Verne Caviness

Neurology

Verne S. Caviness Jr., MD, D Phil, served as Director of the Division of Child Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) from 1982-2007. Formerly the Joseph and Rose Kennedy Professor of Child Neurology and Mental Retardation, he was the Giovanni Armenise Distinguished Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School from 2008-2013. A native of Raleigh, NC, he received his undergraduate degree from Duke University, his MD from Harvard Medical School, and his D Phil in experimental pathology from Oxford University. He trained in Internal Medicine and Neurology at MGH. He served in the Vietnam War from 1967-1969 as Chief of Neurology at the USAF Hospital Tachikawa, Japan, and returned to the Department of Neurology at MGH, and to Harvard Medical School. He began investigative work in developmental neurobiology in the Department of Neuropathology with Professor Richard Sidman. The investigations focused upon the histogenesis of the cortical malformation in the reeler mutant mouse, normal forebrain histogenesis, developmental neuropathology and neural systems organization, which led to his work in Child Neurology and MRI based morphometric study of the human brain. During much of the time that he directed Child Neurology, he served as Co-Director of research programs in Developmental Neurobiology and MRI-based brain imaging in the Department of Neurology at MGH. His bibliography in relation to these fields numbers more than 200 peer reviewed articles and dozens of review articles. Dr. Caviness was active in the clinical and teaching programs of Adult and Child Neurology and Pediatrics at Mass General and was attending physician on the major in-patient and outpatient services of both Adult and Child Neurology.