Andreasen was born in Lincoln, Nebraska. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Nebraska with majors in English, History, and Philosophy. She received a Ph.D. in English literature. She was a Professor of Renaissance Literature in the Department of English at the University of Iowa for 5 years.[2] She published scholarly articles on John Donne and her first book in the field of Renaissance English literature: John Donne: Conservative Revolutionary.[3][4]
A serious illness after the birth of her first daughter piqued Andreasen's interest in medicine and biomedical research, and she decided to change careers to study medicine.[5][6] She attended medical school at the University of Iowa College of Medicine, graduated in 1970 and completed her psychiatry residency in 1973.[7]
In 1974, she conducted the first modern empirical study of creativity that recognized some association between creativity and manic-depressive illness.[8][9]
Early in her career she recognized that negative symptoms and associated cognitive impairments had more debilitating effects than psychotic symptoms, like delusions and hallucinations. While psychotic symptoms represent an exaggeration of normal brain/mind functions, negative symptoms represent a loss of normal functions, for example, alogia the loss of the ability to think and speak fluently, affective blunting the loss of the ability to express emotions, avolition, loss of the ability to initiate goal-directed activity, and anhedonia, loss of the ability to experience emotions.[10] The papers describing these concepts have become citation classics, as determined by the Science Citation Index produced by the Institute for Scientific Information.[11]
Andreasen is largely responsible for development of the concept of negative symptoms in schizophrenia, having created the first widely used scales for rating the positive[12] and negative symptoms of schizophrenia.[13] She became one of the world's foremost authorities on schizophrenia[citation needed]. She contributed to nosology and phenomenology by serving on the DSM III and DSM IV Task Forces, chairing the Schizophrenia Work Group for DSM IV.[14]
Andreasen pioneered the application of neuroimaging techniques in major mental illnesses, and published the first quantitative study of magnetic resonance imaging of brain abnormalities in schizophrenia.[15] Andreasen became director of the Iowa Mental Health Clinical Research Center and the Psychiatric Iowa Neuroimaging Consortium. She leads a multidisciplinary team working on three-dimensional image analysis techniques to integrate multi-modality imaging and on developing automated analysis of structural and functional imaging techniques. Software developed by this team is known as BRAINS (Brain Research: Analysis of Images, Networks, and Systems).[16]
She resumed research about the neuroscience of creativity in the 2000s.[17]
In 2000 President Clinton awarded her the National Medal of Science, America's highest award for scientific achievement.[18] This award was given for
her pivotal contributions to the social and behavioral sciences, through the integrative study of mind, brain, and behavior, by joining behavioral science with the technologies of neuroscience and neuroimaging in order to understand mental processes such as memory and creativity, and mental illnesses such as schizophrenia.[19]
She has spoken about her experiences of sexism. Early in her career she found that her articles were more likely to be accepted for publication when she used her initials instead of her first name.[25]
She is the mother of two daughters. Suz Andreasen, who was a jewelry designer who lived in New York City, died from ovarian cancer on November 10, 2010. Robin Andreasen is a professor of Cognitive Science at the University of Delaware. She is married to Captain Terry Gwinn, a retired military officer who flew helicopter gunships for 3.5 tours during the Vietnam War.[26]
^Who's Who in America. Nancy Coover Andreasen. 62nd ed. New Providence: Marquis Who's Who, 2008
^John Donne: Conservative Revolutionary: Princeton University Press, 1967
^ abcdeWho's Who in the World. Nancy Coover Andreasen. 25th ed. New Providence: Marquis Who's Who, 2008
^This Week's Citation Classic. Current Contents:48,1993
^ abAndreasen, NC. The Broken Brain: The Biological Revolution in Psychiatry. New York: Harper&Row, 1984
^Who's Who in American Education. Nancy Coover Andreasen. 8th ed. New Providence: Marquis Who's Who; 2007-2008
^N. J. C. Andreasen, A. Canter (March–April 1974). "The creative writer: psychiatric symptoms and family history". Comprehensive Psychiatry. 15 (2): 123–31. doi:10.1016/0010-440X(74)90028-5. PMID4822820.
^Andreasen NC (1987). "Creativity and mental illness: prevalence rates in writers and their first-degree relatives". Am J Psychiatry. 144 (10): 1288–92. doi:10.1176/ajp.144.10.1288. PMID3499088.
^This Week's Citation Classic. Current Contents: 48,1993
^Andreasen NC. The Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symptoms (SAPS. Iowa City, IA: The University of Iowa; 1984
^Andreasen NC. The Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS). Iowa City, Iowa: The University of Iowa; 1983
^Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV). Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Press, Inc.; 1994
^Andreasen NC, Nasrallah HA, Dunn VD, Olson SC, Grove WM, Ehrhardt JC, et al. (1986). "Structural abnormalities in the frontal system in schizophrenia: A magnetic resonance imaging study". Arch Gen Psychiatry. 43 (136–44): 136–44. doi:10.1001/archpsyc.1986.01800020042006. PMID3947208.
^Magnotta VA, Harris G, Andreasen NC, O'Leary DS, Yuh WT, Heckel D. Structural MR image processing using the BRAINS2 toolbox. Comput Med Imaging Graph, 26:251-64, 2002
