Rate My Professor Ronald Cowan

Ronald Cowan, MD, PhD, serves as the Harrison Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychiatry in the College of Medicine at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. He earned an undergraduate degree in biology from Christian Brothers University, a PhD in neuroscience from the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in 1990, and an MD from Weill Cornell Medical College in 1994. Cowan completed an internship in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School and a residency in adult psychiatry at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School. Prior to joining UTHSC in 2020, he held a faculty position as professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, with secondary appointments in the Department of Radiology and Radiological Sciences at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and the Department of Psychology at Vanderbilt University. He directed the Residency Training Program in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Vanderbilt and served as an attending psychiatrist at Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital for 18 years.

Cowan directs the Cowan Lab at UTHSC, with research spanning over 25 years focused on clinical and translational neuroimaging studies of the dopamine reward system in addiction, depression, impulsivity, psychopathy, obesity, and pain processing in aging and dementia. His clinical interests include psychosomatic medicine, substance use, and LGBTQI mental health. Key publications include 'Obese adults have visual attention bias for food cue images: evidence for altered reward system function' (2009), 'Dopaminergic network differences in human impulsivity' (2010), 'Mesolimbic dopamine reward system hypersensitivity in individuals with psychopathic traits' (2010), 'Spontaneous firing patterns and axonal projections of single corticostriatal neurons in the rat medial agranular cortex' (1994), and 'Dopaminergic mechanisms of individual differences in human effort-based decision-making' (2012). Cowan was appointed to the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation Scientific Council in 2022, recognizing his leadership in addiction research. He oversees the Depression Research Program and Clinical Trials Program in the Department of Psychiatry.