Perminder Sachdev

Perminder Sachdev (born 1956, Ludhiana, India) is an Indian neuropsychiatrist based in Australia. He is a professor of neuropsychiatry at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), co-director of the UNSW Centre for Healthy Brain Aging, and clinical director of the Neuropsychiatric Institute at the Prince of Wales Hospital, Sydney. He is considered a trailblazer in the field of neuropsychiatry.

Early life and education Sachdev was born in Ludhiana, Punjab, India and went to school in Solan in the foothills of the Himalayas. He attended All India Institutes of Medical Sciences, earning his MBBS in 1978 and his MD in psychiatry in 1981. The title of his thesis was "A reperatory grid comparison of endogeneous and neurotic depressions." He chose to study psychiatry instead of neurology because it "offered the scope for examining 'the human condition'." He has done research on how mirror neurons impact psychiatric disorders, and has examined the efficacy of brain stimulation techniques such as TMS, DCS, VNS, and DBS as treatments for psychiatric disorders.

In 2006, he became the founding chair of the neuropsychiatry section at the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, a position he held for one year. The Sydney Centenarian Study "emphasised the important role of the brain's frontoparietal network in relation to the adaptability of a person's cognitive abilities to ageing and disease, known as cognitive reserve." He also leads three international networks: the International Centenarian Consortium - Dementia (ICC-Dementia), which began in 2012; the Cohort Studies of Memory in an International Consortium (COSMIC), which began in 2017; and the Stroke and Cognititon Consortium (STROKOG), which began expanding in 2022.

His involvement in so many research collectives has allowed him to take a leading role in the development and improvement of training within neuropsychiatry, including the core curriculum.

Personal life Sachdev is married to psychiatrist Dr. Jagdeep Sachdev.

Selected publications As of 2022, Sachdev had more than 1,100 peer reviewed journal articles, seven books (including The Yipping Tiger), three edited books, and 71 book chapters to his name. He has published in journals including Nature, Science, Molecular Psychiatry, Lancet Neurology, and the British Medical Journal. In 2017, he published a book of poems called A migrant's musings and other offerings to an adopted land.

1983: "A repertory grid comparison of endogenous and neurotic depressions." With H.M. Chawla et al. Indian Journal of Psychiatry, 25: 46-51. 1994: "Research diagnostic criteria for drug-induced akathisia: conceptualisation, rationale, and proposal." Psychopharmacology, 114: 181-186. 1995: "Does neurosurgery for obsessive-compulsive disorder produce personality change?" with P. Hay. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 183: 408-413. 1998: "Evidence-based medicine offers little support for psychosurgery." With R.T. White. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 32: 460-462. 2001: "Schizophrenia-like psychosis following traumatic brain injury: a chart-based descriptive and case-control study." With J.S. Smith and S. Cathcart. Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, 13: 533-534. 2005: "MRI hyperintensities and depressive symptoms in a community sample of 60- to 64-year-olds." With A.F. Jorm et al. American Journal of Psychiatry, 162: 699-704. 2008: "Hippocampal volume is positively associated with behavioural inhibition (BIS) in a large community-based sample of mid-life adults: the PATH through life study." With N. Cherbuin et al. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 3: 262-269. 2009: "White matter hyperintensities in the forties: Their prevalence and topography in an epidemiological sample aged 44–48." With W. Wen et al. NeuroImage, 47: S80. 2011: "Impact of Load-Related Neural Processes on Feature Binding in Visuospatial Working Memory." With N.A. Kochan et al. PLoS ONE, 6: e23960. 2014: "Increase in PAS-induced neuroplasticity after a treatment courseof transcranial direct current stimulation for depression." With M.J. Player et al. Journal of Affective Disorders, 167: 140-147. 2017: "Incidental findings on cerebral MRI in twins: the Older Australian Twins Study." With R. Koncz et al. Brain Imaging and Behavior, 12: 860-869. 2018: "Non-Genetic Risk Factors for Degenerative and Vascular Young Onset Dementia: Results from the INSPIRED and KGOW Studies." With M. Cations et al. Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, 62: 1747-1758. 2019: "The Plasma NAD⁺ Metabolome Is Dysregulated in "normal" Aging." With J. Clement et al. Rejuvenation Research, 22: 121-130. 2022: "Social health, social reserve and dementia." Current Opinion in Psychiatry, 35(2): 111-117. 2023: "Ensemble feature selection with data-driven thresholding for Alzheimer's disease biomarker discovery." With A. Spooner et al. BMC Bioinformatics, 24(9).