Professor Kenneth Heilman
Neurology, University of Florida, Gainesville
Born and raised in Brooklyn, Kenneth M. Heilman went to college at the University of Virginia and then
received his MD degree from the University of Virginia in 1963. He subsequently spent two years
training in Internal Medicine at Cornell University Medical Center (Bellevue). During the Vietnam War
he joined the Air Force and was Chief of Medicine at NATO Hospital, Izmir, Turkey. When he was
discharged from the service, he took a neurology residency and fellowship at the Harvard Neurological
Unit (Boston City) with Dr. Derek Denny-Brown and then with Dr. Norman Geschwind. After
completing his residency and fellowship, he jointed the faculty at the University of Florida in 1970, as an
Assistant Professor. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1973 and Professor in 1975. He received
an endowed chair in 1990 making him the first James E Rooks, Jr. Professor of Neurology. In 1998, he
was in the first group of faculty to be awarded the title of Distinguished Professor. He is also a Professor
of Clinical and Health Psychology. Dr. Heilman is an active clinician who is Director of the Memory and
Cognitive Disorder Clinic. In 1977, Dr. Heilman joined the VA faculty, in a part time status, first as a
Staff Neurologist and then between 1996 and 2009 as Chief of the Neurology Service.
His expertise as a clinician has been recognized by being listed in multiple editions of the Best Doctors in
America, America’s Top Doctors and Who’s Who, as well as other similar publications. Dr. Heilman is
also an educator. In addition to teaching medical and psychology students, he is active in resident
education and been director of a Behavioral Neurology-Dementia post-doctoral program that has trained
more than 70 post-doctoral fellows. The majority of these fellows now hold academic positions in this
and other universities, over the world. Several of Dr. Heilman’s former fellows are now leaders in
academic neurology, neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience.
Dr. Heilman has had and continues to have an active research program. His major interests are in
disorders of attention (neglect), action programming (apraxia), emotions, communication and creativity.
His research has been almost continuously funded by federal agencies (e.g., VA Merit Review and/or
National Institutes of Health) for about the last 35 years. He is the author or co-author or editor or coeditor of 14 published or ‘in press’ books and more than 500 publications. Some of the research advances
he and his coworkers reported include: 1) The demonstration that a cortical (frontal-parietal)-limbic
(cingulate)-reticular (thalamic and mesencephalic) network mediates attention. 2) That the right
hemisphere is dominant for mediating attention and arousal. 3) That unilateral neglect, of one side of
space, can be caused by attentional as well as action-intentional deficits. 4) That the right hemisphere,
especially the frontal lobe, is dominant for "when" action-intentional computations including, when to
initiate an act, when not to act and when to stop actions. 5) That certain patients with neglect can be
helped when treated with dopamine agonists. 6) Prior to three decades ago it was thought that the left
hemisphere was dominant for speech and language. Dr. Heilman and his coworkers demonstrated that it
was the right hemisphere that was important for emotional communication including the understanding
and expression of emotional prosody and faces. 7) In regard to skilled movements or praxis, Dr Heilman
and his coworkers have demonstrated that skilled movement, such as using a pair of scissors, is mediated
by a left hemisphere modular network where the parietal lobe contains the memories of the spatial
trajectories needed to perform skilled movements and the frontal lobe (premotor cortex) performs the
computations that transfer this knowledge to a motor code. 8) That the left hemisphere is also dominant
for storing mechanical knowledge and that a loss of this knowledge leads to a deficit called conceptual
apraxia. 9) That the left hemisphere's motor systems help control deftness (precise) movements of both
hands. In addition to this behavioral cognitive research Dr. Heilman and his workers described several
new diseases and behavioral syndromes, such as ‘orthostatic tremor.’
Dr. Heilman is a member of many honorary organizations such as Alpha Omega Alpha, Sigma Xi and the
Dana Foundation. In recognition of his research contributions Dr. Heilman was in the first group of
individuals to receive the University of Florida Research Foundation Professorships and received this
honor again (2005-2007). He also received the Clinical Research Award from the University of Florida,
College of Medicine. In 2008 he received their Lifetime Achievement Award from the University of
Florida. He is a past President of the International Neuropsychology Society (INS) and the Society for
Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology (SCBN). In 2009 the INS gave him their “Distinguished Career
Award,”, the SCBN gave him the “Outstanding Achievement Award” for his research and educational
contributions to neurology and the American Speech and Hearing Association (ASHA) give him their
“Distinguished Service Award” for his scientific and educational contributions. Finally, Dr. Heilman is a
Fellow in the American Academy of Neurololgy, and was elected to be a Honary Member of the
American Neurological Association. The American Academy of Neurology presented him with the
Wartenberg Lecture award at their 2009 Annual Meeting and he presented the Wartenberg Lecture, a
keynote lecture at this meeting. His greatest honor, however, has been being married to Patricia, having
three wonderful children and three grandchildren.
The Spiritual Brain
The goal of this lecture will be to discuss some of the brain mechanisms that may mediate spiritually.
Unlike object and actions, certain concepts like spirituality are difficult to define. Einstein in an essay
called “Cosmic Religion” writes that there are three levels of religion—religion of fear where there is a
G-d who protects, rewards, and punishes; a second related to morality, like the “thou shall not’s;” and a
third level which he called “…the cosmic religious sense,” where a person feels “the…marvelous
order…in nature and in the world of thought.” It is this third level that we might think of as spirituality.
Spirituality is often brought about or enhanced by prayer or meditation. Isolation also may enhance
spirituality. During these mental states a person often will withdraw attention from external stimuli and
instead turn his or her attention inward allowing the discovery of “marvelous order…in the world of
thought.” Attention is the process by which the brain allocates processing resources. In order to have
spiritual experiences, a person has to create a state of mind where they are not stimulus or action oriented
and hence preparing for any sort of physical interaction with external objects, and they must sense
themselves beyond the corporeal self. This mental state is dependent on withdrawing attention from the
external world as well as one’s own body. This lecture on the brain mechanisms mediating spirituality
will address hoe certain brain networks mediate these attentional activities and the dynamics of these
networks that enable spirituality.