Lori Altshuler (August 23, 1957 – November 5, 2015) was a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences and held the Julia S. Gouw Endowed Chair for Mood Disorders.

These foreshadowed her interests in neuroscience and led to her fellowship in Washington D.C. At the NIMH intramural laboratories, she continued this work, completing several projects related to postmortem differences in the brains of patients with schizophrenia and mood disorders.

There, she was a pioneer in using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), an in vivo technique to assess structural changes in the brains of patients with psychiatric disorders.

These findings regarding basic brain functioning complement her clinically-focused research which has improved the quality of care for persons with bipolar disorders.

She has conducted several multi-site collaborative studies evaluating the optimal medication and treatment strategies for persons with bipolar disorder.

However, her work has demonstrated that patients who achieve a positive acute antidepressant response to 10 weeks of antidepressant treatment adjunctive to a mood stabilizer will probably maintain response with the same continued treatment with risk of manic episode no higher than the reported rate for patients on mood stabilizer monotherapy.

Over the past 30 years, Altshuler has published over 265 articles in peer-reviewed journals, 25 chapters in edited volumes, has been invited to give more than 50 major plenary addresses and lectures and her research has been presented in 175 posters and abstracts at national and international meetings.

More than 15 of her published articles reviewed a specific scientific issue, providing new insights and analyses to the psychiatric clinical or research community.