Dr. Susan Bookheimer is Clinical Neuropsychologist and Professor-in-Residence in the UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences and Department of Psychology.  She specializes in functional brain imaging with PET and functional MRI. Her work has focused on the organization of language and memory in the brain, in healthy adults and children and in neurologic conditions and developmental disorders. Recent work focuses on understanding the neural basis of social communication deficits in autism using functional MRI, encompassing both verbal and non-verbal communication, and focusing on emotional aspects of social comprehension.

Dr. Bookheimer also maintains active research programs imaging dyslexia, Alzheimer's disease, and pre-surgical planning in patients with brain lesions such as tumors, arterio-venous malformations, and epilepsy. Dr. Bookheimer received her Bachelors degree in psychology from Cornell University in 1982, and her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Wayne State University in 1989. She performed a postdoctoral Fellowship at the National Institutes of Health before coming to UCLA in 1993.