Alice Weaver Flaherty


Alice Weaver Flaherty is an American neurologist. She is a researcher, physician, educator and author of the 2004 book The Midnight Disease, about the neural basis of creativity.

Early life and education

She completed her undergraduate degree and her medical degree at Harvard University as well as a fellowship there. She also completed a Ph.D. at MIT.

Career

Dr. Flaherty is a joint associate professor of neurology and psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She is a neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital. She heads the MGH Neurology’s Brain Stimulator Unit, where “she uses deep brain stimulators to treat neurological disease and psychiatric disease. Her research focuses on how human brains represent their bodies, a factor that helps drive suffering in depression, Parkinson’s, and somatoform disorders.”
She writes in various genres, including “scientific papers, humorous essays, and picture books”. Her book, The Massachusetts General Hospital Handbook of Neurology is the most "widely used neurology text in its class".

Experience with hypergraphia

After her premature twin boys died soon after their birth, Flaherty was full of grief. Several days later, however, she “awoke one morning with an overwhelming desire to put everything on her mind on paper”. She describes her experiences with hypergraphia, this overwhelming urge to write. She claims she could not stop for a period of four months. A similar experience occurred after the birth of her premature twin girls, who survived. Following the two births, her abilities to produce creative works have been heightened. Her most famous book, The Midnight Disease, tries to make sense of this phenomenon.

Publications

Selected journal articles