Edward Taub (born 1931, Brooklyn New York) is a behavioral neuroscientist on the faculty at the

University of Alabama at Birmingham The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) is a public research university in Birmingham, Alabama. Developed from an academic extension center established in 1936, the institution became a four-year campus in 1966 and a fully autonomous univ ...

. He is best known for his involvement in the Silver Spring monkeys case and for making major breakthroughs in the area of

neuroplasticity Neuroplasticity, also known as neural plasticity, or brain plasticity, is the ability of neural networks in the brain to change through growth and reorganization. It is when the brain is rewired to function in some way that differs from how it ...

and discovering/developing constraint-induced movement therapy; a family of techniques which helps the rehabilitation of people who have developed learned non-use as a result of suffering neurological injuries from a

stroke A stroke is a medical condition in which poor blood flow to the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and hemorrhagic, due to bleeding. Both cause parts of the brain to stop funct ...

or other cause. Taub's techniques have helped survivors regain the use of paralysed limbs, and was hailed in 2002 by the

American Stroke Association The American Heart Association (AHA) is a nonprofit organization in the United States that funds cardiovascular medical research, educates consumers on healthy living and fosters appropriate cardiac care in an effort to reduce disability and death ...

as being "at the forefront of a revolution". The

Society for Neuroscience The Society for Neuroscience (SfN) is a professional society, headquartered in Washington, DC, for basic scientists and physicians around the world whose research is focused on the study of the brain and nervous system. It is especially well kn ...

cited Taub's work as one of top 10 translational Neuroscience accomplishments of the 20th centuryTori Deangelis
Going to bat for science
''Monitor on Psychology'', Volume 38, No. 7 July/August 2007 and he was awarded the 2004 Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the

American Psychological Association The American Psychological Association (APA) is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States, with over 133,000 members, including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students. It has ...

.Bridget Murray Law
Training the brain to fix itself
''Monitor on Psychology'', Volume 35, No. 9 October 2004 Taub holds a B.A. from

Brooklyn College , mottoeng = Nothing without great effort , established = , parent = CUNY , type = Public university , endowment = $98.0 million (2019) , budget = $123.96 m ...

, a M.A. from

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

, and a Ph.D. from

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, t ...

. He is married to opera singer Mildred Allen.

Silver Spring trial

Taub's studies have involved using animal test subjects, including seventeen macaque monkeys living inside the Institute of Behavioral Research in

Silver Spring, Maryland Silver Spring is a census-designated place (CDP) in southeastern Montgomery County, Maryland, United States, near Washington, D.C. Although officially unincorporated, in practice it is an edge city, with a population of 81,015 at the 2020 ce ...

. These monkeys, known as the Silver Spring monkeys, became the focus of a protest spearheaded by Alex Pacheco of the animal-rights group

PETA Peta or PETA may refer to: Acronym * Pembela Tanah Air, a militia established by the occupying Japanese in Indonesia in 1943 * People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, an American animal rights organization * People Eating Tasty Animals, a ...

in 1981. After Pacheco submitted his allegations to the authorities, Taub was charged with 119 counts of animal cruelty and failing to provide adequate veterinary care. At the conclusion of the first

bench trial A bench trial is a trial by judge, as opposed to a trial by jury. The term applies most appropriately to any administrative hearing in relation to a summary offense to distinguish the type of trial. Many legal systems ( Roman, Islamic) use bench ...

113 cruelty charges were dismissed by the judge, largely because a Department of Agriculture veterinarian who had made unannounced visits to the laboratory had testified that he did not find the conditions depicted by Pacheco. Taub was convicted of six misdemeanor charges of failing to provide adequate veterinary care and fined $3,500. Five of these were dismissed at a second,

jury trial A jury trial, or trial by jury, is a legal proceeding in which a jury makes a decision or findings of fact. It is distinguished from a bench trial in which a judge or panel of judges makes all decisions. Jury trials are used in a significant ...

and the final charge was set aside by an

appellate court A court of appeals, also called a court of appeal, appellate court, appeal court, court of second instance or second instance court, is any court of law that is empowered to hear an appeal of a trial court or other lower tribunal. In much of ...

, which found that the Maryland's Prevention of Cruelty to Animals law was never intended to apply to researchers. The

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

initiated its own investigation and suspended the remaining funding for Taub's experiments, over $200,000, due to violations of animal care guidelines. After Taub was exonerated by the courts, sixty-seven professional societies made representation on Taub's behalf and the NIH reversed its decision not to fund him.

Work on stroke recovery

In 1987 Taub moved to the University of Alabama-Birmingham, and began to focus on the area of stroke-recovery. Taub sought to investigate the potential for "constraint-based therapy" to help in the recovery of movement in affected limbs. With an impaired arm, for instance, the therapy involves restraining the patient's good arm over a period of intensive therapy on the affected arm.

Sharon Begley Sharon Begley (June 14, 1956 – January 16, 2021) was an American journalist who was the senior science writer for '' Stat'', a publication from ''The Boston Globe'' that covers stories related to the life sciences. She regularly contributed ar ...

writes that Taub and his colleagues' work achieved major progress in the area of

, by targeting the conditions in which the brain can adapt and repair itself after an injury. This original work has since been translated into clinical practice protocols with the development of modified constraint induced therapies, led by Dr. Stephen PagePage SJ, Sisto S, Levine P, McGrath RE. (2004). Efficacy of modified constraint-induced movement therapy in chronic stroke: a single-blinded randomized controlled trial. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 85(1):14-18. and subsequently by others, and by the adoption of a modified protocol of Taub's own that is now featured in Taub's clinic.

Selected papers

*Taub, Edward; Perrella, Philip; Barro, Gilbert
"Behavioral Development after Forelimb Deafferentation on Day of Birth in Monkeys with and without Blinding"
''Science'', Vol. 181. no. 4103, September 7, 1973, pp. 959–960. *Taub, E. (1977). Movement in nonhuman primates deprived of somatosensory feedback. Exercise and sports science reviews, Vol. 4 (pp. 335–374). Santa Barbara: Journal Publishing Affiliates. *Taub, E. (1980). Somatosensory deafferentation research with monkeys: Implications for rehabilitation medicine. In L. P. Ince (Ed.), Behavioral Psychology in Rehabilitation Medicine: Clinical Applications (pp. 371–401). New York: Williams & Wilkins. *Taub, E. (1994). Overcoming learned nonuse: A new behavioral medicine approach to physical medicine. In J. G. Carlson, S. R. Seifert, & N. Birbaumer. (eds.) Clinical applied psychophysiology (pp. 185–220). New York: Plenum. *Taub, E., Burgio, L., Miller, N. E., Cook, E.W. III, Groomes, T., DeLuca, S., & Crago, J. (1994). An operant approach to overcoming learned nonuse after CNS damage in monkeys and man: The role of shaping. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 61, 281-293. *Taub, E., & Crago, J. E. (1995). Behavioral plasticity following central nervous system damage in monkeys and man. In B.Julesz & I. Kovacs (Eds.), Maturational windows and adult cortical plasticity. SFI Studies in the Sciences of Complexity, vol. 23 (pp. 201–215). Redwood City, CA: Addison-Wesley. *Taub, E., Pidikiti, R. D., DeLuca, S. C., & Crago, J. E. (1996). Effects of motor restriction of an unimpaired upper extremity and training on improving functional tasks and altering brain/behaviors. In J. Toole (Ed.), Imaging and Neurologic Rehabilitation (pp. 133–154). New York: Demos Publications. *Taub, E., & Wolf, S.L. (1997). Constraint-Induced (CI) Movement techniques to facilitate upper extremity use in stroke patients. Topics in Stroke Rehabilitation, 3, 38-61.

References

External links

Dr. Edward Taub
University of Alabama at Birmingham Department of Psychology
Dr. Edward Taub
Lifeboat Foundation Advisory Board {{DEFAULTSORT:Taub, Edward 1931 births Living people American neuroscientists Brooklyn College alumni Columbia University alumni New York University alumni