- Neuroscience
- Psychiatry
- Brain Circuits
- +۶ مورد دیگر
Vikaas Sohal, MD, PhD is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine and a member of the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences. He directs a neuroscience laboratory investigating the brain circuits underlying fundamental aspects of cognition and emotion, with particular focus on gamma oscillations in normal cognition and schizophrenia, as well as how rhythmic brain activity encodes emotional states. Dr. Sohal is also a board-certified psychiatrist who supervises residents in the Early Psychosis (PATH) clinic. Dr. Sohal earned his A.B. and S.M. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University in 1997, followed by an M.A.St. in Mathematics from the University of Cambridge in 1998. He completed his M.D./Ph.D. in Neuroscience at Stanford University in 2005, where he also completed his residency in adult psychiatry. During his residency, he conducted postdoctoral research with Dr. Karl Deisseroth, performing some of the first experiments using optogenetics to study information processing in brain circuits. Dr. Sohal's research has focused on neural circuit mechanisms underlying cognitive and emotional processes, with particular emphasis on gamma oscillations, prefrontal-hippocampal interactions, and the role of specific interneuron subtypes in information processing. His laboratory has made significant contributions to understanding how parvalbumin interneurons generate gamma oscillations that organize prefrontal networks to promote behavioral adaptation. His recent work has explored the circuit basis of emotional states, pain-related aversion, and neuropsychiatric disorders. His publication record shows a consistent trajectory of high-impact research, with recent publications spanning topics from psilocybin effects to thalamocortical organoids for neuropsychiatric disorder modeling. His work demonstrates a progression from fundamental circuit mechanisms to translational applications for psychiatric disorders, particularly focusing on schizophrenia and emotional processing abnormalities. Dr. Sohal has secured continuous NIH funding as Principal Investigator since 2009, including multiple R01 grants, an R56, DP2, R00, and K99 awards, demonstrating sustained research productivity and significance. His research program represents a sophisticated integration of molecular, cellular, circuit, and behavioral approaches to understand and potentially treat neuropsychiatric disorders.
