Arnold Bernard Scheibel (January 18, 1923 – April 3, 2017) was an American neuroscientist, professor of psychiatry and neuroanatomy, and the former director of the Brain Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles.

He demonstrated the correlations between human cognitive activity and structural change, and also emphasized the role of plasticity in the living reactive brain.

One of his favorite books as a child was "The Mysterious Universe by Sir James Jeans, and Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia was his "bible" for several years.

Growing up, outdoor sports were not encouraged by his parents, who believed that "play was at best a slightly disreputable way of taking a necessary break from meaningful work".

[3] When the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred in 1941, Scheibel and his classmates became more concerned with how their future careers could be relevant to the war effort (they did not know how long it would drag on).

Unsatisfied with his school's coverage of neurology due to the lack of physicians for education caused by the demands of World War II, Scheibel, ironically, decided he would not pursue a specialty involving any "structures above the neck."

While learning clinical medicine under renowned faculty, he noticed the physicians seemed "remote and unapproachable and far from representing the human component that [he] expected."

It was here that he was exposed to the work done by psychoanalytically trained psychiatrists, and he reported it to be "an eye opening experience" that led him to consider psychiatry instead of cardiology as his future specialty.

In June 1947, he started residency at the new Psychiatry Service at Barnes and McMillan Hospitals of Washington University in St. Louis, and his "pattern of life changed forever".

[3] Scheibel did two years of active service with the United States Army Medical Corps at Brooke General Hospital in San Antonio.

[3] In June 1950, Arne and Mila Scheibel set out for Chicago to work at Warren Mculloch's laboratory at Illinois Psychiatric Institute.

After Horace Magoun became the chair of anatomy at UCLA school of medicine, he left behind new ideas of the role of the reticular core, as control of cortical excitability as well as spinal mechanisms.

At the University of Tennessee Medical Center at Memphis, Scheibel secured a joint appointment at the departments of Psychiatry and Anatomy, and Mila and he were given their own laboratory.

His project, in collaboration with Amilcare Mollica, was to characterize inputs upon brainstem reticular cells using extracellular microelectrode recording techniques.

Scheibel began to branch out from anatomy to physiology, and he used postnatal kittens as a model for investigating cortical and subcortical electrical rhythms.

He was able to obtain brain tissue samples from people with schizophrenia that were about to be discarded from the hospital, and he then focused his research around studying this disease using Golgi techniques.

[21] Prior to the presentation, in 1979, Scheibel was invited to give a talk at the University of California, Berkeley by Professor Marian Diamond, a scientist whom he had never met.

Scheibel found it difficult to forget "Marian's dynamic personality and sensitivity," and as a result, their relationship grew for several years.

Prior to these appointments, Scheibel had already been a faculty member at UCLA, teaching his own graduate neuroscience courses as well as conducting research in his laboratory at the university.

(http://www.bri.ucla.edu/about-us/past-directors/arnoldscheibel) He also established Project Brainstorm at UCLA, an outreach program that teaches neuroscience concepts to K-12 students across the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD).

(https://newsroom.ucla.edu/dept/faculty/in-memoriam:-dr-arnold-scheibel-helped-shape-ucla-s-neuroscience-community ) Scheibel's passion for increasing exposure and accessibility to neuroscience even led him to create The Human Brain Coloring Book with Marian.

It is reported that "His lectures were captivating, guided tours through the nervous system: a stream of effortless narratives with fluid, blackboard illustrations serving as familiar landmarks.