Heather Berlin

Assistant Professor of Neuroscience and Psychiatry, Mount Sinai Hospital

Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and associate clinical professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. She explores the neural basis of impulsive and compulsive psychiatric and neurological disorders with the aim of developing novel treatments. She is also interested in the brain basis of consciousness, dynamic unconscious processes, and creativity. Clinically, she specializes in lifespan (child, adolescent, and adult) treatment of anxiety, mood, and impulsive and compulsive disorders (e.g., OCD), blending her neural perspective with cognitive-behavioral therapy, mindfulness, and humanistic approaches.

Dr. Berlin received her doctorate from the University of Oxford, Master of Public Health from Harvard University, and Master’s in Psychology from the New School for Social Research. She completed her NIMH post-doctoral fellowship at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and trained in clinical neuropsychology at Weill Cornell Medicine in the Department of Neurological Surgery. She has published over 40 peer-reviewed articles and chapters in textbooks and high-impact journals.

Dr. Berlin is a visiting scholar at the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, and was a Visiting Professor at Vassar College, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology/University of Zurich, and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is the recipient of numerous honors including the Young Investigator Award from the American Neuropsychiatric Association, the Young Investigator Award from the National Education Alliance for Borderline Personality Disorder, and the Clifford Yorke Prize from the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society. She was honored as one of Stony Brook University’s “40 Under Forty”, and won the BBC’s “University Challenge” quiz show as part of the Magdalen College, Oxford team.

Passionate about science communication, destigmatizing mental illness, and promoting women in STEM, Berlin is a committee member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Science and Entertainment Exchange and on the inaugural committee of the National Academies’ Eric and Wendy Schmidt Awards for Excellence in Science Communication. She has also served on the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s (AAAS) Committee on Science and Technology Engagement with the Public. She co-hosts StarTalk with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and has hosted television series on PBS and the Discovery Channel. Dr. Berlin also co-wrote and starred in the critically acclaimed off-Broadway and Edinburgh Fringe Festival shows, Off the Top, about the neuroscience of improvisation, and Impulse Control, about the science of impulsivity. She has made numerous media appearances including on the BBC, History Channel, Netflix, National Geographic, and TEDx, and was featured in the documentary film Bill Nye: Science Guy.

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Perception Box

Can you trust your own brain? Neuroscientist Heather Berlin explains

Combining years of neurological research and mindfulness techniques, Dr. Heather Berlin helps us better understand how the body’s most complex organ can easily be misled into negative thinking – and how we can stop that from happening.

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Heather Berlin

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Heather Berlin on the Link Between Genius and Disorder

As part of Big Think’s partnership with 92Y’s Seven Days of Genius series, New York Times columnist Carl Zimmer asks Heather Berlin about the research that illuminates our understanding of genius.

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7 min

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Heather Berlin

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Heather Berlin on Genius and Creativity

Neuroscientist Heather Berlin explains current research into creative “flow states,” examining what happens in the brain when rappers and jazz musicians improvise.

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7 min

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Heather Berlin