R. J. Rushmore III

Dr. Rushmore is interested in the capacity of the brain to undergo adaptive or maladaptive change following injury or developmental challenges.  He uses invasive and non-invasive reversible deactivation of cerebral cortical areas to study brain function and to encourage restoration of function after brain damage. He is also interested in the visual circuitry underlying visual neglect. Current studies are focused on examining a major effect of brain damage – cortical spreading depression (CSD). Spreading depression is slow electrical wave that expands the brain damage caused by traumatic or penetrating injury, and Dr. Rushmore is interested both in the  principles of its initiation and propagation as well as discovering ways to attenuate or block the wave and thereby improve function after brain damage.

Dr. Rushmore has received the 2008 CFA Educator of the Year in Graduate Sciences Award and the 2014 CFA Educator of the Year in Pre-clinical Sciences.  He directs the first year medical school Neuroscience module, and is the co-director of the first year medical school Head and Neck Body Structures module. He also teaches in other modules of the first year medical school curriculum. He also teaches and co-directs an Advanced Human Anatomy graduate course (with Kathy Rockland), the Systems Neuroscience, Methods in Neuroscience, and The Cellular Organization of Tissues graduate courses.  He also teaches neuroscience to second year and third year medical students. He is presently the ombudsman for graduate students in the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology and was the director of the Department graduate programs from 2008-2013.