Dr. Feusner graduated with honors from the University of California San Diego with a major in Biochemistry and Cell Biology. He obtained his medical degree and completed his psychiatry residency training at UCLA. He then completed a clinical psychopharmacology fellowship followed by a National Institute of Mental Health T32 psychobiology research fellowship where he received training in neuroimaging.
Dr. Feusner came to the University of Toronto in July 2021. He was previously a Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA, where he was on faculty from 2006-2021 and was the Director of the UCLA Eating Disorders and Body Dysmorphic Disorder Research Program and the Director of the UCLA Adult OCD Program. Dr. Feusner's clinical areas of specialty are body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), obsessive-compulsive disorder, eating disorders, and anxiety disorders. Dr. Feusner has taught cognitive-behavioural therapy and pharmacotherapy to psychiatry residents and other mental health providers, and provides research supervision and mentorship to junior faculty, postdoctoral fellows, neuroscience Ph.D. students, psychology Ph.D. students, master's students, undergraduates, and high school students.
Dr. Feusner's clinical neuroscience research seeks to understand the brain basis of perception, emotion, and reward across conditions involving body image and obsessions and compulsions. He also studies gender identity, own body perception, and the effects of hormone treatments in individuals with gender dysphoria in the interest of improving health outcomes of gender-affirming treatments. Dr. Feusner lectures internationally on these topics. He is a member of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, the Eating Disorder Research Society, the International OCD Foundation Clinical and Scientific Advisory Board, an elected Board Member of the International College of Obsessive Compulsive Spectrum Disorders and a member of the International OCD Accreditation Task Force.
Dr. Feusner's research utilizes functional and structural neuroimaging (fMRI, DTI, brain morphology, and EEG), psychophysical testing, and neuromodulation to understand the brain and behavior. Dr. Feusner's seminal research includes the first fMRI, EEG, and TMS studies in BDD, and the first studies to directly compare the neurobiology of BDD to anorexia nervosa. Dr. Feusner’s pioneering functional brain imaging studies in BDD discovered that distorted perception of appearance is related to abnormal visual processing. His later research uncovered similar abnormalities in visual processing in anorexia nervosa. His research influenced the change in classification of BDD to an obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders (DSM-5). He has been funded continuously for his research from government and foundation grants since 2007. His current pre-translational research investigates visual perceptual modulation using behavioural and TMS approaches to improve body image distortions. He has also created novel digital applications (Somatomap) to assess and quantify body- and appearance perception.
Dr. Feusner’s research has been featured in the media including the BBC, CBC, CNN, NBC, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Nature, and Scientific American Mind.
