Elaine L. Bearer is an American neuroscientist, pathologist, and composer. She received her Bachelor's of Music from The Manhattan School of Music in Theory, June 1970. She received the Masters of Art from New York University, where her thesis was Structural Innovation in the String Quartets of Haydn. Prior to studies at The Manhattan School, Bearer was a pupil of Nadia Boulanger, first at the Ecole Americaine des Beaux Arts in Fontainebleau and continuing in Boulanger's home on Rue Ballu in Paris. She received the combined MD-PhD degree from University of California San Francisco (UCSF).

She earned her MD/PhD in the medical scientist training program at UCSF, where she was a clinical instructor in pathology and research biochemist in biochemistry and biophysics. In 1991, she left UCSF to become a tenure track professor in the Departments of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Brown University. In 2009, she was recruited to the University of New Mexico (UNM), where she was named the Harvey Family Professor of Pathology with appointments in the pathology, neurosurgery, and music departments