Alvaro Pascual-Leone
PhD, MD, Professor Harvard Medical School, USA
Foundation Board Member
Alvaro Pascual-Leone is Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA, Senior Scientist at the Hinda and Arthur Marcus Institute for Aging Research and Medical Director of the Deanna and Sidney Wolk Center for Memory Health, Hebrew SeniorLife, Boston, USA, and Scientific Director at the Guttmann Brain Health Institute, Institut Guttmann, Barcelona, Spain.
He received his MD in 1984 and his PhD in Neurophysiology in 1985, both from Albert-Ludwigs University in Freiburg, Germany. Following an internship in Medicine at Staedtisches Klinikum Karlsruhe in Germany and residency in Internal Medicine at Hospital Universitario de Valencia in Spain, he completed a Neurology residency at the University of Minnesota, and then trained in Clinical Neurophysiology and Human Motor Control at the University of Minnesota and the National Institutes of Health. He joined Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in 1997, after several years at the Cajal Institute of the Spanish Research Council.
Prof. Pascual-Leone is a world leader in the field of noninvasive brain stimulation where his contributions span from technology development, through basic neurobiologic insights from animal studies and modeling approaches, to human proof-of-principle and multicenter clinical trials. His research has been fundamental in establishing the field of therapeutic brain stimulation. His work has provided evidence for the efficacy of noninvasive brain stimulation in treating various neurologic and psychiatric conditions, including epilepsy, stroke, Parkinson's disease, chronic pain, autism, and drug-resistant depression.
He is a pioneer in the use of noninvasive brain stimulation and its application for the study of brain behavior relations and the development of diagnostic and therapeutic interventions in neuropsychiatry. His contributions range from technology development to basic neurobiological insights gained from animal studies and modeling approaches to human proof-of-principle and multicenter clinical trials.
A major interest of current work aims at translating insights from cognitive neuroscience into clinical interventions.
