George Dragoi, MD, PhD

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.