Professor William Bobo, M.D., MPH, was selected as this year’s Phineas J. Sparer Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC) in Memphis.

As part of the honor, Bobo delivered the Phineas J. Sparer Distinguished Visiting Professorship lecture, focusing on new approaches to treating depression through the strategic combination of biological and psychosocial therapies.

He discussed whether strategically combining neuromodulatory therapeutics that promote the brain’s ability to change and adapt may enhance learning during psychotherapy and strengthen its therapeutic effects for depression.

View the Full Lecture
 

 “For decades, we’ve known that neuromodulatory treatments for depression and, increasingly, rapid-acting antidepressants like ketamine, alter plasticity, both at the synaptic level and at the level of larger brain networks. And we’ve also known that psychotherapy also changes brain, perhaps in complementary ways. 

And so that naturally leads to the question of whether or not neuromodulation and rapidly acting antidepressants create these transient alterations in neuroplasticity in ways that make new learning from psychotherapy more effective or enduring—or vice-versa—whether changes in behavioral functioning from psychotherapy create “meta-plasticity” windows to facilitate better outcomes from biological treatments for depression.”

— William Bobo, M.D., MPH