Clifford Saper

BIOGRAPHY

ACADEMIC POSITION:
James Jackson Putnam Professor of Neurology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

EDUCATION:
Clifford Saper received his MD and PhD degrees and did his internship in internal medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, before doing a neurology residency at Cornell University Medical Center-New York Hospital.

MEMBERSHIPS:
• Sleep Research Society
• Society for Neuroscience
• American Physiological Society
• American Neurological Association
• American Academy of Neurology

AWARDS:
• McKnight Scholar Award
• Javits Neuroscience Investigator, NINDS
• Distinguished Alumnus Award, Washington University Medical School
• Councilor, American Neurological Association
• Chair, Program Committee, Society for Neuroscience
• Chair, Program Committee, American Neurological Assocation
• Publication Committee, Society for Neuroscience
• Editor-in-chief, Journal of Comparative Neurology
• Fellow, Royal College of Physicians
• Elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences

RESEARCH INTERESTS:
The focus of the Saper laboratory is on the integrated functions maintained by the hypothalamus. These include regulation of wake-sleep cycles, body temperature, and feeding. These functions interact with one another extensively, and all three are driven by homeostatic mechanisms as well as by circadian influences. We attempt to identify the neuronal circuitry that is involved in regulating these responses. We use a variety of methods to analyze neuronal circuits and their functions, including axonal tracer methods combined with in situ hybridization and immunohistochemistry; physiological recordings ranging from whole animal chronic recording, to lesion and stimulation methods, single cell extracellular recording in whole animals, and to intracellular recordings in slice preparations; and we use viral vectors and transgenic approaches to introduce and manipulate genes in specific sets of neurons in the brain, and determine their function. In addition to identifying this circuitry in experimental animals, we also are interested in determining the homologous circuitry in human brians, and in determining how it may be disrupted in specific neurological and psychiatric disorders.

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