Martha R. Herbert

Dr. Martha Herbert (www.marthaherbert.org) is an Assistant Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School, a Pediatric Neurologist subspecializing in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and an affiliate of the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging. She co-founded and directs the TRANSCEND Research Program (www.transcendresearch.org), a multimodal and multisystem brain research program at MGH. She earned her medical degree at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, and then trained in pediatrics at Cornell University Medical Center and in neurology and child neurology at the Massachusetts General Hospital, where she has remained. Prior to her medical training she obtained a doctoral degree at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in the History of Consciousness program. Her background in pediatric neurology, evolutionary biology and history of science has influenced her orientation toward systems biology, brain connectivity and dynamism, and brain-body interrelationships. Her research aims to occupy the interface between metabolic and electrophysiological dysfunction, and how this core disturbance affects brain structure, function and development. She addresses these concerns in investigating the relationship of brain and body in the early development of autism in young infants, and addressing the systems biology of improvement and recovery.