Please join UCLA’s Friends of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior and the Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital Board of Advisors for an Open Mind program with Drew Ramsey, MD, author of the new critically acclaimed book, Healing the Modern Brain: Nine Tenets to Build Mental Fitness and Revitalize Your Mind.  
 
Drew Ramsey, MD, is a psychiatrist, author of 5 books, and a leading voice in Nutritional Psychiatry and integrative mental health. His work shines a much-needed light on the importance of self-awareness, nutrition, movement, sleep, connection, grounding, engagement, unburdening, and purpose. These core nine tenets work together to promote neuroplasticity, facilitate neurogenesis, reduce inflammation, and foster a healthy microbiome, ultimately helping individuals protect their brains and safeguard their mental health from the challenges of today’s world.   
  
In Healing the Modern Brain, Dr. Ramsey provides direct, actionable techniques to improve brain function and emotional health. He teaches us how to make educated decisions that can lead to significant improvements in our mental fitness, regardless of whether someone has a specific mental health diagnosis. Healing the Modern Brain combines the latest scientific research with compelling patient encounters from Dr. Ramsey’s clinical practice to show us how we can put ourselves on the road to optimal mental health and better care for our miraculous, modern brains. Dr. Ramsey has delivered three TEDx talks, and his work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Today Show, NPR and other notable outlets.
  
Arpana Church, PhD, Associate Professor and Co-Director, Goodman-Luskin Microbiome Center at UCLA will join Dr. Ramsey in discussion. Dr. Church is also Director of the Neuroimaging Core at UCLA; the Director of the Obesity, Metabolic Disorders, and Eating Behaviors Research Program in the Department of Medicine and in the Vatche and Tamar Manoukian Division of Digestive Diseases at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine. Her current research focuses on the interactions between environmental and biological factors in shaping brain-gut microbiome signatures associated with stress-based diseases such as obesity. 
 
Dr. Church’s goal is to develop a comprehensive model that provides a powerful biomarker that will increase diagnostics around obesity in an effort to improve overall health outcomes. She has published over one hundred peer-reviewed articles, which have been featured in mainstream media outlets such as the Today Show, NBC, PBS, NPR, WSJ, Science, and WebMD and she is featured in a Netflix documentary “Hack your Health: Secrets of the Gut”.