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 1/2/2026

    Rockland KS, Rushmore RJ. Cortical white matter: no longer a silent partner. Front Neuroanat. 2025; 19:1726067. PMID: 41552372.

    Read at: PubMed

  • Published 11/24/2025

    Pignatelli M, Rockland KS. The legacy of Rudolf Nieuwenhuys in perspective. Brain Struct Funct. 2025 Nov 24; 230(9):183. PMID: 41284159.

    Read at: PubMed

  • Published 9/30/2025

    Descoteaux M, Schilling KG, Aydogan DB, Beaulieu C, Borra E, Chamberland M, Daducci A, Luca A, Dell'Acqua F, Dubois J, Dyrby TB, Farquharson S, Forkel S, Froeling M, Griffa A, Grotheer M, Guevara P, Haber SN, Jangir VK, Leemans A, Lefebvre J, Lin CP, Little G, Zac Lo CY, Maffei C, Mayberg HS, McNab JA, Mukherjee P, O'Donnell LJ, Parent M, Pierpaoli C, Rheault F, Rockland KS, Roebroeck A, Rokem A, Rushmore RJ, Sarubbo S, Schiavi S, Sotiropoulos SN, Szczupak D, de Schotten MT, Tournier JD, Vergani F, Yuan-Mou Yang J, Zhang F, Jones D, Petit L. Millennium Pathways for Tractography: 40 grand challenges to shape the future of tractography. ArXiv. 2025 Sep 30. PMID: 41256884.

    Read at: PubMed

  • Published 9/18/2025

    Diederich NJ, Brüne M, Allen JS, Bender N, Bruner E, Changeux JP, Cali 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 Dec; 98(6):1178-1195. 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

View All 143 Publications:   View Full Profile in BUMC

Other Positions

  • Graduate Medical Sciences Educator and Mentor (Primary Mentor of Graduate 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

View all profiles