Reisa Sperling and Marian Diamond: At the Forefront of Alzheimer’s and Brain Research
Two women who shattered medicine’s understanding of the brain
Reisa Sperling: Making ‘Disruptive’ a Compliment
When Reisa Sperling, MD, was added to the 2017 list of Most Disruptive Women to Watch in Healthcare, she knew it was a badge of honor. A Harvard Medical School-trained clinical neurologist and neuroimaging researcher, Dr. Sperling was a driving force behind the early diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. Her innovative use of multi-modality imaging has led to a better understanding of how aging and early Alzheimer’s disease affects memory.
While chairing the National Institute on Aging-Alzheimer’s Association Workgroup, Dr. Sperling proposed a new framework for defining the preclinical stages of the disease and helped lead the Anti-Amyloid Treatment in Asymptomatic Alzheimer’s Disease Study. It was the first trial of its kind focusing on the prevention of cognitive decline in older people who, while currently cognitively normal, have markers for a later onset of the disease. And in 2020, as a pandemic gripped the country, Dr. Sperling was hard at work launching two new prevention trials.
Today, Dr. Sperling directs both the Center for Alzheimer Research and Treatment at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the Harvard Aging Brain Study at Massachusetts General Hospital—all while serving as an associate professor at Harvard Medical School. She’s also won the Derek Denny-Brown Award (2011), the American Academy of Neurology’s Potamkin Prize (2015), and the American Neurological Association’s Raymond Adams Lectureship Award (2018). And, of course, she holds the honor of being one of the most disruptive women in the field of Alzheimer’s and brain research.
Listen to Dr. Sperling speak about her research here.
Marian Diamond: Use It, or Lose It
For decades, students at the University of California at Berkeley knew exactly what was inside the floral-print box carried around by Marian Diamond, MD—a human brain. The seminal neuroscientist used it to illustrate to her students that the brain was, in her words, “the most complex mass of protoplasm on this earth and, perhaps, in our galaxy.” Not a surprising statement coming from someone who’d studied the preserved brain of Albert Einstein during her own training.
Dr. Diamond’s remarkable career really took off in 1960 when she began studying the brains of rats—some of which were raised in isolation, while others lived in a more enriched environment that included opportunities to socialize and play. Later, while studying the rats’ brains under a microscope, she made a startling discovery: the brains of the enriched-environment rats had cerebral cortices six percent thicker than the isolated rats.
This finding led to her theory on brain plasticity, which posited that five elements were crucial in a developing brain: diet, exercise, challenge, newness, and love. According to her colleague, George Brooks, “She shattered the old paradigm of understanding the brain as a static and unchangeable entity that simply degenerated as we age.” But Dr. Diamond had her own way of saying the exact same thing regarding the brain: Use it, or lose it.
Born in California in 1926, Dr. Diamond first attended a community college before transferring to UC-Berkeley, where she graduated in 1948. Soon after, she became the first female graduate student in the anatomy department, earning her master’s degree in 1949 and her doctorate in 1953. Dr. Diamond died in July 2017 at age 90, but her legacy will forever live on.
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Reisa Sperling
Marian Diamond
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