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Alice Flaherty | |
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 Alice Flaherty in 2013 | |
| Born | Alice Weaver Flaherty 21 July 1963 |
| Spouse | Andrew John Hrycyna (m. 1986) |
| Children | 2 |
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Alice Weaver Flaherty is an American neurologist. She is a researcher, physician, educator, and author of the 2004 book The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain, about the neural basis of creativity. [1]
Alice Flaherty was born on 21 July 1963 in Morristown, New Jersey to mechanical engineer Franklin Trimby Flaherty and librarian Sarah Louise Flaherty. [2] She grew up in Brookside, an unincorporated community in Mendham Township, New Jersey and graduated from West Morris Mendham High School. [3] She completed her undergraduate degree and her medical degree at Harvard University as well as a fellowship there. She also completed a Ph.D. at MIT.
Flaherty is a joint associate professor of neurology and psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She is a neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital. She was the first head of the MGH neurology department's Brain Stimulator Unit, where "she uses deep brain stimulators to treat neurological disease and psychiatric disease. Her research focuses on voluntary control of action, and how human brains represent their bodies, two factors that help drive suffering in depression, Parkinson's, and somatoform disorders." [4] [5]
She writes in various genres, including "scientific papers, humorous essays, and picture books". [6] Her book, The Massachusetts General Hospital Handbook of Neurology was for years the most "widely used neurology text in its class". [7] Her most famous book, The Midnight Disease, appeared on "Best Books of 2004" lists in The Washington Post and The San Francisco Chronicle.
After her premature twin boys died soon after their birth, Flaherty was full of grief. Several days later, however, she "awoke one morning with an overwhelming desire to put everything on her mind on paper". [8] She describes her experiences with hypergraphia, this overwhelming urge to write. She claims she could not stop for four months. A similar experience occurred after the birth of her premature twin girls, who survived. Following the two births, her abilities to produce creative works were heightened. The Midnight Disease tried to make sense of this phenomenon.
Flaherty gave a TEDx talk Danger and Creativity, in 2019. [9] She was a consultant on two TV drama series pilots based on her life: The Madness of Jane, created by Rob LaZebnik, and Hysteria, created by Shaun Cassidy. She has appeared on many TV and radio broadcasts as a public advocate for the abilities of patients with brain illnesses. She was featured on the podcast The Great God of Depression, created by Pagan Kennedy, about her interactions with the writer William Styron. [10] Her image hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in the oil painting Museum Epiphany 3 painted by Warren and Lucia Prosperi. [11] She was the protagonist of Bedside Manner, directed by Corinne Botz, which in 2016 won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Short Documentary, DOC NYC, Oscar-qualifying. [12]
The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) is a part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). It conducts and funds research on brain and nervous system disorders and has a budget of just over US$2.03 billion. The mission of NINDS is "to reduce the burden of neurological disease—a burden borne by every age group, every segment of society, and people all over the world". NINDS has established two major branches for research: an extramural branch that funds studies outside the NIH, and an intramural branch that funds research inside the NIH. Most of NINDS' budget goes to fund extramural research. NINDS' basic science research focuses on studies of the fundamental biology of the brain and nervous system, genetics, neurodegeneration, learning and memory, motor control, brain repair, and synapses. NINDS also funds clinical research related to diseases and disorders of the brain and nervous system, e.g. AIDS, Alzheimer's disease, epilepsy, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, spinal cord injury, stroke, and traumatic brain injury.
Alexandra Adler was an Austrian neurologist and the daughter of psychoanalyst Alfred Adler and Raissa Adler. She has been described as one of the "leading systematizers and interpreters" of Adlerian psychology. Her sister was socialist activist Valentine Adler. Alexandra Adler's husband was Halfdan Gregersen.
Hypergraphia is a behavioral condition characterized by the intense desire to write or draw. Forms of hypergraphia can vary in writing style and content. It is a symptom associated with temporal lobe changes in epilepsy and in Geschwind syndrome. Structures that may have an effect on hypergraphia when damaged due to temporal lobe epilepsy are the hippocampus and Wernicke's area. Aside from temporal lobe epilepsy, chemical causes may be responsible for inducing hypergraphia.
Vanessa Bradford Kerry is an American physician, public health expert, and advocate. She is a founder of the non-profit Seed Global Health, director of the Program in Global Public Policy and Social Change at Harvard Medical School, and serves as the Special Envoy for Climate Change and Health for the World Health Organization (WHO).
Writer's block is a non-medical condition, primarily associated with writing, in which an author is either unable to produce new work or experiences a creative slowdown.
Neurasthenia is a term that was first used as early as 1829 for a mechanical weakness of the nerves. It became a major diagnosis in North America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries after neurologist George Miller Beard reintroduced the concept in 1869.
Massachusetts General Hospital is a teaching hospital located in the West End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. It is the original and largest clinical education and research facility of Harvard Medical School/Harvard University, and houses the world's largest hospital-based research program with an annual research budget of more than $1.2 billion in 2021. It is the third-oldest general hospital in the United States with a patient capacity of 999 beds. Along with Brigham and Women's Hospital, Mass General is a founding member of Mass General Brigham, formerly known as Partners HealthCare, the largest healthcare provider in Massachusetts.
Kenneth M. Heilman was an American behavioral neurologist. He is considered one of the fathers of modern-day behavioral neurology.
Ann Martin Graybiel is an Institute Professor and a faculty member in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is also an investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. She is an expert on the basal ganglia and the neurophysiology of habit formation, implicit learning, and her work is relevant to Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, obsessive–compulsive disorder, substance abuse and other disorders that affect the basal ganglia.
Hugo Wolfgang Moser (1924–2007) was a Swiss-born American research scientist and director of the Neurogenetics Research Center at the Kennedy Krieger Institute. Moser was also University Professor of Neurology and Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University. His research on peroxisomal disorders achieved international recognition.
Hanna Damasio is a scientist in the field of cognitive neuroscience. Using computerized tomography and magnetic resonance imaging, she has developed methods of investigating human brain structure and studied functions such as language, memory, and emotion, using both the lesion method and functional neuroimaging. She is currently a Dana Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience and Director of the Dana and David Dornsife Cognitive Neuroscience Imaging Center at the University of Southern California.
Anne Buckingham Young is an American physician and neuroscientist who has made major contributions to the study of neurodegenerative diseases, with a focus on movement disorders like Huntington's disease and Parkinson's disease. Young completed her undergraduate studies at Vassar College and earned a dual MD/PhD from Johns Hopkins Medical School. She has held faculty positions at University of Michigan and Harvard University. She became the first female chief of service at Massachusetts General Hospital when she was appointed Chief of Neurology in 1991. She retired from this role and from clinical service in 2012. She is a member of many academic societies and has won numerous awards. Young is also the only person to have been president of both the international Society for Neuroscience and the American Neurological Association.
Martin A. Samuels, MD, DSc (hon), FAAN, MACP, FRCP, FANA, was an American physician, neurologist and medical educator whose unique teaching style and contributions, accessible to a wide audience, were widely known and celebrated. He wrote and spoke on the relationships between neurology and the rest of medicine, and linked the nervous system with cardiac function, highlighting the mechanisms and prevention of neurogenic cardiac disease.
Gitte Moos Knudsen is a Danish translational neurobiologist and clinical neurologist, and Clinical Professor and Chief Physician at the Department of Clinical Medicine, Neurology, Psychiatry and Sensory Sciences, at Copenhagen University Hospital. She graduated from Lyngby Statsskole, just north of Copenhagen, before gaining entrance to medicine, where she received her MD from University of Copenhagen in 1984, and became a Board certified user of radioisotopes in 1986. She sat the FMGEMS exam (US) in 1989. She became Board certified in neurology in 1994 and received her DMSc (Dr.Med.) from University of Copenhagen in 1994. She currently resides in Copenhagen, and is married to Tore Vulpius. She has 3 children.
Tommy McHugh was a British artist and poet. In his early life, McHugh was a builder and was also involved in youth crimes. When he was 51, he suffered a stroke on both sides of his brain that resulted in two burst blood vessels. He was sent into a coma for a week and acquired savant syndrome.
Peter Richard Huttenlocher was a German-American pediatric neurologist and neuroscientist who discovered how the brain develops in children. He is considered to be one of the fathers of developmental cognitive neuroscience.
Amytis "Amy" Towfighi is Professor of Neurology, Director of Neurological Services and Innovation for Los Angeles County Department of Health Services and Chief of Neurology and Associate Medical Director of Neurological Services at LAC+USC Medical Center.
Merit Cudkowicz is an American neurologist and neuroscientist who studies amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Cudkowicz is Julieanne Dorn Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School, director of the ALS clinic and the Neurological Clinical Research Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), and chair of the Department of Neurology at MGH. Cudkowicz has led several large-scale collaborations and clinical trials to test novel treatments for ALS and as of 2020, researching ways to detect early biomarkers of ALS to improve diagnosis.
Anne Pappenheimer Forbes (1911–1992) was an American endocrinologist. A graduate of Radcliffe College and Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, she was an associate of Fuller Albright, who was the endocrinology chief at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). Forbes was one of the first women to reach the rank of clinical professor at Harvard Medical School.
Catarina Resende de Oliveira is a Portuguese neurologist, researcher, university professor, and doctor. A full professor of biochemistry at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Coimbra, she studies the processes that cause neurological degeneration responsible for illnesses such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease.
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