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Marian Cleeves Diamond  (b. November 11, 1926) is a professor of anatomy at the University of California, Berkeley who has published research into the neuroanatomy of the forebrain, notably the discovery of the impact of the environment on brain development, the differences between the cerebral cortex of male and female rats, and the likely link between positive thinking and health.

Early life
Marian Cleeves Diamond was born in Glendale, California to Dr. Montague Cleeves and Rosa Marian Wamphler Cleeves as the sixth and last child in the family. Her father was an English physician and her Mother a Latin teacher at Berkeley High School. Diamond was educated with her siblings near home at La Crescenta grammar school, Clark Junior High, Glendale High school and finally Glendale Community College, before going to University of California, Berkeley

Career
After graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1948, Diamond spent summer at the University of Oslo, Norway before returning to Berkeley for her graduate studies, the first female graduate student in the department of anatomy. Her doctoral dissertation thesis "Functional Interrelationships of the Hypothalamus and the Neurohypophysis" was published in 1953. During her PhD Marian Diamond also began to teach, and teaching became a life-long passion that continued well into her eighties.

In a long career at Berkeley Marian Diamond's major scientific contributions have been threefold. First, she showed that the structural components of the cerebral cortex can be altered by either enriched or impoverished environments at any age, from prenatal to extremely old age. An enriched cortex shows greater learning capacity, an impoverished, lesser learning capacity.

Second, Diamond demonstrated that the structural arrangement of the male and female cortices is significantly different and can be altered in the absence of sex steroid hormones.

Third, Diamond showed that the dorsal lateral frontal cerebral cortex is bilaterally deficient in the immune deficient mouse and can be reversed with thymic transplants. In humans, cognitive stimulation increases circulating CD4-positive T lymphocytes, supporting the idea that immunity can be voluntarily modulated, in other words, that mood and a positive outlook can impact the immune system.