Raised in an isolated pocket of rural Wyoming, Michael Irwin yearned for the educational breadth and experience that comes with attending a large urban university.

So the ambitious teen put his mind to it -- traveling east to obtain a bachelor's in biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania, then west for medical training at UC San Diego. After completing his internship in medicine, he entered psychiatric training at UCLA, where he became fascinated with the science behind the mind's power over disease, or psychoneuroimmunology.

Michael Irwin is director of the Cousins Center of Psychoneuroimmunology.

Following his residency, he returned to UC San Diego, where pursuit of his passion earned him an Early Career Award in 1991. Irwin came home to UCLA last year as Norman Cousins Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences and director of the Cousins Center of Psychoneuroimmunology, part of the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute.

"Psychoneuroimmunology is at the cutting edge of understanding mind-body relationships and how behavior affects health and resistance to disease in humans," Irwin said. "These scientific insights, once integrated into the practice of medicine, will contribute to the healing arts and our repertoire of preventative health care."

Irwin has long been intrigued with these relationships. During his UCLA residency training, he recalled, "I remember talking with patients about how they became ill -- the circumstances. I was always impressed with how they described losses of spouses or other significant people in their lives and how they dated their illness to those events."

Such anecdotal evidence led Irwin into scientific investigation. In collaboration with Psychiatry Professor Herbert Weiner, Irwin published one of the earliest studies on the harmful effects of bereavement on the immune system.

Among Irwin's current research interests are the health implications of depression, which, he has found, can pose an increased risk for rheumatoid arthritis and shingles, a painful infection in older adults caused by the herpes zoster virus. The link apparently resides in the body's neuropeptide system, he said. When the system becomes unbalanced, susceptibility to disease may increase.

Irwin is excited about future findings at the Cousins Center, which is named for Norman Cousins, longtime editor of the Saturday Review, who joined the School of Medicine faculty in 1978. A year later, Cousins published the popular book "Anatomy of an Illness," which described how he drew on his emotions -- specifically laughter -- to overcome illness.

"The center has clearly been at the forefront of discovering how psychological processes lead to alterations of immune systems," Irwin said. Its researchers are now beginning to look at potential clinical implications, he said, examining how behavioral and psychological interventions can impact the course of disease -- including AIDS, cancer, depression and a range of autoimmune disorders.