Dr. Robert W. McCarley
Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA
Curator and author
Featured Author: Robert W. McCarley
Robert W. McCarley was born in 1937 in Mayfield, Kentucky, where he grew up. He received his A.B. from Harvard College, Summa Cum Laude, in 1959 and his M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1964. While a resident in psychiatry at Massachussetts Mental Health Center (MMHC, Boston), Dr. McCarley began researching the cellular physiology of sleep. He was co-director of the Laboratory of Neurophysiology at Harvard Medical School Department of Psychiatry (MMHC) from 1975 to 1985, and he is currently Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Head of the Harvard Department of Psychiatry and Associate Director of Mental Health at the VA Boston Healthcare System.
Dr. McCarley has received numerous awards and honors for his work, including two consecutive ten year NIH MERIT awards and the Distinguished Scientist Award from the Sleep Research Society (1995). Over his prolific academic career, he has published more than 320 papers, co-authored three books, and written over 50 book chapters.
Dr. McCarley performs both clinical and basic research. His clinical research focuses on the neuroimaging and neurophysiology of schizophrenia, and has led to an increased awareness of auditory and language-related areas of the superior temporal gyrus as being an important site of gray matter abnormalities. His basic research investigates how the brain controls behavior, especially during sleep and wakefulness, and has been pivotal in the discovery of brainstem control mechanisms of REM sleep.
Scholarpedia articles:
- Neurobiology of sleep and wakefulness, Scholarpedia, 3(4):3313 (2008).
(Author profile by Maxime Lemieux)
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