Eric J. Nestler

Nestler is known for elucidating how transcriptional and epigenetic mechanisms—including the transcription factor ΔFosB—produce long-lasting changes in brain reward and stress circuits that contribute to addiction, depression, and stress resilience. He has authored or co-authored several widely used textbooks in psychiatry and neuroscience and more than 700 peer-reviewed articles. He has served as president of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology and the Society for Neuroscience, and has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences.

Biography

Education Nestler is a graduate of Herricks High School in New Hyde Park, New York. He received his B.A., his Ph.D. and his M.D. from Yale University, where he performed his doctoral research in the laboratory of Paul Greengard. He completed his residency in psychiatry at both McLean Hospital in Massachusetts and Yale in 1987.

Career Nestler served as Director of the Abraham Ribicoff Research Facilities, and as the Founding Director of the Division of Molecular Psychiatry, at Yale until 2000, and as Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. as Council Member of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (for which he served as president in 2011) and the Society for Neuroscience (for which he served as president in 2017). He chairs the Depression Task Force of the Hope for Depression Research Foundation, co-chairs the Scientific Advisory Board of One Mind (previously International Mental Health Research Organization), is a scientific council member of the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (BBRF, previously NARSAD), and a past member of the Board of Directors of the McKnight Endowment Fund in Neuroscience. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine (now National Academy of Medicine) in 1998, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005, and the National Academy of Sciences in 2025.

Research The Nestler laboratory's focus in neuropsychopharmacology and molecular neuroscience concentrates on forming a molecular approach to psychiatry and furthering the understanding of the molecular basis of both depression and drug addiction, using animal models to study the way drug use or stress affects the brain.

The Nestler laboratory has driven innovative use of viral-mediated gene transfer, inducible, cell-type specific mutations in mice, and locus-specific epigenome editing to establish causal links between molecular and behavioral phenomena in animal models. The laboratory also makes use of machine learning approaches to derive novel biological insight from large sequencing datasets.

Awards Nestler's awards and honors include the Pfizer Scholars Award (1987), the Sloan Research Fellowship (1987), the McKnight Scholar Award (1989), the Jordi-Folch-Pi Memorial Award from the American Society of Neurochemistry (1990), the Efron Award of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (1994), the Pasarow Foundation Award for Neuropsychiatric Research (1998), the NARSAD Distinguished Investigator Award (1996), the Bristol-Myers Squibb Freedom to Discover Neuroscience Research Grant (2004), the Patricia S. Goldman-Rakic Award and the Falcone Prize both from NARSAD (2008, 2009), and the Rhoda and Bernard Sarnat International Prize in Mental Health from the Institute of Medicine (2010). He received an honorary doctorate from Uppsala University in Sweden in 2011, and the Anna Monika Prize in Depression Research (2012).

In 2017, he was awarded the Wilbur Cross Medal by Yale University for distinguished alumnus from the graduate school, and the Paul Hoch Distinguished Service Award from the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology. In 2019, he received the Redelsheimer Distinguished Award in Biological Psychiatry from the Society for Biological Psychiatry. In 2020, Nestler received an honorary degree from Concordia University in Montreal as "a pioneer in depression and drug-addiction research and institutional advocacy for equity, diversity and inclusion. He is also the recipient of the Barbara Fish Memorial Award in 2021 for outstanding contributions to the field of neuroscience from the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology and the Peter Seeburg Integrative Neuroscience Prize in 2023 from the Schaller-Nikolich Foundation and Society for Neuroscience. In 2025, he received the Synapsy Prize, University of Geneva, and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

Publications (partial list)

Books Nestler is the author (with Dennis S. Charney and Joseph D. Buxbaum) of Neurobiology of Mental Illness (6th edition; ), of Nestler, Hyman and Malenka's Molecular Neuropharmacology (with Paul J. Kenny, Scott J. Russo and Anne Schaefer); 4th edition; ) and two additional books published earlier: Protein Phosphorylation in the Nervous System (with Paul Greengard; ) and Molecular Foundations of Psychiatry (with Steven E. Hyman; ). He is also the author of more than 725 peer-reviewed publications and reviews.

Articles Nestler has been cited more than 186,953 times and has an H-index of 216.