George Dragoi, PhD

George Dragoi is interested in the dynamic interplay between externally driven and internally generated internal representations of the external world to understand memory formation and spatial navigation. His research group 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 optogenetic stimulation in freely behaving animals, as well as computational 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.

animal models ;  behavioral testing ;  brain stimulation ;  electrophysiology ;  generative models ;  intracranial recordings ;  network analysis ;  signal processing  

circuits ;  development ;  learning ;  long-term memory ;  navigation ;  physiology ;  sleep ;  systems neuroscience  

Dragoi received his MD from the Gr. T. Popa University of Medicine and Pharmacy of Iasi, Romania, and his PhD in Behavioral and Neural Science from Rutgers University, where he revealed essential features of brain encoding of contextual information via temporally-compressed neural sequences. He completed his postdoctoral studies at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he discovered the existence of preconfigured cellular assemblies that pre-play in time the spatial sequences occurring during a future novel spatial experience in naive animals.