Gregory S. Berns

Gregory Berns is one of the only board-certified psychiatrists in the United States who also has a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering. He is a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, where he has been for the past 10 years. He graduated cum laude in physics from Princeton University, received a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from the University of California at Davis and an M.D. from the University of California at San Diego. He subsequently completed a psychiatry residency at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Berns specializes in the use of brain-imaging technologies to understand human motivation and decision-making. His interest is in neuroeconomics and neuropolitics. Current projects include the biology of adolescent decision-making and the effects of peer pressure on risk attitudes. He has received numerous grants from the National Institutes of Health and has published over 40 peer-reviewed original research articles, in such journals as Science, Nature, and Neuron and is the author of Satisfaction: Sensation Seeking, Novelty, and the Science of Finding True Fulfillment (Henry Holt, 2005). Harvard Business School Press published his next book, Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently, in 2008. Berns's research is frequently the subject of popular media coverage including articles in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Money, Oprah, Forbes, The Financial Times, The New Scientist, Wired, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, International Herald Tribune, and Los Angeles Times. He speaks frequently on CNN and NPR, and has been profiled on ABC's "Primetime."