chneiderman, James L. Knight Professor of Health Psychology, Medicine, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and Biomedical Engineering, began his career as a basic scientist, winning early recognition for codeveloping eye-blink conditioning in rabbits, a model for studying the neural basis of learning and memory. His citation for the prestigious American Psychological Association 1994 Distinguished Scientist Award also highlights his experimental work with Philip McCabe, professor of psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences, in understanding how organisms respond to stressful emotional responses--that is, how we "learn" to fear.

McCabe, who still collaborates with Schneiderman, recalls how his colleague made the transition to applied research.

"In the 1970s, Neil was approached by some people at NIH who were interested in putting together a field that looked at the relationship among behavioral and psychological stressors, physiological functioning, and health," McCabe says. "As one of the few researchers who understood how behavior and physiology interrelate, he was able to frame questions about how behavior translates into heart disease, infectious disease, and cancer."

Schneiderman felt the time was ripe for a greater emphasis on the relationship between the mind and body in treating disease.

Schneiderman explains, "After World War II, molecular and cellular biology became more important in science, and medicine began to become very specialized. You had a doctor for your head, a doctor for your feet, a doctor for your heart, and so on. Now there is more of a notion that you have to take care of the whole person. In addition, I think we're realizing that you can have all the pills in the world, but if you can't get people to take them, they won't do any good."

As acute infectious disease has declined as the leading cause of death, Schneiderman observes, more and more of medical practice is devoted to treating chronic illnesses that require management of the entire patient.

"Psychosocial and behavioral factors are recognized as part of the whole disease process and its management," he says, "so there's much better collaboration now between people in behavior and people in other sciences and practice."

ince 1987 Schneiderman has headed the Department of Psychology's Behavioral Medicine Research Center, an umbrella organization through which more than 70 people at the Coral Gables campus and School of Medicine conduct collaborative research on the relationship between psychosocial and behavioral issues and health.

One of the earliest studies, on HIV-infected men, involved at least five separate disciplines. It revealed, among other things, that managing stress through exercise and psychotherapy delayed the onset of symptoms and prolonged survival once AIDS was diagnosed. From a more basic science perspective, it also demonstrated that behavioral intervention decreased levels of stress hormones (norepinephrine and cortisol), raised testosterone levels, and had a positive effect on important components of the immune system.

With the introduction of protease inhibitors, a more successful approach to treating HIV and AIDS, the team's research shifted. In the past few years, their work has emphasized behavioral interventions to ensure that patients follow their complicated drug regimens (often 18 pills at different periods of the day) and act responsibly to prevent the spread of AIDS and the threat of more drug-resistant strains of the virus.

In other studies, Schneiderman's collaborative teams have used NIH program projects to look at teenagers with high blood pressure, and develop beneficial treatments--basically diet, exercise, weight loss, and stress management--to help these youngsters avoid becoming hypertensive or diabetic with age. He and his colleagues also are involved in coronary rehabilitation programs at several area hospitals to determine the best methods for getting patients to diet, exercise, and control stress in order to decrease risk of complications from coronary heart disease. And more recently Schneiderman became a principal investigator on a National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute multicenter trial to determine if eliminating depression or social isolation in heart attack victims also decreases the higher death rates historically experienced by this population.

hat Schneiderman has been so successful at finding out in all these studies is how psychological and behavioral factors set off a cascade of events, beginning with the brain, which, in turn, signals the endocrine system and the immune system, and affects the onset of, and recovery from, disease. As a scientist, he has tried to identify the best approaches for improving the health of people with HIV, diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure, and chronic heart disease.

But if you talk to his colleagues at the University, they would rather discuss his remarkable skill at putting people from vastly different disciplines together to perform unprecedented research.

"While he is obviously a very productive scientist, it seems to me that Neil's most impressive characteristic is his ability to put talent together--to train people to be creative, independent scientists," says Luis Glaser, executive vice president and provost. "You have to have some very clear, self-starting characteristics to start a field like health psychology."

Adds Jay Skyler, professor of medicine, pediatrics, and psychology who has worked with Schneiderman on diabetes research, "He motivates everybody around him to make great advances. He has enormous insight into what the critical questions are and how to get the job done."

Rod Wellens, professor and chairman of the Department of Psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences, concurs. "Neil is very effective at arranging collaborative relationships, recognizes and reinforces talent in the faculty, and is generous in helping junior faculty get the funding to get things going," he says. "If there's a good idea there, he knows how to get it in front of the right people."

One of fellow researcher Nancy Klimas's favorite anecdotes about Schneiderman illustrates his exceptional ability to cross disciplinary boundaries and motivate others to do the same. It dates back to the mid-1980s, when Schneiderman for the first time ever brought together a group of sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, statisticians, and immunologists to write a large grant application for an interdisciplinary study of AIDS. Mary Ann Fletcher, professor of medicine and director of the Clinical Immunology Laboratory at the School of Medicine, was one of the key collaborators.

"None of us knew each other, but it was so much fun because we taught one another the language of our specialties," recalls Klimas (M.D. '80), now a professor of medicine, microbiology and immunology, and psychology at the School of Medicine who has been working with Schneiderman for more than a decade. "NIH sent a committee down to check us out, and Neil stood up at the presentation and said, 'We want to show you how closely we work together, so I'll give you Dr. Fletcher's talk and she'll give you mine.'

"The mouths of the NIH people dropped open, and the rest of us sat there grinning as this experimental psychologist talked about lymphocytes and immune system markers, and this laboratory immunologist discussed the merits of different measurements of depression."

They got the grant.

chneiderman, who speaks in a soft Brooklyn accent he describes as "East Coast Cockney," has long been a familiar sight on the University of Miami campus, jogging each morning with faculty, graduate students, and postdocs. That ended two years ago as the group, so to speak, matured. Even so, the 63-year-old professor continues to "mentor" and learn from graduate students, postdocs, and other faculty on the basketball court at his house on Sundays, and reputedly holds his own with these younger academicians.

Schneiderman's warmth and informal style of teaching belie the erudition and international stature of this scientist. And his headquarters on the University's Coral Gables campus, the Behavioral Medicine Research Building, looks more like a bomb shelter than the home base for one of the University's most prestigious programs.

But the quality of Schneiderman's work and his ability to conduct scholarly research, draw top-notch people, build research programs, and attract grants is reflected in the 20,000 square feet of space dedicated to his projects at the Miami Veterans Administration Hospital and Jackson Medical Towers on the medical campus. He is among the NIH's most heavily funded investigators, with two NIH program project grants in AIDS and cardiovascular disease, and two NIH training grants to prepare graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to perform research in these areas.

The growth of Neil Schneiderman's reputation has, in many ways, paralleled that of the University of Miami. But, as Klimas points out, that's to be expected.

"While older, established universities tend to be driven by tradition, a relatively young university tends to be driven by personality, by energetic and powerful people who move the university forward," she says. "When this occurs with someone who truly wants to foster an academic environment that nourishes people, then a single personality can do a tremendous amount of good. At the University, there are several names on the list of such people. But Neil's is at the top."

Although the mind-body connection is making headlines these days, particularly in journals and alternative medicine magazines, Schneiderman sees his research as being very much in the mainstream of science and medicine.

"What we're doing is bringing psychosocial issues and cultural factors back into the mainstream," he says. "Medicine needs to go back to something it did early and well, which is understanding the context in which a patient lives and experiences illness."

In other words, grandma was right.

The Dream Team of Behavioral Medicine

ince its establishment in 1986, the University's Behavioral Medicine Research Center has been an important meeting ground for graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and faculty members researching the relationship among psychological and behavioral factors, physiological processes, and health.

One of the latest endeavors is a multimillion-dollar project funded by the National Cancer Institute to create a mind-body research center that will look at how beliefs, attitudes, values, and stress affect the physical and mental health of individuals with prostate, cervical, and breast cancer.

"Some doctors believe that stress management may play a role in cancer, but it has yet to be shown if psycho-social components affect the immune system and the course of the disease in unison," says Michael Antoni (Ph.D. '86), professor of psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences and the project's principal investigator.

Supervised by the Department of Psychology, the mind-body center will conduct therapy groups on the Coral Gables campus and at the Behavioral Medicine Research Center's facility at the Miami Veteran Affairs Medical Center. In one study, Antoni will use a stress management program he developed to teach participants meditation and relaxation techniques along with anger management, assertiveness, and interpersonal skills.

On the cardiovascular front, the Behavioral Medicine Research Center is participating in a three-year project to determine if stress management helps in the overall physical recovery of heart attack victims suffering from depression or low perceived social support.

"We believe that individuals who suffer heart attacks and are either socially isolated or clinically depressed are more likely to die," says Neil Schneiderman, professor of psychology, adding that this group is less likely to take their medicine or regularly attend doctor's appointments. "If we can effectively treat depression in heart attack victims, we're hoping this can increase the survival rate."

This study builds on several projects by Schneiderman; Patrice Saab and Barry Hurwitz, associate professors of psychology; and Philip McCabe, professor of psychology, on the relationship between emotional stress and other factors in the development of hypertension and heart disease.

As part of the center's ongoing research on HIV and AIDS, Gail Ironson (M.D. '86), a professor of psychology and psychiatry, has a large NIH grant to study the psychological, endocrine, and immune system characteristics of long-term survivors of HIV. Ironson has found that these survivors of HIV have strong positive relationships with their health care providers and have a high level of natural killer cell activity, which helps the immune system.

Also as part of the center's HIV and AIDS portfolio, Schneiderman directs a project funded by the National Institute of Mental Health that provides stress management and medication adherence training to men and women with HIV/AIDS. Because many of the patients speak only Spanish, assistant professor Ron Duran has developed translations of treatment manuals and assessment instruments.

Similarly, Nancy Klimas, a professor of medicine, microbiology, immunology, and psychology in the School of Medicine, has received a five-year grant sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for research on chronic fatigue syndrome--a project she says she instigated "on the strength of what Neil has taught me."

And Edward Green, associate professor of psychology, is splitting his time between the Departments of Psychology and Neurology in an effort to determine what happens in the brain after it suffers from trauma or loses blood flow, and why some people recover more quickly than others. His work has been used to develop drug therapies to protect the brain and help it rebuild damaged neural circuitry following a stroke or trauma.