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Anatol is MapLight’s Chief Discovery Officer and leads the Company’s platform development and target discovery efforts.

Anatol brings over 20 years of experience in academic neuroscience research, focused on mechanisms of neuromodulation and the application of optogenetics, electrophysiology, and imaging to understand neural circuit function and dysfunction. Anatol is also a Professor at the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease, where he concurrently leads a research group focused on understanding the neural basis of adaptive motor control. Over the past decade, his research has focused on the basal ganglia, a highly-conserved brain region in vertebrates that controls motivation, decision making, and the automation of behavior. His laboratory has made important advances in the cellular, synaptic, and circuit mechanisms underlying motor deficits in Parkinson’s disease and dyskinesia. Using optogenetics, his laboratory established how activating specific types of cells in the basal ganglia could either mimic or reverse parkinsonian motor symptoms. Earlier in his career, he made seminal discoveries about the mechanisms of endocannabinoid signaling in the central nervous system.

He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and a doctorate in Neurobiology from Harvard University. He completed postdoctoral work at Stanford University, and concurrently runs a laboratory at the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco.