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George Dragoi, MD, PhD

Associate Professor of Psychiatry and of Neuroscience
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About

Titles

Associate Professor of Psychiatry and of Neuroscience

Biography

Dr. George Dragoi is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and of Neuroscience in the Department of Psychiatry and a member of the Wu-Tsai Institute at Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven. He received his M.D. degree from the Grigore Popa University of Medicine and Pharmacy of Iasi, Romania and his Ph.D. degree in Behavioral and Neural Science from Rutgers University. He completed his postdoctoral studies and was a Research Scientist at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he revealed the existence of preconfigured cellular assemblies that pre-play in time the spatial sequences occurring during a future novel spatial experience in naive animals. Dr. Dragoi studies the dynamic interplay between externally-driven and preconfigured internally-generated representations of the external world to understand memory formation and spatial navigation. He aims to map the neural circuits and decipher the neuronal codes underlying the formation of these representations across brain development and in adulthood using large-scale high-density electrophysiology and computational methods for data analysis. Recently, he conceptualized the existence of a generative grammar in the brain that could support the brain’s ability to express internally generated representations about the world. Dr. Dragoi’ current research focuses on the role of neuronal activity and prior experience in cellular assembly organization and animal learning with implications for our better understanding of neuro-psychiatric diseases.

Appointments

Education & Training

PhD
Rutgers University (2002)
MD
Grigore Popa University of Medicine (1994)
Research Scientist
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Research

Overview

Learned information is not encoded in isolation, but is integrated within a network of preexisting knowledge stored in patterns of neuronal ensemble functional connectivity. Our immediate goal is to investigate:

1. How these patterns emerge during development

2. How are they utilized in behavior

3. How are they disrupted in neuropsychiatric diseases.

The hippocampus, a brain structure initially implicated in rapid learning and formation of episodic memory, is now recognized to encode internally-generated spatial-temporal sequence representations. Its dysfunctions have resulted in anterograde amnesia, impaired imagining of new experiences, and hallucinations. Achieving our goal will be facilitated by our use of electrophysiological recordings of ensembles of neurons in behaving mice and rats, optogenetic manipulation of neurons, optical imaging of neuronal ensembles, and computational methods for decoding neuronal population activity.

Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)

Behavior, Animal; Cognition; Electrophysiology; Hippocampus; Learning; Neuronal Plasticity; Psychiatry and Psychology; Spatial Behavior; Spatial Memory

Research at a Glance

Yale Co-Authors

Frequent collaborators of George Dragoi's published research.

Publications

2024

2023

2021

2020

2019

Get In Touch

Contacts

Academic Office Number
Mailing Address

Dragoi Lab

300 George St., Suite 9144A

New Haven, CT 06511

United States