Madeleine Sharp, MD

Dr. Madeleine Sharp is a neurologist specializing in movements disorders. Her research focuses on understanding the cognitive mechanisms that underlie cognitive dysfunction in patients with movement disorders. Movement disorders that affect the basal ganglia, such as Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease, are increasingly recognized as impairing much more than movement. Cognitive and behavioral symptoms are very common in these patients but remain poorly understood and difficult to treat. Her lab’s research aims to relate what we know about the role of the basal ganglia in healthy cognition to patients’ common cognitive symptoms such as executive dysfunction, difficulty in multi-tasking and apathy. Examples of current projects include examining the role of the basal ganglia in orienting learning and memory towards motivationally significant goals, and examining the role of disturbed sleep in long-term memory in Parkinson’s patients. Her research combines behavioral experiments, pharmacological manipulations and neuroimaging in patients and healthy populations. Ultimately, the goal is to develop more precise models of cognitive dysfunction in patients, grounded in neurobiology, in order to develop and to reliably test novel behavioral and pharmacologic therapies.

Dr. Sharp holds an undergraduate degree from Queen's University and a medical degree from McGill University. She completed a postdoctoral position at Columbia University where she conducted research on clinical movement disorders. At the Neuro, her work has led her to collaborate with Columbia University's Huntington's Disease Research Group and neurologists at the University of Montreal.