Yaakov Stern is an American cognitive neuroscientist, professor of

neuropsychology Neuropsychology is a branch of psychology concerned with how a person's cognition and behavior are related to the brain and the rest of the nervous system. Professionals in this branch of psychology often focus on how injuries or illnesses of t ...

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manha ...

Early life

Stern has an undergraduate degree in psychology from

Touro College Touro University is a private Jewish university system headquartered in New York City, with branches throughout the United States as well as one each in Germany, Israel and Russia. It was founded by Bernard Lander in 1971 and named for Isaac a ...

, and a doctorate in

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...

from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He joined the faculty at Columbia University after completing his doctorate. He now is a Florence Irving professor of

and chief of the Cognitive Neuroscience Division of the Neurology department.

Cognitive reserve

Stern’s major contribution is the concept of

cognitive reserve Cognitive reserve is the mind's and brain's resistance to damage of the brain. The mind's resilience is evaluated behaviorally, whereas the neuropathological damage is evaluated histologically, although damage may be estimated using blood-based ma ...

, which helps to explain differential susceptibility to age- or disease-related brain changes. In 2002 he published his first systematic treatment of the concept. Stern's work in cognitive reserve is the most cited in the list of 300 papers in Alzheimer's Disease research compiled by the ''

Journal of Alzheimer's Disease The ''Journal of Alzheimer's Disease'' is a peer-reviewed medical journal published by IOS Press covering the etiology, pathogenesis, epidemiology, genetics, treatment, and psychology of Alzheimer's disease Alzheimer's disease (AD) ...

'' and has been quoted in news articles. In 1992, he demonstrated that when patients with Alzheimer's disease are matched for clinical severity, those with higher education had more extensive

neurodegeneration A neurodegenerative disease is caused by the progressive loss of structure or function of neurons, in the process known as neurodegeneration. Such neuronal damage may ultimately involve cell death. Neurodegenerative diseases include amyotrophic ...

, indicating that they could cope more successfully with the underlying

pathology Pathology is the study of the causes and effects of disease or injury. The word ''pathology'' also refers to the study of disease in general, incorporating a wide range of biology research fields and medical practices. However, when used in ...

. He was one of the first to use prospective incidence studies to demonstrate that individuals with higher educational or occupational attainment, or who engage in more late life leisure activities have a reduced risk of developing Alzheimer's. He was the first to observe that patients with higher reserve had a more rapid rate of decline. Much of his later work has focused on the potential neural basis of cognitive reserve using imaging studies. Stern has authored or co-authored and published over 600 articles in academic journals. His H index according to

Google scholar Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes p ...

is over 150. He edited a book on cognitive reserve.

Other research

Stern’s earliest work focused on identifying cognitive changes in nondemented patients with idiopathic

Parkinson’s disease Parkinson's disease (PD), or simply Parkinson's, is a long-term degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that mainly affects the motor system. The symptoms usually emerge slowly, and as the disease worsens, non-motor symptoms become ...

, which helped identify the cognitive role of the

basal ganglia The basal ganglia (BG), or basal nuclei, are a group of subcortical nuclei, of varied origin, in the brains of vertebrates. In humans, and some primates, there are some differences, mainly in the division of the globus pallidus into an extern ...

when it was widely believed to have a role only in motor function. He validated these observations in patients with

MPTP MPTP (1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine) is a prodrug to the neurotoxin MPP+, which causes permanent symptoms of Parkinson's disease by destroying dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra of the brain. It has been used to study d ...

-induced Parkinson's. In the long-standing Predictors study, Stern has been working to clarify the heterogeneity of the course of Alzheimer's disease. He identified a set of disease features that are associated with more rapid decline, and created prediction algorithms for disease course. Stern directs the Reference Ability Neural Network (RANN) study, which is examining the neural basis for key cognitive domains in aging.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stern, Yaakov Year of birth missing (living people) 20th-century births Living people 21st-century American psychologists American neuroscientists Touro College alumni CUNY Graduate Center alumni Columbia University faculty Place of birth missing (living people)