Brian D. Kangas, PhD

Dr. Kangas’ research examines the effects of psychoactive drugs on complex behavioral repertoires and cognitive processes relevant to pain perception, addiction, and other neuropsychiatric conditions. He is engaged in the development and empirical validation of novel laboratory apparatus and techniques to further this study.

Dr. Kangas’ research efforts are generally divided between two drug categories—drugs of abuse and candidate therapeutics. Because the effects of abused drugs on cognition are arguably some of the most important and least understood, one aim of his work is to gain a better understanding of how drugs like marijuana, cocaine, and the prescription opioids affect learning, memory, vigilance, and other cognition-related behavior.

A second aim of his research is to design experimental techniques to evaluate the potential side effects of novel therapeutics on various aspects of cognitive function. He works to demonstrate a reliable null effect on complex behavioral measures following administration of doses that are known to have medicinal value. This work, he believes, can serve as important preclinical predictors of a novel pharmacotherapy’s safety.

For Dr. Kangas, the examination of drugs of abuse and candidate therapeutics can often be studied in a reciprocal manner to inform each other. That is, many efforts in drug development strive to improve preexisting pharmacotherapies by decreasing adverse side effect profiles while maintaining medicinal value. For example, prescription opioids are very effective in the treatment of many painful conditions, but also have well-known addiction liability. Likewise, cannabis products can serve as excellent anti-nausea, anti-emetic, and appetite stimulant agents to assist those, for example, undergoing chemotherapeutic treatment; however, they also produce deleterious and unwanted effects on learning and memory. Designing studies that examine the preexisting drug as a standard allows Dr. Kangas and his colleagues to engage in direct within-subject appraisals of candidate therapeutics.