The Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine’s Neurology Department was founded in 1919 as one of the first academic departments of neurology in the country, and the first to be established west of the Mississippi River.

Its residency program was one of the first to be accredited in the 1920s. It originally lived in the first university hospital (shown to the right), which later became known as Seashore Hall.

The Department was founded by its first Chairman, Clarence Van Epps, upon his return from Europe after World War I. Dr. Van Epps was born in Camanche, Iowa, in 1875. He graduated from medical school at the University of Iowa in 1897 and subsequently obtained a second MD from the University of Pennsylvania. Initially trained in the east and in Vienna, Austria as an otolaryngologist he returned to Iowa to join a private practice in Davenport. However, he was soon recruited to the University of Iowa to become a faculty member in 1904, where he developed an interest in neurological disease. He rose to the rank of Professor in 1910, and by that time became known as the sole neurologist at the university. During World War I he served as a Major in the Medical Officer Reserve Corps in Hôpital Saint-Antoine in Paris and at Base Hospital 114 at Beau-Desert, France. Upon his return to Iowa in 1919, he was named as the first Chairman of a new Department of Neurology at the University of Iowa.

In 1928, the new General Hospital was built on its current site on the west side of the Iowa River (view looking south). At the time it was one of the largest hospitals in the country, and had a capacity of 700 beds. Neurology had a 48 bed inpatient ward. For much of the first two decades of its existence the Department was made up of only a handful of neurologists.

In the early 1930s, Iowa was one of the first centers in the nation to open an electroencephalography (EEG) lab.

Dr. Adolph Sahs was named head in 1948. More than fifty neurologists were trained under his tutelage. His personal devotion to patient care left lasting impressions on his students, and his teaching extended beyond the bedside and lecture hall to include two revisions of Grinker's Neurology in 1960 and 1966. Dr. Sahs gained international recognition as an expert in cerebrovascular disease. Clinical research related to intracranial aneurysms was given special emphasis, and Sahs organized the first multi-center NIH clinical trial in this area of investigation. Dr. Sahs also served as president of both the American Neurological Association in 1967-1968 and the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology in 1967.

It was Sahs that co-founded the American Academy of Neurology (AAN). In 1947, together with three other Chairmen of Neurology at Midwestern universities - Russell DeJong (U Michigan), AB Baker (U Minnesota), Adolph Sahs, and Francis Forster (U Wisconsin) - he established what is now the leading professional organization for the field. These leaders became known as “The Four Horsemen of Neurology.”

In 1974, Dr. Maurice Van Allen became the third head of the Department. Dr. Van Allen brought his unique clinical insights from both neurosurgery and neurology, and the department grew rapidly. Several highly-qualified physicians and researchers were attracted to the Department during his tenure (including Antonio R. Damasio). Research and treatment for epilepsy and sleep were growth areas during this period.

In 1978, upon Dr. Arthur L. Benton's retirement, the Benton Laboratory of Neuropsychology in the Division of Behavioral Neurology was dedicated. During Sahs' tenure as head, Maurice Van Allen and Arthur Benton established the Neurosensory Center, which became an important stimulus for future endeavors in neurological research. Benton supervised 46 doctoral dissertations and 24 master's theses. He was the author of numerous books and the creator of a number of neuropsychological testing instruments, including the Benton Visual Retention Test (BVRT).

In 1982, Damasio co-founded the Iowa Neurological Patient Registry with his wife, Hanna Damasio, a fellow neuroscientist, and Daniel Tranel, a graduate student at the time and now a UI faculty member and fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The one-of-a-kind registry has collected brain scans of thousands of patients, along with medical histories and lesion maps, and has over 500 active members available to participate in cognitive research studies.

In 1985, Dr. Antonio R. Damasio was appointed as the Department's fourth head.  Dr. Damasio studied medicine at the University of Lisbon Medical School, where he also did his neurological residency and completed his doctorate. For part of his studies he researched behavioral neurology under the supervision of Norman Geschwind of the Aphasia Research Center at Harvard in Boston. Dr. Damasio formulated the somatic marker hypothesis, a theory about how emotions and their biological underpinnings are involved in decision-making.  The research depended significantly on establishing the modern human lesion method, an enterprise made possible by Hanna Damasio's structural neuroimaging/neuroanatomy work complemented by experimental neuropsychology (with Antoine Bechara, Ralph Adolphs, and Daniel Tranel).

In 2005, Dr. Robert Rodnitzky served as acting chief and was then appointed as the department's 5th head from 2007 to 2010. As a movement disorders specialist, Dr. Rodnitzky helped translate developmental drugs into treatments that are used to treat disorders such as Parkinson's Disease.  His dedication helped turn the movement disorders clinic into one of the best in the country.

In 2010, the Department appointed Dr. George Richerson as the 6th head.  Dr. Richerson has continued the tradition of leadership by bringing together top minds to understand and treat complex disorders of the nervous system.  He established the department as a collaborative leader in epilepsy, neurogenetics, and neuromuscular research.  Dr. Richerson has also helped create partnerships with other hospitals, and continues to explore frontiers, both old and new, in the field of Neurology. He has built an interdisciplinary research group that is an international leader in the mechanisms of sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP).

The Iowa Neuroscience Institute (INI) was established in 2016, thanks to a $45 million grant from the Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust and a commitment from leaders at UI Hospitals and Clinics and the Carver College of Medicine. Ted Abel, a renowned scientist and AAAS fellow, was hired to lead the institute, and he has begun assembling a multidisciplinary team of researchers from across the country. Researchers in the institute receive more than $50 million dollars in annual external funding. Numerous members of the Neurology Department have appointments in the INI.

On January 1, 2019, the University of Iowa Health Care's Department of Neurology reached 100 years of service and dedication and has been recognized by the AAN as the third oldest neurology department in the United States.