CAMBRIDGE, MA. -- February 28, 2005 -- Dr. Robert Desimone, Director of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, announced today that the Edward M. Scolnick Prize in Neuroscience, an annual award recognizing an outstanding discovery or significant advance in the field of neuroscience, will be presented to Dr. Judith L. Rapoport, Chief of the Child Psychiatry Branch at the National Institute of Mental Health on April 14, 2005.

As part of the day's activities, Dr. Rapoport will present a public lecture on the MIT Campus from 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. The lecture will be hosted by the McGovern Institute and is free and open to the public. The address will be followed by a private dinner event and official award presentation ceremony.

Dr. Rapoport was selected to receive the 2005 Edward M. Scolnick Prize for her groundbreaking studies on the neurobiological basis for mental illness in children, including Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), and Childhood Onset Schizophrenia. Her work has helped usher in a new era in the application of modern neuroscience approaches to the study of mental illness in children.

Dr. Rapoport was a pioneer in studying the pathophysiology of ADHD and neuropharmacological approaches to its treatment, and she was the first to discover that some childhood psychiatric symptoms result from autoimmune reactions to streptococcal infection, the first to establish the link between obsessive-compulsive behaviors in children and OCD in adults, and the first to use longitudinal magnetic resonance imaging to uncover developmental abnormalities in brain size and structure in children with schizophrenia. Her longitudinal studies of brain development in healthy children have revealed that some brain structures continue to change and do not reach maturity until late adolescence. She is well known for her popular book on OCD, "The Boy Who Couldn't Stop Washing," which was on The New York Times Bestseller list for 10 weeks, and which brought new hope to families with affected children.

The Scolnick Prize comes with an award of $50,000 and is named in honor of Dr. Edward M. Scolnick who stepped down as President of Merck Research Laboratories in December 2002, after holding Merck & Co., Inc.'s top research post for 17 years.

About the McGovern Institute at MIT

The McGovern Institute at MIT is a research and teaching institute committed to advancing human understanding and communications. Led by a team of world-renowned, multi-disciplinary scientists, The McGovern Institute was established in February 2000 by Lore Harp McGovern and Patrick McGovern to meet one of the great challenges of modern science - the development of a deep understanding of thought and emotion in terms of their realization in the human brain. Additional information is available at: http://web.mit.edu/mcgovern/.

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