Brian C. Rakitin, Ph.D.
The author in his office
Dr. Rakitin is a graduate of Columbia College (CC ’92), where he took his first laboratory position as an assistant to Warren Meck, Ph.D., in 1988. He earned his doctorate in experimental psychology at the University of Oregon Department of Psychology. He was trained by Steven W. Keele, Ph.D, the first psychology faculty hired as an expert in human factors research, and Michael I. Posner, Ph.D., among the most renowned psychologists of the 20th century. Dr. Rakitin was a graduate fellow in the McDonnel-Pew Center for the Cognitive Neuroscience of Attention, making him one of the first psychologists fully trained in the new field of cognitive neuroscience. He was also received a National Science Foundation graduate fellowship, granted to graduate fellows with extraordinary credentials and potential. He completed his doctoral thesis in 1997, which reported a discovery of the interaction between cognitive systems for motor control and time perception. Dr. Rakitin’s training also included visiting fellowships at the Salpetrie Hospital in Paris, and the VA center in Davis, CA, where he conducted research into dysfunctions in the sense of time caused by dopamine depletion in Parkinson’s disease.
Dr. Rakitin returned to New York City to take a postdoctoral fellowship in developmental psychobiology at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, supervised by John Gibbon, co-developer of the leading theory of temporally constrained behavior, Scalar Expectancy Theory. He completed his training with Yaakov Stern,Ph.D., before moving into a faculty position in Dr. Stern’s Cognitive Neuroscience Division of the Taub Institute for the Study of Alzheimer’s Disease and the Aging Brain in 2001. His position there was funded by a prestigious K-award granted by the Nation Institutes of Health and the National Institute on Aging. Since that time Dr. Rakitin has been promoted to the rank of Associate Professor, and conducts research on time perception, memory, and executive function in healthy young and elderly individuals, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease patients, using behavioral, pharmacological, genetic and brain imaging techniques. Dr. Rakitin is the author of over 40 scientific papers, published in major peer review journals.
Dr. Rakitin’s interest in spirituality extend back as far as he can remember. He was raised a conservative jew, but had no contact with that community between his bar mitzvah in 1981, when he made his first trip to Israel, and the present day. At the urging of his brother, Paul Rakitin, D.C., he attended a few lectures at the Miami Kabbalah Centre, given by Chaim Solomon. Over time Dr. Rakitin felt a connection to the ancient teaching of Kabbalah, and in 2008 began studying at the Manhattan Kabbalah Centre.
