He received his BA from Brandeis University with Honors (1993) and a Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts Medical School (2000). He completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Albert Einstein College of Medicine where his research demonstrated that the dynamics of mRNA transport to synapses were defective in the hippocampus of the Fragile X syndrome mouse. Dr. Dictenberg is the recipient of grants from the NIHand NSF to study the role of mRNA transport and translation in synapse development.