Author Information
Lennart Heimer, MD (1930-2007) was renowned in two related spheres: neuroanatomy education and research on the brain's limbic structures.
He harbored an indefatigable commitment to medical education in the neurosciences. Both editions of his textbook for medical students, The Human Brain and Spinal Cord: Functional Neuroanatomy and Dissection Guide, are regarded as among the most lucid available accounts of this difficult subject. Dr. Heimer served for many years on the editorial boards of The Journal of Comparative Neurology and Neuroscience. His series of books on experimental neuroanatomical methods, Neuroanatomical Tract-tracing Methods, is a standard reference among working neuroscientists. Dr. Heimer's acclaimed series of teaching videotapes and DVDs demonstrating the prosected human brain, which emerged out of now locally legendary sessions with neurology and neurosurgery residents at the University of Virginia, have been acquired by generations of students, neuroscientists, and clinicians. He was vigorously pursued throughout his career as a lecturer in university, clinic, and workshop settings worldwide.
Dr. Heimer's research focus was the neuroanatomy of the brain's limbic structures. Upon completing training in medicine at the University of Gothenburg, he was recruited in 1965 to the Department of Psychology and Brain Science of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He had developed what was, at the time, the most sensitive silver method to map the pathways of nerve fibers in the brain and soon formulated revolutionary new concepts about the basic organization and connectivity of brain structures that regulate emotions and motivation. Concepts conceived in his laboratory, first at MIT and later in the Neurosurgery and Neuroscience departments at the University of Virginia, have served for more than 30 years to energize inquiry in the basic and clinical neurosciences in subdisciplines ranging from drug abuse research to neuropsychiatry. Dr. Heimer's early work is widely recognized as providing the conceptual basis for the subsequent elaboration of "segregated, parallel cortico-subcortical reentrant pathways," which are presently utilized as surgical and pharmacotherapeutic targets in the treatment of diverse neurological and neuropsychiatric brain conditions, from Parkinson's disease to drug abuse, to obsessive-compulsive disorder.
