John Growdon is Professor of Neurology at the Harvard Medical School and attending neurologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He graduated from Northwestern University in 1960 with a BA in English Literature and obtained the MD degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1965. His post-graduate training was in Internal Medicine at the University of Chicago Hospitals (1965-69), in Neurology at the Massachusetts General Hospital (1971-74) and in Neurochemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1975-1977). Since 1982, he has directed the Memory and Movement Disorders Units at the Massachusetts General Hospital, which provide diagnostic services and continuing care for individuals with Parkinson disease and related movement disorders, and for individuals with cognitive impairments and dementia, including Alzheimer disease.