Brizendine to speak at special 'Female Brain' film screening

By Nicholas Roznovsky
 

Cummings and Brizendine

The Female Brain director and star Whitney Cummings (left) and UCSF neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine, MD  [Photo courtesy Louann Brizendine]

UC San Francisco faculty member and bestselling author Louann Brizendine, MD, will be on hand Tuesday, March 27, for a scientific discussion and special screening of The Female Brain, a relationship comedy motion picture loosely based on her 2006 New York Times bestselling book of the same name. The event will be held at the California Film Institute's Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael, Calif. as part of the national Science on Screen® film series. Tickets are now available on the Smith Rafael Film Center website.

Released in theaters and online last month, the film was directed by comedian Whitney Cummings, who also appeared in front of the camera as a fictionalized version of Brizendine. The Female Brain also features performances by Sofia Vergara, James Marsden, Lucy Punch, Toby Kebbell, Cecily Strong, Beanie Feldstein, Blake Griffin, and Deon Cole.

Brizendine, author of "The Female Brain" and its 2010 follow-up "The Male Brain," is a professor emeritus and the Lynne and Marc Benioff Endowed Chair in Psychiatry. Following a three-year appointment at Harvard University, she joined the faculty at UCSF in 1988. Six years later, she founded the UCSF Women's Mood and Hormone Clinic, where she conducted research on the neurobiology of hormones, mood disorders, anxiety, and changes in sexual interest due to hormones. In addition to providing the source material, Brizendine is also the film's executive producer.

The Science on Screen® series creatively pairs screenings of classic, cult, science fiction, and documentary films with lively presentations by notable experts from the world of science and technology. Each film is used as a jumping-off point for a speaker to introduce current research or technological advances in a manner that engages popular culture audiences—from the function of the amygdala in the zombie brains of Night of the Living Dead to how far epidemiology has come since The Andromeda Strain.

The popular film series has enhanced film and scientific literary since debuting at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in 2005. In partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and its pioneering nationwide film program, the Coolidge has expanded Science on Screen to 72 cinemas nationwide.
 


About UCSF Psychiatry

The UCSF Department of Psychiatry and the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute are among the nation's foremost resources in the fields of child, adolescent, adult, and geriatric mental health. Together they constitute one of the largest departments in the UCSF School of Medicine and the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, with a mission focused on research (basic, translational, clinical), teaching, patient care and public service.

UCSF Psychiatry conducts its clinical, educational and research efforts at a variety of locations in Northern California, including UCSF campuses at Parnassus Heights, Mission Bay and Laurel Heights, UCSF Medical Center, UCSF Benioff Children's Hospitals, Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, the San Francisco VA Health Care System and UCSF Fresno.

About the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences

The UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, established by the extraordinary generosity of Joan and Sanford I. "Sandy" Weill, brings together world-class researchers with top-ranked physicians to solve some of the most complex challenges in the human brain.

The UCSF Weill Institute leverages UCSF’s unrivaled bench-to-bedside excellence in the neurosciences. It unites three UCSF departments—Neurology, Psychiatry, and Neurological Surgery—that are highly esteemed for both patient care and research, as well as the Neuroscience Graduate Program, a cross-disciplinary alliance of nearly 100 UCSF faculty members from 15 basic-science departments, as well as the UCSF Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, a multidisciplinary research center focused on finding effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and other neurodegenerative disorders.

About UCSF

UC San Francisco (UCSF) is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. It includes top-ranked graduate schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing and pharmacy; a graduate division with nationally renowned programs in basic, biomedical, translational and population sciences; and a preeminent biomedical research enterprise. It also includes UCSF Health, which comprises top-ranked hospitals – UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland – and other partner and affiliated hospitals and healthcare providers throughout the Bay Area.