| Erik Willcutt, Ph.D., is Associate Professor
in the Department of Psychology and Faculty Fellow of the
Institute for Behavioral Genetics. Dr. Willcutt received his
Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Denver
in 1998. After completing his clinical internship at the University
of Chicago Department of Psychiatry, he received an NIH National
Research Service Award individual postdoctoral fellowship
to fund training in behavioral and molecular genetics at the
Institute for Behavioral Genetics, University of Colorado,
Boulder, and has remained at the University of Colorado since
that time. He was recently awarded the 2007 Early Career Research
Award by Division 53 (Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology)
of the American Psychological Association and the 2007 Faculty
Research Award by the University of Colorado. Dr. Willcutt
is Principal Investigator or co-Investigator on several ongoing
studies funded by the National Institutes of Health, and he
has authored or co-authored over 70 book chapters, review
articles and journal articles.
Dr. Willcutt's research program focuses on the identification
of etiological factors that lead to the development of psychopathology,
with a specific focus on childhood disruptive disorders and
learning disabilities. In addition to behavioral and molecular
genetic studies, his collaborative projects with Dr. Marie
Banich, Dr. Tim Curran, and Dr. Randy O’Reilly employ
techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging,
event-related potentials, and neural network modeling to identify
the specific neural substrates that play a role in these disorders.
By integrating these results with data from clinical studies,
we hope to develop comprehensive models that explain how genetic
and environmental risk factors influence brain development
and lead to the final behavioral symptoms of these disorders.
Selected Publications:
Frank, M., Santamaria, A., O’Reilly, R. & Willcutt,
E. G. (2007). Testing Computational Models of Dopamine and
Noradrenaline Dysfunction in Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity
Disorder. Neuropsychopharmacology, 32, 1583 - 1599.
Nigg, J. T., Willcutt, E. G., Doyle, A. E., & Sonuga-Barke,
E. J. S. (2005). Heterogenous Causality in ADHD: The Need
for a Neuropsychologically Impaired Subtype. Biological Psychiatry,
57, 1231 - 1238.
Willcutt, E. G., Pennington, B. F., Chhabildas, N. A., Olson,
R. K., & Hulslander, J. L. (2005). Neuropsychological
analyses of comorbidity between RD and ADHD: in search of
the common deficit. Developmental Neuropsychology, 27, 35-78.
Willcutt, E. G., Doyle, A. E., Nigg, J. T., Faraone, S. V.,
& Pennington, B. F. (2005). A meta-analytic review of
the executive function theory of ADHD. Biological Psychiatry,
57, 1336-1346.
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