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Sylvia P. Montesinos, MD
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Kimberly White, MD
Mark H. Lewis, Ph.D.
Professor & Associate Chair for Research
Dr. Lewis attended Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo Michigan and received his Master's in Psychology in 1975. Between 1972 and 1977, Dr. Lewis was employed by Central State Hospital in Milledgeville Georgia as Director of Staff Training and a Staff Psychologist. He then entered Vanderbilt University in Nashville and received his PhD in Psychology in 1980. He was offered a post-doctoral fellowship at the Biological Science Research Center at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.
In 1983, Dr. Lewis joined the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey as an Assistant Professor. In 1986, he returned to the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill as an Assistant Research Professor of Psychiatry and a Research Scientist in the Brain and Development Center. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1988. Dr. Lewis left UNC in 1992 to come to the University of Florida as an Associate Professor of Psychiatry. He was promoted to Full Professor in 1995 and was appointed the department's Associate Chair for Research in 2003. Dr. Lewis has adjunct appointments in the Department of Neuroscience and the Department of Psychology.
Research and Scholarly Interests
Dr. Lewis' research is currently focused on the neurobiological basis of abnormal repetitive behaviors. His research program in this area involves clinical studies of individuals with developmental disorders who engage in such abnormal repetitive behaviors as stereotyped motor activity, self-injurious behavior, and compulsions. These studies have addressed the phenomenology and co-morbidity of these behavioral disorders as well as their pathophysiology and treatment. For example, he and his colleagues have documented the co-morbidity of several categories of repetitive behavior, designed item-independent evaluation instruments to measure these behaviors, and tested the efficacy of several pharmacological treatments. They have also provided the first evidence for motor control deficits in individuals who exhibit stereotyped behavior. Finally, they have attempted to account for these behaviors and their associated physiology using a dynamical disease model.
Dr. Lewis has also been actively investigating animal models of these behavioral disorders. The model currently in use in his lab has the distinct advantage of involving the expression, in mice, of stereotyped behavior that is spontaneous, persistent, and develops early in life. They have established the role of early experience in the development and expression of the stereotyped behavior of these animals. They have also documented biochemical and anatomical changes in brain that mediate the effects of such early experience. In parallel studies, they have also provided pharmacological evidence to support the importance of cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical circuitry in the expression of these abnormal repetitive behaviors. These studies should suggest efficacious treatments that can be applied clinically.
Educational Interests and Accomplishments
Although Dr. Lewis does not have many formal didactic responsibilities, he has been very active as a research mentor for both undergraduate and graduate students. He currently has two full-time doctoral students and six undergraduate students in his lab. Currently, two of his undergraduate students have been selected as University Scholars. He also has provided lectures for the first year course in Neuroscience for our residents and has increased his involvement in the first year course for medical students in Human Behavior.
Leadership and Service
Dr. Lewis has taken a leadership role both nationally and locally. For example, he continues to serve on the Executive Committee of the Gatlinburg Conference on Research in Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities. He also continues to serve as a Consulting Editor to the American Journal on Mental Retardation and actively review for a number of other journals. Dr. Lewis has also been very active in peer review of extramural funding proposals for NIH. He is currently serving on the NICHD Mental retardation Committee and has been involved in several special emphasis panels. He recently chaired NIH site visits to the University of Wisconsin and to the Eunice Kennedy Shriver Center in Boston, MA. He also served as a member of the Organizing Committee for a 2001 NIH workshop on Emotional/Behavioral Disorders in Individuals with Mental Retardation.
Leadership activities within the University have included serving as Administrative Director of the Children's Mental Health Unit. In this capacity, he has sought to improve significantly the quality and range of services that the department can offer to families of children with autism. He has made substantial improvements to the program including establishing high quality behavior management services, initiating parent and staff training efforts, forgoing a working relationship with the CARD programs, and involving Special Education and Psychology faculty and students. He is currently reconfiguring the program to serve individuals with autism on an outpatient basis. Importantly, he has established the autism program as a viable venue for research.
Publications (since 1998)
Gendreau PL, Petitto JM, Gariépy J-L, Lewis MH (1998). D 2-like dopamine receptor mediation of social-emotional reactivity in a mouse model of anxiety: strain and experience effects. Neuropsychopharmacology, 18: 210-221.
Gariepy JL, Gendreau PL, Cairns RB, Lewis MH (1998). D1 dopamine receptors and the reversal of isolation-induced behaviors in mice. Behav Brain Res. 95(1):103-11.
McNamara RK, Stumpo DJ, Morel LM, Lewis MH, Wakeland EK, Blackshear PJ, Lenox RH (1998). Effect of reduced myristoylated alanine-rich C kinase substrate expression on hippocampal mossy fiber development and spatial learning in mutant mice: Transgenic rescue and interactions with gene background. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA, 95:14517-14522
Powell SB, Newman HA, Pendergast J, Lewis MH (1999). A rodent model of spontaneous stereotypy: initial characterization of developmental, environmental, and neurobiological factors. Physiology & Behavior, 66, 2: 355-363
Petitto JM, Gariepy JL, Gendreau PL, Rodriguiz R, Lewis MH, Lysle DT (1999). Differences in NK cell function in mice bred for high and low aggression: Genetic linkage between complex behavioral and immunological traits? Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, 13: 175-186
Klein RL, Lewis MH, Muzyczka N, Meyer EM (1999). Prevention of 6-hydroxydopamine-induced rotational behavior by BDNF somatic gene transfer. Brain Research, 847: 314-320
Lewis MH, Gluck JP, Petitto JM, Hensley LL, Ozer H (2000). Early social deprivation in non-human primates: long term effects on survival and cell-mediated immunity. Biological Psychiatry, 47:119-26
Powell SB, Newman HA, McDonald TA, Bugenhagen P, Lewis MH. (2000). Development of spontaneous stereotypy in deer mice: effects of early and late exposure to a more complex environment. Developmental Psychobiology, 37:100-108.
Gendreau PL, Petitto JM, Petrova A, Gariépy J-L, Lewis MH (2000). D3 and D2 dopamine receptor agonists differentially modulate isolation-induced social-emotional reactivity in mice. Behavioural Brain Research, 114:107-117
Bodfish JW, Symons FJ, Parker DE, Lewis MH (2000). Varieties of repetitive behavior in autism: comparisons to mental retardation. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 30: 237-243
Schroeder SR, Oster-Granite ML, Berkson G, Bodfish JW, Breese GR, Cataldo MF, Cook EH, Crnic LS, DeLeon I, Fisher W, Harris JC, Horner RH, Iwata B, Jinnah HA, King BH, Lauder JM, Lewis MH, Newell K, Nyhan WL, Rojahn J, Sackett GP, Sandman C, Symons F, Tessel RE, Thompson T, Wong DF. Self-injurious behavior: gene-brain-behavior relationships. Ment Retard Dev Disabil Res Rev. ;7(1):3-12.
Bodfish JW, Parker DE, Lewis MH, Sprague RL, Newell KM (2001). Stereotypy and motor control: differences in the postural stability dynamics of persons with stereotyped and dyskinetic movement disorders. Am J Ment Retard. 106(2):123-34.
Turner CA, Presti MF, Newman HA, Bugenhagen P, Crnic L, Lewis MH (2001). Spontaneous stereotypy in an animal model of Down syndrome: Ts65Dn mice. Behav Genet. 31(4):393-400.
Presti MF, Powell SB, Lewis MH (2002). Dissociation between spontaneously emitted and apomorphine-induced stereotypy in Peromyscus maniculatus bairdii. Physiol Behav. 75(3):347-53.
Turner CA, Yang MC, Lewis MH (2002). Environmental enrichment: effects on stereotyped behavior and regional neuronal metabolic activity. Brain Res. 938(1-2):15-21.
Presti MF, Mikes HM, Lewis MH (2003). Selective blockade of spontaneous motor stereotypy via intrastriatal pharmacological manipulation. Pharmacol Biochem Behav. 74(4):833-9.
Turner CA, Lewis MH, King MA (2003). Environmental enrichment: effects on stereotyped behavior and dendritic morphology. Dev Psychobiol. 43(1):20-7.
Turner CA, Lewis MH (2003). Environmental enrichment: effects on stereotyped behavior and neurotrophin levels. Physiol Behav. 80(2-3):259-66.
Murphy TK, Sajid M, Soto O, Shapira N, Edge P, Yang M, Lewis MH, Goodman WK (2004). Detecting pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with streptococcus in children with obsessive-compulsive disorder and tics. Biol Psychiatry. 55(1):61-8.
Presti MF, Gibney BC, Lewis MH. Effects of intrastriatal administration of selective dopaminergic ligands on spontaneous stereotypy in mice. Physiol Behav. 2004 Jan;80(4):433-9.
Presti MF, Watson CJ, Kennedy RT, Yang M, Lewis MH (2004). Behavior-related alterations of striatal neurochemistry in a mouse model of stereotyped movement disorder. Pharmacol Biochem Behav. 77(3):501-7.
Shapira NA, Lessig MC, Lewis MH, Goodman WK, Driscoll DJ (2004). Effects of topiramate in adults with Prader-Willi syndrome. Am J Ment Retard. 109(4):301-9.
Lewis MH (2004). Environmental complexity and central nervous system development and function. Ment Retard Dev Disabil Res Rev. 10(2):91-5.
Lewis MH, Lazoritz M. (2005) Psychopharmacology of Autism Spectrum Disorders. Psychiatric Times, 22(6), online exclusive.
Presti MF, Lewis MH (2005). Striatal opioid peptide content in an animal model of spontaneous stereotypic behavior. Behav Brain Res. 157(2):363-8.
Hadley C, Hadley B, Ephraim S, Yang M, Lewis, MH. (2006) Spontaneous stereotypy and environmental enrichment in deer mice (Peromyscus maniculants): Reversibility of experience. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 97(2-4):312-322.
Lewis MH, Tanimura Y, Lee LW, Bodfish JW. (2007) Animal models of restricted repetitive behavior in autism. Behavioural Brain Research, 10;176(1):66-74.
Storch EA, Merlo LJ, Bengtson M, Murphy TK, Lewis MH, Yang MC, Jacob ML, Larson M, Hirsh A, Fernandez M, Geffken GR, Goodman WK. (2007) D-Cycloserine Does Not Enhance Exposure-Response Prevention Therapy in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Intern’l J Clin Psychopharm, 22(4):230-237.
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