (JLU; ; often abbreviated JLU or ) is a leading national research university located in Changchun, China. It is under the direct jurisdiction of China's Ministry of Education. It is a Chinese Ministry of Education Class A Doub ...

Changchun Changchun (, ; ), also romanized as Ch'angch'un, is the capital and largest city of Jilin Province, People's Republic of China. Lying in the center of the Songliao Plain, Changchun is administered as a , comprising 7 districts, 1 county and 3 c ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

(2010) *

ECNP The European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) is a pan-European, non-profit scientific association that serves as a platform to exchange and promote research in the field of neuropsychopharmacology. The ECNP “is committed to ensuring ...

Neuropsychopharmacology Award (2014) * Honorary doctorate at

Semmelweis University Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis (; hu, Semmelweis Ignác Fülöp ; 1 July 1818 – 13 August 1865) was a Hungarian physician and scientist, who was an early pioneer of antiseptic procedures. Described as the "saviour of mothers", he discovered that t ...

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia a ...

(2014) * Lifetime achievement award of the Netherlands Psychiatric Association (2016) * President of The

(2014–2016) * Fellow,

American College of Neuropsychopharmacology Founded in 1961, the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP) is a professional organization of leading brain and behavior scientists. The principal functions of the college are research and education. Their goals in research are to offe ...

* Member of the

(2009) * Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion (2018)

Research

Kahn studies biological causes of

psychiatric disorders A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness or psychiatric disorder, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. Such features may be persistent, relapsing and remitti ...

such as schizophrenia and has led numerous consortia examining the brain changes that play a role in

. He has coordinated several international trials to optimize the treatment of schizophrenia. He is known for helping establish proof that schizophrenia debuts with

cognitive dysfunction Cognitive disorders (CDs), also known as neurocognitive disorders (NCDs), are a category of mental health disorders that primarily affect cognitive abilities including learning, memory, perception, and problem solving. Neurocognitive disorders in ...

, preceding the onset of the first incidence of

psychosis Psychosis is a condition of the mind that results in difficulties determining what is real and what is not real. Symptoms may include delusions and hallucinations, among other features. Additional symptoms are incoherent speech and behavior ...

by more than a decade. He and associates further showed that

brain volume The size of the brain is a frequent topic of study within the fields of anatomy, biological anthropology, animal science and evolution. Brain size is sometimes measured by weight and sometimes by volume (via MRI scans or by skull volume). Neur ...

is one of the most

heritable Heredity, also called inheritance or biological inheritance, is the passing on of traits from parents to their offspring; either through asexual reproduction or sexual reproduction, the offspring cells or organisms acquire the genetic informa ...

characteristics, paving the way to link brain volumes in health and disease to

genetic variation Genetic variation is the difference in DNA among individuals or the differences between populations. The multiple sources of genetic variation include mutation and genetic recombination. Mutations are the ultimate sources of genetic variation, ...

Grants and trials

As of 2020, Kahn is the principal investigator or co-principal investigator on 13 active grants related to child development and drug augmentation for onset schizophrenia to prevent psychosis and cognitive therapy symptoms. Active grant in 2020:

Publications

Editorial

As of 2020, Kahn is on the editorial board of

Schizophrenia Research ''Schizophrenia Research'' is a peer-reviewed medical journal covering research on the cause, clinical diagnostics, and treatment of schizophrenia. It is an official journal of the Schizophrenia International Research Society and was establishe ...

European Neuropsychopharmacology ''European Neuropsychopharmacology'' is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Elsevier. It is the official journal of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology. It was established in November 1990 and covers clinical and b ...

Schizophrenia Bulletin ''Schizophrenia Bulletin'' is a peer-reviewed medical journal which covers research relating to the etiology and treatment of schizophrenia. The journal is published bimonthly by Oxford University Press in association with the Maryland Psychiatri ...

and

Early Intervention in Psychosis Early intervention in psychosis is a clinical approach to those experiencing symptoms of psychosis for the first time. It forms part of a new prevention paradigm for psychiatry and is leading to reform of mental health services, especially in th ...

Peer reviewed articles

Kahn authored or co-authored over 1000 scientific papers with an

H index The ''h''-index is an author-level metric that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications, initially used for an individual scientist or scholar. The ''h''-index correlates with obvious success indicators such as winn ...

Thomson Reuters Thomson Reuters Corporation ( ) is a Canadian multinational media conglomerate. The company was founded in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where it is headquartered at the Bay Adelaide Centre. Thomson Reuters was created by the Thomson Corpora ...

: 128; cites: > 73,500 and an H index,

Google Scholar Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes p ...

: 195; cites: > 165,000. Partial list: * Sher L, Kahn RS. Suicide in Schizophrenia: An Educational Overview. Medicina (Kaunas). 2019 Jul 10;55(7):361. doi: 10.3390/medicina55070361. ; PMCID: PMC6681260. * Böttcher C, Schlickeiser S, Sneeboer MAM, Kunkel D, Knop A, Paza E, Fidzinski P, Kraus L, Snijders GJL, Kahn RS, Schulz AR, Mei HE; NBB-Psy, Hol EM, Siegmund B, Glauben R, Spruth EJ, de Witte LD, Priller J. Human microglia regional heterogeneity and phenotypes determined by multiplexed single-cell mass cytometry. Nat Neurosci. 2019 Jan;22(1):78-90. doi: 10.1038/s41593-018-0290-2. Epub 2018 Dec 17. . * Turk E, van den Heuvel MI, Benders MJ, de Heus R, Franx A, Manning JH, Hect JL, Hernandez-Andrade E, Hassan SS, Romero R, Kahn RS, Thomason ME, van den Heuvel MP. Functional Connectome of the Fetal Brain. J Neurosci. 2019 Dec 4;39(49):9716-9724. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2891-18.2019. Epub 2019 Nov 4. ; PMCID: PMC6891066. * Hess JL, Tylee DS, Mattheisen M; Schizophrenia Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium; Lundbeck Foundation Initiative for Integrative Psychiatric Research (iPSYCH), Børglum AD, Als TD, Grove J, Werge T, Mortensen PB, Mors O, Nordentoft M, Hougaard DM, Byberg-Grauholm J, Bækvad-Hansen M, Greenwood TA, Tsuang MT, Curtis D, Steinberg S, Sigurdsson E, Stefánsson H, Stefánsson K, Edenberg HJ, Holmans P, Faraone SV, Glatt SJ. A polygenic resilience score moderates the genetic risk for schizophrenia. Mol Psychiatry. 2019 Sep 6:10.1038/s41380-019-0463-8. doi: 10.1038/s41380-019-0463-8. Epub ahead of print. ; PMCID: PMC7058518. * Kahn RS. On the Origins of Schizophrenia. Am J Psychiatry. 2020 Apr 1;177(4):291-297. doi: 10.1176/appi.ajp.2020.20020147. . * Ormel PR, Vieira de Sá R, van Bodegraven EJ, Karst H, Harschnitz O, Sneeboer MAM, Johansen LE, van Dijk RE, Scheefhals N, Berdenis van Berlekom A, Ribes Martínez E, Kling S, MacGillavry HD, van den Berg LH, Kahn RS, Hol EM, de Witte LD, Pasterkamp RJ. Microglia innately develop within cerebral organoids. Nat Commun. 2018 Oct 9;9(1):4167. doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-06684-2. ; PMCID: PMC6177485. * Bipolar Disorder and Schizophrenia Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium. Electronic address: douglas.ruderfer@vanderbilt.edu; Bipolar Disorder and Schizophrenia Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium. Genomic Dissection of Bipolar Disorder and Schizophrenia, Including 28 Subphenotypes. Cell. 2018 Jun 14;173(7):1705-1715.e16. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2018.05.046. ; PMCID: PMC6432650. * Böttcher C, Schlickeiser S, Sneeboer MAM, Kunkel D, Knop A, Paza E, Fidzinski P, Kraus L, Snijders GJL, Kahn RS, Schulz AR, Mei HE; NBB-Psy, Hol EM, Siegmund B, Glauben R, Spruth EJ, de Witte LD, Priller J. Human microglia regional heterogeneity and phenotypes determined by multiplexed single-cell mass cytometry. Nat Neurosci. 2019 Jan;22(1):78-90. doi: 10.1038/s41593-018-0290-2. Epub 2018 Dec 17. . * Böttcher C, Schlickeiser S, Sneeboer MAM, Kunkel D, Knop A, Paza E, Fidzinski P, Kraus L, Snijders GJL, Kahn RS, Schulz AR, Mei HE; NBB-Psy, Hol EM, Siegmund B, Glauben R, Spruth EJ, de Witte LD, Priller J. Human microglia regional heterogeneity and phenotypes determined by multiplexed single-cell mass cytometry. Nat Neurosci. 2019 Jan;22(1):78-90. doi: 10.1038/s41593-018-0290-2. Epub 2018 Dec 17. . * Schür RR, van Leeuwen JMC, Houtepen LC, Joëls M, Kahn RS, Boks MP, Vinkers CH. Glucocorticoid receptor exon 1Fmethylation and the cortisol stress response in health and disease. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2018 Nov;97:182-189. doi: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2018.07.018. Epub 2018 Jul 11. .

Books and chapters

Partial list: * Kahn RS. De appel en de Boom. Uitgeverij Balans, Amsterdam 2011. (3 editions) * Kahn RS. In de spreekkamer van de psychiater. Uitgeverij Balans, Amsterdam 2008. , NUR 875 (6 printings) * Kahn RS. Onze Hersenen., Over de smalle grens tussen normaal en abnormaal. Uitgeverij Balans, Amsterdam 2006, 2007, 2008. , NUR 875 (12 printings) * De Haan L, Kahn RS. Psychotische stoornissen. In: Leerboek Psychiatrie (Hengeveld, van Balkom eds). De Tijdstroom uitgeverij, 2005. / 5898 094 4, NUR 875

References

External links

Faculty page
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kahn, René Sylvain Dutch psychiatrists Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai faculty Living people 1954 births Dutch emigrants to the United States Schizophrenia researchers Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Academic staff of Utrecht University