Jerrold L. Vitek
Jerrold L. Vitek is Professor and Head of the Department of Neurology at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Vitek received his medical degree as well as a doctorate of neurophysiology from the University of Minnesota in 1984 and completed his residency in Neurology at The Johns Hopkins University Hospital.
In 1988, Dr. Vitek accepted a faculty position in the Department of Neurology at The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. There, he spent two years studying motor systems in animal models of Parkinson’s disease (PD) and worked with Drs. F. Lenz and M. DeLong to establish the functional neurosurgery program at The Johns Hopkins Hospital.
In 1990, he accepted a postion at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, GA to develop and direct the program for functional and stereotactic neurology. During that time, his program gained both national and international recognition. While at Emory, he also ran a basic science laboratory directed at studying the pathophysiology of Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders and delineating the mechanism(s) underlying the beneficial effects of deep brain stimulation (DBS).
From Emory, he went on to the Cleveland Clinic where he continued to serve as a practicing physician in the field of movement disorders and deep brain stimulation and became the Director of the Neuromodulation Research Center. This center focused on the development of new applications for DBS, improving current application and advancement of functional surgery and DBS techniques for the treatment of neurological disease.
Dr. Vitek accepted the Chair of Neurology position at the University of Minnesota in June of 2010 where he continues to see patients, specializing in the diagnosis, treatment and management of movement disorders, performing elecrophysiology and mapping during DBS surgery and DBS programming. Dr. Vitek is also the Director for the Center for Neuromodulation Research at the University of Minnesota and a principal investigator on numerous basic, preclinical and clinical studies investigating the pathophysiology of movement disorders, mechanisms of DBS and the application of DBS for the treatment of neurologic disorders.