For those of you interested in my music (saxophone), go to: http://www.jamesbjork.com
So what do I do for a living? I am Associate Professor in the Institute for Drug and Alcohol Studies and Departments of Psychiatry, Pharmacology and Toxicology at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). I am a principal investigator (PI) of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study www.abcdstudy.org at VCU. I conduct research on the brain biology of impulsivity and addiction in human subjects by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and specially-designed laboratory performance tasks. I find it fascinating to study the brains and behavior of individuals who lack self-control: like criminals, drug addicts, teenagers with behavior disorders, and the President. I also research how the brain processes rewards and risks as we age from adolescence to adulthood.
Why do people who are bright enough to hold a decent conversation do really impulsive things that wreck their lives or the lives of others- such as become dependent on drugs or alcohol, or kill someone in the heat of the moment? This burning question has driven my career in biomedical research. To help advance our understanding of the neurobiology of impulsivity, I have studied hundreds of messed-up people in the laboratory using a variety of measures-- from questionnaires, to carefully-calibrated laboratory tasks of behavior, to genetics, to structural and functional neuroimaging. With one exception, all my research has been on human volunteers, who can sometimes be more difficult to study than rats or monkeys.Here are some of my peer-reviewed publications:
Bjork,
J.M., Straub,
L.K., Provost, R.G., Neale, M.C. (In Press) The ABCD study of neurodevelopment:
Identifying neurocircuit targets for prevention and treatment of adolescent
substance abuse. Current Treatment Options in Psychiatry.
Bjork, J.M.,
Burroughs, T.K., Franke, L.M., Pickett, T.C., Johns, S.E., Moeller, F.G.,
Walker, W.C. (2017) Rapid-response
impulsivity predicts depression and PTSD symptomatology at 1-year follow-up in
blast-exposed service members. Arch Phys Med Rehabil. Apr 22. pii:
S0003-9993(17)30255-1. doi: 10.1016/j.apmr.2017.03.022. [Epub ahead of print]
Newman, E., Jernigan, T.L., Lisdahl, K.M., Tamm, L., Tapert, S.F., Potkin, S.G.,
Mathalon, D., Molina, B., Bjork, J.,
Castellanos, F. X., Swanson, J.M., Kuperman, J.M., Bartsch, H., Chen, C., Dale,
A.M., Epstein, J.N., & MTA Neuroimaging Group (2016) Go/No Go Task
Performance Predicts Cortical Thickness in the Caudal Inferior Frontal Gyrus in
Young Adults with and without ADHD. Brain Imaging Behav. Sep;10(3):880-92. doi:
10.1007/s11682-015-9453-x.
Bjork,
J.M., Burroughs,
T.K., Franke, L.M., Pickett, T.C., Johns, S.E., Moeller, F.G.,
Walker, W.C. (2016) Laboratory impulsivity
and depression in blast-exposed military personnel with post-concussion
syndrome. Psychiatry Research 246: 321-325.
Rasmussen,
R., Casey, B.J., van Erp, T.G.M., Tamm, L., Epstein, J.N., Buss, C., Bjork, J.M., Molina, B.S.G., Velanova,
K., Mathalon, D.H., Somerville, L., Swanson, J.M., Wigal, T.L., Arnold, L.E.,
Potkin, S.G., & MTA Neuroimaging Group (2016). ADHD and Cannabis Use in
Young Adults Examined Using fMRI of a Go/NoGo Task. Brain Imaging and Behavior 10(3):
761-771.
Zhu, X., Sundby,
K., Bjork, J.M., Momenan, R. (2016) Alcohol
Dependence and Altered Engagement of Neural Networks in Risky Decisions. Frontiers
in Human Neuroscience 10: Article 142. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2016.00142
Lisdahl, K.M.,
Tamm, L., Epstein, J.N., Jernigan, T., Molina, B.S.G., 4, Hinshaw, S.P., Swanson,
J.M., Newman, E., Kelly,C., Bjork, J.M.,
MTA Neuroimaging Group (2016) The Impact of ADHD Persistence, Recent Cannabis
Use, and Age of Regular Cannabis Use Onset on Subcortical Volume and Cortical
Thickness in Young Adults. Drug and Alcohol Dependence 161:135-146.
Ma,
L., Steinberg, J.L., Cunningham, K.A., Lane, S.D., Bjork, J.M., Neelakantan, H., Price, A.E., Narayana, P.A., Kosten,
T.R., Bechara, A., Moeller, F.G. (2015) Inhibitory behavioral control: A
stochastic dynamic causal modeling study comparing cocaine dependent subjects
and controls. Neuroimage: Clinical: 7:837-47.
Gilman, J.M., Bjork, J.M., Wilens, T. (2015)
Task-elicited brain signals in psychiatric disorders: What can they tell us
in the absence of behavioral differences? Journal of Behavioral and Brain
Science 5: 333-337
Bjork, J.M.,
Pardini, D.A. (2015) Who are those “risk-taking adolescents”? Individual differences in developmental
neuroimaging research. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience 11: 56-64.
Gilman,
J.M., Smith, A.R., Bjork, J.M., Ramchandani,
V.A., Momenan, R., Hommer, D.W. (2015) Cumulative
Gains Enhance Striatal Response to Reward Opportunities in Alcohol-dependent
Patients. Addiction Biology 20(3):580-93.
Bjork, J.M.,
Grant, S.J., Chen, G., Hommer, D.W. (2014) Dietary tyrosine/phenylalanine
depletion effects on behavioral and brain signatures of human motivational
processing. Neuropsychopharmacology 39(3):595-604.
Bjork, J.M.,
Gilman, J.M (2014) The effects of acute alcohol administration on the human
brain: Insights from neuroimaging.
Neuropharmacology 39(3):595-604.
Barch,
D.M., Burgess, G.C., Harms, M.P., Petersen, S.E., Schlaggar, B.L., Corbetta,
M., Glasser, M., Curtiss, S., Dixit, S., Feldt, C., Nolan, D., Bryant, E., Hartley,
T., Footer, O., Bjork, J.M.,
Poldrack, R., Smith, S.; Snyder, A.Z., Van Essen, D.C., WU-Minn HCP Consortium
(2013) Function in the Human Connectome: Task-fMRI and Individual Differences
in Behavior. NeuroImage 80: 169-189.
Bjork, J.M.,
Lynne-Landsman, S.D., Sirocco, K., Boyce, C.A. (2012) Brain Maturation and
Risky Behavior: The Promise and the
Challenges of Neuroimaging-based Accounts. Child Development Perspectives
6: 382-391.
Bjork, J.M., Smith,
A.R., Chen, G., Hommer, D.W. (2012) Mesolimbic recruitment by nondrug rewards
in detoxified alcoholics: effort anticipation, reward anticipation and reward
delivery. Human Brain Mapping 33
2174-88. DOI 10.1002/hbm.21351.
Bjork, J.M., Chen,
G., Hommer, D.W. (2012) Psychopathic tendencies and mesolimbic recruitment by
cues for instrumental and passively-obtained rewards. Biological Psychology 89: 408-412.
Bjork, J.M.,
Smith, A.R., Chen, G., Hommer, D.W. (2011) Psychosocial problems and
recruitment of incentive neurocircuitry by potential rewards: Exploring
individual differences in healthy adolescents Developmental Cognitive
Neuroscience 1 (4): 570-577.
Hommer, D.W., Bjork, J.M., Gilman, J.M. (2011) Imaging brain
response to reward in addictive disorders.
Ann N Y Acad Sci 1216: 50-61.
Bjork, J.M., Smith,
A.R., Chen, G., Hommer, D.W. (2010) Adolescents, adults, and rewards: comparing
motivational neurocircuitry recruitment using fMRI. PLoS ONE 5(7):e11440.
Bjork, J.M., Chen,
G., Smith, A.R., Hommer, D.W. (2010) Incentive-elicited mesolimbic activation
and externalizing symptomatology in adolescents. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry
51(7): 827-37.
Bjork, J.M.,
Momenan, R., Hommer, D.W. (2009) Delay discounting correlates with
proportional frontocortical volumes. Biological
Psychiatry 65: 710-713.
Bjork, J.M., Grant,
S.J. (2009) Does traumatic brain injury increase risk for substance abuse? J
Neurotrauma 26(7):1077-82. doi: 10.1089/neu.2008-0849.
