Dr. Howard Fields - 2024

Howard Fields received his MD and PhD in Neuroscience at Stanford in 1965-66. Following clinical training in neurology at Harvard Medical School in 1972, he joined the faculty of the University of California San Francisco, where he is currently Professor Emeritus of Neurology and Physiology. Fields has expertise in both animal and human research. He has made major contributions to understanding and treating post-herpetic neuralgia, including demonstrating the effectiveness of opioids and topical lidocaine for neuropathic pain. In laboratory studies his research group elucidated a top-down neural circuit that exerts bidirectional modulation of pain. They showed this circuit engages endogenous opioids and is activated by opioid analgesics. Furthermore, his research group discovered that placebo analgesia can be blocked by an opioid antagonist, opening the way to a neurobiological explanation of placebo. His later work has centered on the problem of addiction. His team has discovered nerve cells in the striatum that selectively encode the magnitude of a reward. They have also shown how opioid control of the neurotransmitter dopamine contributes to motivation and rewardbased choice. They demonstrated that drinking alcohol leads to the release of endorphins in brain reward centers in human subjects. In 1997, he was elected to membership in the National Academy of Medicine and in 2010 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.