Catherine Kerr is an investigator at the Osher Research Center and an instructor in general medicine at Harvard Medical School. SHe received her BA from Amherst College and her PhD from the Johns Hopkins University and currently holds a NIH K01 mentored research grant awarded by NCCAM in 2006. She uses neuroimaging and behavioral approaches to investigate neural processes underlying mindfulness based stress reduction (MBSR), Tai Chi and other somatically focused mind-body therapies. Many of her studies, carried out in collaboration with investigators at MIT and MGH, investigate neural processes underlying touch perception and bodily feelings. One of her central questions  is whether therapies such as MBSR and Tai Chi work by eliciting changes in neural processes and structures that encode touch and bodily sensations.