I am a senior Neuropsychologist, presently on the faculty of the Boston University School of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and the Boston Institute for the Study of Violence. I have been Director and Chief of two Clinical Neuropsychology/Psychology Departments within two Boston area teaching hospital since completing my training in 1986.
My practice focuses on the behavioral, cognitive, and emotional effects of neurodegenerative, trauma-based, cerebrovascular and other diseases or dysfunctions of the central nervous system due to a wide variety of illnesses and factors.
I see patients suffering from the effects of CNS active drugs (prescribed or otherwise), suffering from head traumas, neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease or Parkinson's disease or similar diseases, strokes, or just about any other condition that might effect the structural or functional integrity of the brain. These various central nervous system disorders include many (typically reversible) conditions associated with medical illnesses and with the ingesting of various psychoactive substances. Many if not all of these conditions affecting the integrity of the brain demonstrate significant effects on emotion, personality, cognition, outward behavior, and subjective experience. Understanding correlations between these behavioral and experiential changes and an underlying etiology or particular brain disease/dysfunction requires a detailed understanding of the brain as a distributed and integrative system. The brain is also regulated by numerous neuromodulatory systems, and integrated by large white matter systems that connect literally many dozens of different forebrain and brainstem regions together. Most if not all major diseases of the central nervous system effect the vast neural integrations achieved in this distributed set of structures and connectivities. Integrations at a neural network level achieved by this system underpin everything that we as human beings take for granted, not just our higher cognitive functions but basic emotional and personality issues as well, and indeed every aspect of human behavior.
My resume includes roughly 45-50 peer-reviewed publications on emotion, cognition, behavior and the brain. I have been asked to speak many times at both national and international conferences addressing the neural substrates of emotion and behavior, and have given literally hundreds of talks on various issues in both clinical as well as theoretical neuroscience. I have given dozens of Grand Rounds at hospitals and medical centers throughout the country and in Europe on clinical syndromes such as depression, various forms of dementia associated with Alzheimer's disease, head trauma, delirium and confusional states, basal ganglia disease and function, and dozens of other topics (see CV for details). Current projects include a major review paper/target article on depression with Jaak Panksepp, a recently completed target article on empathy, and an upcoming review paper on delirium and confusional states.
I frequently evaluate patients in terms of competence to manage finances, enter contracts, stand trial, or make health care decisions.
