Dr. Geschwind received his M.D.and Ph.D. in neuroscience through the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-sponsored Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. He completed his internship in internal medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Medical Center, his neurology residency at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore and his fellowship in behavioral neurology at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center (MAC). He is now on faculty in the UCSF Department of Neurology where he is Professor of Neurology at the Memory and Aging Center (MAC).

Dr. Geschwind evaluates new patients in the MAC clinic and participates in the continued management and care for these patients in the continuity clinic. He is active in the training of medical students, residents and neurobehavior fellows at UCSF. Dr. Geschwind teaches national courses, and lectures both nationally and internationally, on dementia including rapidly progressive dementias, such as prion diseases and antibody-mediated dementias. He has been a guest editor for the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) Continuum Dementia edition, and has contributed to editions on Dementia and Infectious Disease. He also served on the AAN’s committee for dementia criteria.

Dr. Geschwind’s primary research interest is the assessment, management and treatment of rapidly progressive dementias, including prion diseases such as Jakob-Creutzfeldt disease (CJD). Dr. Geschwind helped establish an inpatient hospital program for the assessment of rapidly progressive dementias at UCSF, the first of its kind in the country. He helped to run the first U.S. treatment study for CJD. He also has an active research interest in cognitive dysfunction in movement disorders, such as Huntington’s Disease, ataxia, Corticobasal Degeneration (CBD), Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP), other parkinsonian dementias, and neurogenetic disorders.

Dr. Geschwind also directs the UCSF Memory and Aging Center (UCSF MAC) Huntington's Disease (HD) center, which has been designated an Huntington's Disease Society of America Center of Excellence. He has been an active investigator for several HD observational and interventional studies. He also was the site investigator for a treatment trial for patients with Cerebral Autosomal Dominant Arteriopathy Subcortical Infarcts and Leukoencephalopathy (CADASIL). He co-directs the UCSF MAC autoimmune clinic in which patients with suspected or known antibody mediated encephalopathies are evaluated and managed.