History

Dr. Murray Grossman started his career in cognitive neurology and neuroscience while training at the Boston Aphasia Research Center in the 1970s.  The Boston Aphasia Research Center has historically been recognized as world’s leading center for excellence in research on the understanding, evaluation, and treatment of acquired language disorders.  After completing a post-doctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Dr. Grossman attended McGill University for his medical training.  Dr. Grossman moved to the University of Pennsylvania for his neurology residency in 1986 and has since been building a diverse laboratory.  Dr. Grossman’s research has been instrumental in the field of Cognitive Neurology and neurodegenerative disease.  He is internationally recognized as a world-leader in frontotemporal degeneration (FTD) and is ranked among the top 100 Alzheimer’s disease (AD) researchers by the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.  He has served on numerous editorial boards, National Institutes of Health panels, and scientific societies.

Since building his laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Grossman has made several important contributions to the understanding of neurodegenerative disease and the cognitive neuroscience of language.  Dr. Grossman was among the first to recognize that patients with movement disorders like Parkinson’s disease and Corticobasal Degeneration can also have cognitive limitations.  He provided the first quantitative description of progressive non-fluent aphasia.  He was also a pioneer in early neuroimaging research on the neural basis of language.  Dr. Grossman’s laboratory is a unique environment that spans many levels of neuroscience research ranging across detailed studies of clinical-pathological relationships, biomarker discovery, genetics, neuropsychological investigations, functional and structural neuroimaging, and cognitive neuroscience investigations of language, memory, and social cognition.  Many of Dr. Grossman’s research investigations emphasize the importance of multimodality research and comparative studies across different diseases.

In 2011 Dr. Grossman created the Penn Frontotemporal Degeneration Center (Penn FTD Center).  This state-of-the-art research center brings together leading experts in neuropsychology, neuroimaging, clinical care, biofluid biomarkers, and cognitive neuroscience in an effort to improve the diagnosis, treatment, and care for individuals with FTD.  The Penn FTD Center also works in close collaboration with the Center for Neurodegenerative Disease (CNDR) Neuropathology and Genetics Cores and with other neurodegenerative disease centers at the University of Pennsylvania.  These include the Penn Memory Center, the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) Center, and the Morris K. Udall Center of Excellence for Parkinson's Disease Research.  All of these centers have a rich history of collaboration and have contributed many important discoveries to our understanding of neurodegenerative disease, and especially Frontotemporal degeneration .  The Penn FTD Center also provides an excellent training environment for undergraduate students, graduate students, clinical fellows, and research fellows to facilitate the education of the next generation of world-leading Frontotemporal degeneration experts.