Myriam Heiman

Dr. Heiman is an Associate Professor of Neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences (BCS) at MIT and a member of the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT.  She received a B.A. in molecular biology from Princeton University, a Ph.D. in cell biology from the Johns Hopkins University, and post-doctoral training at the Rockefeller University.  Her expertise is in the development of genetic and biochemical methods for the study of the mammalian nervous system, as well as the study of basal ganglia circuits and their dysfunction in disease.  She is a recipient of various awards including an NIH EUREKA Award, an NIH Director's Transformative Research Award, an NIH R35 Research Program Award, as well as awards for excellence in undergraduate teaching and graduate mentoring from the MIT BCS department, and a Committed to Caring Award from MIT.

The focus of Dr. Heiman's research group is to understand the molecular basis of nerve cell function and dysfunction in CNS diseases and disorders.  The group seeks to understand what combination of cell autonomous and non-cell autonomous mechanisms leads to vulnerability in these diseases and disorders, as well as which cell types are most important in considering the actions of CNS-acting drugs such as antipsychotic drugs and drugs involved in substance use disorders (SUDs).  Recent work in the group has focused on profiling intrinsic vulnerabilities and adaptations that occur in the CNS in the context of Huntington's disease, ALS, Parkinson's disease, spinocerebellar ataxia (SCA), vascular contributions to cognitive impairment and dementia (VCID), normal aging, and opioid use disorder (OUD), using human tissue samples and mouse models of disease, bulk and single cell genomic techniques, and high- and low-throughput casual testing approaches.