Barry R Komisaruk, PhD - Health Blog Bio

Barry R Komisaruk, PhD BS, Biology, CUNY, 1961; PhD, Psychobiology, Rutgers, 1965; NIH postdoc, Neuroendocrinology, UCLA; Rutgers faculty, 1966-present. Now Rutgers University Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor, Professor II, Psychology Department, Associate Dean of the Graduate School, and Adjunct Professor, Department of Radiology, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey; Program Director in the M.O.R.E. Division, National Institute of General Medical Sciences, NIH, 2001-2004.

Research funding via grants from NIH, NSF, Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation, and NJ Commission on Spinal Cord Research, total over $12M. Shared the Hugo F. Beigel Research Award in Sexuality with Dr. Beverly Whipple. Research specialty: brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system activity in sexual behavior and physiology and pain control, in humans and laboratory animals, currently using fMRI.

Served on the Psychobiology Review Panel of the NSF, the editorial boards of biomedical and behavioral journals including the Journal of Sexual Medicine, grant review panels of the NIH, Chairman, Rutgers IRB. Supervised doctoral dissertations of 24 PhDs, 14 postdocs, established a faculty-doctoral student exchange program with 5 universities and research centers in Mexico, including CINVESTAV, conceptualized and played a major role in the development of the Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience at Rutgers University and a grant-issuing program of the NIH supporting research on the efficacy of interventions to stimulate especially minority students to enter careers in biomedical and behavioral research. Published over 145 research papers and 150 conference abstracts, and 3 books, most recently, first-authored with Carlos Beyer-Flores and Beverly Whipple: “The Science of Orgasm,” Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006, now in second printing and translated into Spanish and Chinese, which has received the Bullough Award of the Foundation for the Scientific Study of Sexuality for “the most distinguished book written for the professional sexological community in 2006.” More recently, first-authored with Beyer-Flores, Whipple, and Sara Nasserzadeh, “The Orgasm Answer Guide”, published in 2009, by the Johns Hopkins University Press. My research is the first to report the brain regions activated during orgasm in women, the role of the Vagus nerves in conveying genital sensation in women with severed spinal cord, and the phenomenon and mechanism of the pain-blocking action of vaginal stimulation. Our research receives extensive international media coverage in print and video.