Kathleen S. Rockland, PhD

Research Professor, Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine

Biography

Dr. Rockland received her doctorate at Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine (1979), working on feedforward and feedback cortical connections with Dr. Deepak Pandya. She completed postdoctoral studies on patchy horizontal intrinsic collaterals with Jennifer Lund at the Medical University of South Carolina, and began an independent laboratory in 1983 at the E.K. Shriver Center (Waltham, MA), continuing to work on cortical connectivity in non-human primates. In 1988 she joined the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology at BUSM as an assistant professor, before moving in 1991 to the Department of Neurology at the University of Iowa. A collaboration with Keiji Tanaka (Brain Science Institute at RIKEN, Wako, Japan) led to an invitation to join BSI as lab head, where she established the Lab for Cortical Organization and Systematics (2000). After taking sabbatical leave from BSI at Tonegawa Lab (MIT), she returned to the Dept. of Anatomy and Neurobiology in 2012, where she has started a new lab, partly focused on microstructure of human postmortem cortex.

Publications

  • Published 9/18/2025

    Diederich NJ, Brüne M, Allen JS, Bender N, Bruner E, Changeux JP, Corrado C, Dolgova O, Grünewald A, Konopka G, Jin P, Lemon R, Levy G, Magistretti P, Rantala MJ, Rockland KS, Sullivan R, Swanepoel A, Uchihara T, Amunts K, Goetz CG. Buried Treasure? Overlooked and Newly Discovered Evolutionary Contributions to Human Brain Diseases. Ann Neurol. 2025 Sep 18. PMID: 40964844.

    Read at: PubMed

  • Published 5/31/2025

    Roebroeck A, Haber S, Borra E, Schiavi S, Forkel SJ, Rockland K, Dyrby TB, Schilling K. Animal models are useful in studying human neuroanatomy with tractography. Brain Struct Funct. 2025 May 31; 230(5):79. PMID: 40450074.

    Read at: PubMed

  • Published 5/30/2025

    Borra E, Jones DK, Parent M, Petit L, Rockland KS, Rushmore RJ, Szczupak D. Brain connectivity: complex, not chaotic. Brain Struct Funct. 2025 May 30; 230(5):77. PMID: 40445394.

    Read at: PubMed

  • Published 5/22/2025

    Rockland KS. Traditions of Excellence: neuroanatomy at the forefront of the new era. Anat Sci Int. 2025 May 22. PMID: 40402345.

    Read at: PubMed

  • Published 1/27/2025

    Hu D, Sato T, Rockland KS, Tanifuji M, Tanigawa H. Relationship between functional structures and horizontal connections in macaque inferior temporal cortex. Sci Rep. 2025 Jan 27; 15(1):3436. PMID: 39870740.

    Read at: PubMed

View All 140 Publications:   View Full Profile in BUMC

Other Positions

  • Graduate Faculty (Primary Mentor of Grad Students)
    Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, Graduate Medical Sciences

Websites

Education

  • Boston University, PhD
  • Boston University, MA
  • Princeton University, MA
  • Wellesley College, BA

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