Dr. Lealani Mae (Leah) Acosta is an Associate Professor of Neurology and a board-certified neurologist specializing in neurodegenerative memory disorders. Currently she serves as co-editor of the Humanities section of the journal Neurology. Dr. Acosta joined the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine faculty in 2013. She completed graduate studies, obtaining a master's in public health at Vanderbilt, with her research focused on error frequency and quality in a task of semantic fluency in patients with mild cognitive impairment. 

She attended The George Washington University, graduating summa cum laude in psychology. She completed graduate studies in psychology, philosophy, and physiology at Oxford University in Oxford, UK. On returning to the United States, she finished both her medical education and residency training in Neurology at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA. She completed fellowship in Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology at the University of Florida in Gainesville, FL, under the mentorship of Dr. Kenneth Heilman, focusing on creativity. Her interest in this topic stems in part from her own hobbies of poetry, drawing, and calligraphy. Her range of publications reflects these varied interests, including peer-reviewed research articles and creative writing, primarily poetry.

Dr. Abou-Khalil is Professor of Neurology and Director of the Epilepsy Center at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He is board certified in Neurology, Clinical Neurophysiology, and Epilepsy. He is founder and Director of the Vanderbilt Epilepsy Monitoring Unit and Clinical Epilepsy Program and was the founding director of the Vanderbilt Clinical Neurophysiology Training Program, which was accredited by ACGME in 1996. Dr. Abou-Khalil is a member of the American Neurological Association, a fellow of the American Academy of Neurology (Epilepsy Section), a fellow of the American Epilepsy Society, and a fellow of the American Clinical Neurophysiology Society.

Dr. Abou-Khalil earned both his B.S. and his medical degree (1978) at the American University of Beirut in Beirut, Lebanon. He completed an internship and one year of residency in Internal Medicine at the American University Medical Center in Beirut. He completed his neurology residency and EEG and epilepsy fellowship at the University of Michigan Medical Center in 1985 and then was a post-doctoral fellow in Clinical Neurophysiology at the Montreal Neurologic Institute in Montreal, Quebec in 1986.