C. ROBERT CLONINGER, M.D.
Wallace Renard Professor of Psychiatry
Director of Center for Psychobiology of Personality

Research Interests

1) Genetic epidemiology of psychiatric disorders, particularly alcoholism, schizophrenics, and mood disorders.

2) Assessment and classification of personality variants

3) Neurobiology of motivated behavior and learning

Specific Research Activities

My research on genetic epidemiology of psychiatric disorders is currently focused on linkage studies of alcoholism, schizophrenia, and bipolar affective disorder using molecular genetic probes in systematically ascertained sets of pedigrees. My research on personality is focused on validation of self-report and performance measures of individual differences in personality and operant/classical learning abilities. This includes cross-cultural studies of the structure of personality and assessment of the relationship between personality and learning.

Special Populations, Data Sets and Facilities

Samples from the general population of several countries, including the USA, Yugoslavia, USSR, Italy, Japan and Scandinavia. Samples of psychiatric inpatients and outpatients. DNA lab and tissue culture facilities. Computing facilities for linkage, pedigree, and path analyses.

Key References

Cloninger CR, Svrakic DM, Przybeck TR: A Psychobiological Model of Temperament and Character. Arch Gen Psychiatry 1993; 50:975-990.

Svrakic DM, Whitehead C, Przybeck TR, Cloninger CR: Factor Model of Temperament and Character. Arch Gen Psychiatry 1993; 50:991-999.

Cloninger CR: Temperament and Personality. Current Opinion in Neurobiology 1994; 4:266-273.

Cloninger CR, Adolfsson R, Svrakic NM: Mapping genes for human personality. Nature Genetics 1996; 12:3-4.

Svrakic NM, Svrakic DM, Cloninger CR: A General Quantitative Theory of Personality Development: Fundamentals of a self-organizing psychobiological complex. Development and Psychopathology 1996; 8:247-272.