معرفی
Vikram Gadagkar, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Neuroscience at Columbia University's Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and a Principal Investigator at Columbia's Zuckerman Institute. His research focuses on understanding how brains evaluate behaviors, both self-generated and those of others, using songbirds as a model system.
Dr. Gadagkar's research interests center on the neural mechanisms of learning, memory, and social behavior. His lab investigates how male finches learn to sing and how female finches judge song quality, with particular focus on dopamine signaling in performance evaluation. His work bridges neuroscience, physics, and computation to understand fundamental principles of brain function.
Dr. Gadagkar's recent publications reveal trends in dopamine-mediated reinforcement learning, social feedback processing, and neural evaluation of performance quality. His work spans from basic mechanisms of motor learning to implications for neurological disorders like Parkinson's disease and autism spectrum disorders.
Scientific Awards:
- HHMI Freeman Hrabowski Scholars (2025)
- Society for Neuroscience Peter and Patricia Gruber International Research Award (2018)
- National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award (2017-present)
- Simons Foundation Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain Postdoctoral Fellowship (2016-present)
- Searle Scholars Program Scholar (2021)
Dr. Gadagkar has secured significant grant funding supporting his research on dopamine signaling, songbird neurobiology, and social behavior. His lab actively collaborates with Columbia's Center for Theoretical Neuroscience to develop new analytical approaches for understanding complex neural data. The lab provides training opportunities for students interested in interdisciplinary neuroscience research at the intersection of biology, physics, and computation.
The Gadagkar Lab represents a unique interdisciplinary environment where physics-trained approaches meet cutting-edge neuroscience. By studying songbird communication and evaluation, the lab aims to uncover fundamental principles of how brains learn, express behaviors, and evaluate the actions of others - questions with implications for both basic neuroscience and clinical applications.
