About

Bradley E. Alger, Ph.D. is Professor Emeritus of Physiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. His specialty is in neuroscience and he is a member of the Program in Neuroscience. Brad got his degree from Harvard University in 1977 and his thesis was based on the then-new technique of in vitro brain slices and the study of different forms of synaptic plasticity including Long-Term Potentiation (LTP). After post-doctoral training with Roger Nicoll at the University of California, San Francisco, Brad joined the faculty of the University of Maryland in 1981 as an Assistant Professor, running a research laboratory and teaching medical and graduate students until his retirement from active duties in 2014. His research concentrated on the neuronal inhibitory systems of the brain and, in the latter years, focused on how those systems are regulated by “the brain’s own marijuana.” But it was while he was co-teaching a Proseminar course for first-year graduate students that he first became interested in the scientific hypothesis and other matters related to scientific thinking that this website is devoted to covering.