Matthew Burke

Associate scientist
Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre

Research Assistant:

Colleen Barry
Phone: 416-480-4216
Email: matthew.burke@sunnybrook.ca

Dr. Burke’s research focuses on trying to understand and treat disorders at the interface between neurology and psychiatry. These include concussion or traumatic brain injury, functional neurological disorders, migraine and other neuropsychiatric disorders.

Prior to joining Sunnybrook Research Institute, he completed the Sidney R. Baer, Jr. Foundation Fellowship in the Clinical Neurosciences at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School. This clinical research fellowship provided him with training in novel noninvasive brain stimulation techniques and brain network mapping analyses. His current research looks to apply such approaches to investigate these complex and poorly understood brain disorders.

Dr. Burke also has an active line of research interrogating the neurobiology of placebo effects and how placebo effects may meaningfully modulate brain networks. Though placebo effects were once considered a nuisance in medicine, he believes that they offer new insights for translational research and can be leveraged to optimize clinical practice. His work in this area has led to international media attention on platforms like CNN and BBC.

His research is funded by many local and national grants has resulted in multiple high-level peer-reviewed publications. He has made many meaningful academic contributions in the field of neuropsychiatry and has been recognized with the American Neuropsychiatric Association’s 2019 Young Investigator Award and 2023 Career Development Award.

Education

  • B.Sc. (Honours), 2008, life sciences, Queen’s University, Canada
  • MD, 2012, University of Toronto, Canada
  • FRCPC, 2017, neurology, U of T, Canada
  • Cognitive neurology fellowship, 2019, Harvard Medical School, U.S.
  • Harvard Catalyst Clinical and Translational Research Academy, 2019, Harvard Medical School, U.S.

Appointments and Affiliations

  • Associate scientist, Evaluative Clinical Sciences, Hurvitz Brain Sciences Research Program, Sunnybrook Research Institute
  • Medical director, Traumatic Brain Injury Recovery Program, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre
  • Neuropsychiatry lead, U of T Neurology Residency Program
  • Scientist, Harquail Centre for Neuromodulation, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre
  • Assistant professor, Department of Psychiatry, U of T
  • Affiliate instructor, Harvard Medical School

Research Foci

  • Brain network mapping
  • Concussion or traumatic brain injury
  • Functional neurological disorders
  • Neuropsychiatry
  • Noninvasive brain stimulation
  • Placebo and Nocebo effects

Publications

Affiliated Labs & Programs

Selected Publications

  1. Burke MJ. “It’s All in Your Head” – Medicine’s Silent Epidemic. JAMA Neurology 2019; 76(12):1417-8.

  2. Burke MJ, Joutsa J, Cohen AL, Soussand L, Cooke D, Burstein R, Fox MD. Mapping Migraine to a Common Brain Network. Brain 2020:143(2):541-53.

  3. Burke MJ, Blumberger DM. Caution at psychiatry's psychedelic frontier. Nature Medicine. 2021;27(10):1687-1688.

  4. Burke MJ, Romanella SM, Mencarelli L, Greben R, Fox MD, Kaptchuk TJ, Pascual-Leone A, Santarnecchi E. Placebo effects and neuromodulation for depression: a meta-analysis and evaluation of shared mechanisms. Molecular Psychiatry. 2022;27(3):1658-66.

  5. Burke MJ. A fundamental change is needed for appraising placebo responses in psychiatry. Lancet Psychiatry. 2023;10(5):316-7.

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