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Foreword
Americans continue to demand a greater role in deciding issues that affect their health. Increased health awareness and the convincing evidence linking lifestyle, risk factors, and specific diseases have accelerated our need to know.The Clinical Center, recognizing the importance of providing information to facilitate intelligent decisions on health issues, created a unique lecture series featuring physician scientists working at the frontiers of biomedical research at the National Institutes of Health.
The Medicine for the Public series has provided an opportunity for millions of people to learn more about how their bodies work and what they can do to maintain to improve their health.
This publication is one of several adapted from the series. It is our sincere hope that you will find this material interesting and enlightening.
Saul Rosen, Ph.D.,M.D.
Acting Director
Clinical Center
National Institutes of Health
Biographical Note:
Alan J. Zametkin, M.D.
Senior Staff Psychiatrist
Section on Clinical Brain Imaging
Laboratory of Cerebral Metabolism
National Institute of Mental HealthA native of Providence, Rhode Island, Dr. Alan Zametkin received a bachelor of arts degree in psychology from Amherst College and a medical degree from Brown University. He fulfilled a one-year internship in pediatrics at Stanford University Medical Center, then completed an adult and child psychiatry training program at the University of California at Los Angeles.
Dr. Zametkin joined the Clinical Center in 1980 as a staff psychiatrist in the National Institute of Mental Health's (NIMH) Child Psychiatry Branch. Seven years later he became a senior staff psychiatrist in the Clinical Brain Imaging Section of the NIMH Laboratory of Cerebral Metabolism.
He and his colleagues were the first to show clear-cut cerebral metabolic abnormalities in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, as well as document that different stimulants have remarkably dissimilar metabolic effects in hyperactive children.