Ann M.Graybiel

About

Ann M. Graybiel joined the MIT faculty in 1973 and was named Walter A. Rosenblith Professor of Neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences in 1994. She was appointed Investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research in 2001 and has received numerous honors including the National Medal of Science, the James R. Killian Faculty Achievement Award, the Woman Leader of Parkinson’s Science award, and the Harold S. Diamond Professor title. In 2008, she was named Institute Professor, the highest academic award at MIT, and in 2012, she shared the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her research focuses on the mechanisms of learning and memory within the basal ganglia, particularly how the brain constructs habits and transitions between conscious and non-conscious behaviors. Her laboratory investigates how the basal ganglia and cortico-basal ganglia loops facilitate the acquisition, execution, and breaking of habits, with implications for understanding disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorders, and addiction. Her work involves neural recording techniques in awake, behaving animals, revealing plasticity in the response properties of neurons during learning processes. She also explores the interaction between emotional and motor systems, the molecular basis of learning mechanisms, and genes involved in…

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Psychology
• Biology
• Physics
• Neuroscience

Selected publications

• The Role of the Dorsal–Lateral Prefrontal Cortex in Reward Sensitivity During Approach–Avoidance Conflict

  Cerebral Cortex · 2021-08-31 · 67 citations

  articleOpen access

  Approach-Avoidance conflict (AAC) arises from decisions with embedded positive and negative outcomes, such that approaching leads to reward and punishment and avoiding to neither. Despite its importance, the field lacks a mechanistic understanding of which regions are driving avoidance behavior during conflict. In the current task, we utilized transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and drift-diffusion modeling to investigate the role of one of the most prominent regions relevant to AAC-the dors…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Striosomes Mediate Value-Based Learning Vulnerable in Age and a Huntington’s Disease Model

  Cell · 2020-10-27 · 62 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Dopamine and beta-band oscillations differentially link to striatal value and motor control

  Science Advances · 2020 · 51 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Parkinson's disease is characterized by decreased dopamine and increased beta-band oscillatory activity accompanying debilitating motor and mood impairments. Coordinate dopamine-beta opposition is considered a normative rule for basal ganglia function. We report a breakdown of this rule. We developed multimodal systems allowing the first simultaneous, chronic recordings of dopamine release and beta-band activity in the striatum of nonhuman primates during behavioral performance. Dopamine and bet…

  DOI

• Striosomes control dopamine via dual pathways paralleling canonical basal ganglia circuits

  Current Biology · 2024-10-23 · 41 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Balanced activity of canonical direct D1 and indirect D2 basal ganglia pathways is considered a core requirement for normal movement, and their imbalance is an etiologic factor in movement and neuropsychiatric disorders. We present evidence for a conceptually equivalent pair of direct D1 and indirect D2 pathways that arise from striatal projection neurons (SPNs) of the striosome compartment rather than from SPNs of the matrix, as do the canonical pathways. These striosomal D1 (S-D1) and D2 (S-D2…

  PublisherDOI

• Scalable, flexible carbon fiber electrode thread arrays for three-dimensional probing of neurochemical activity in deep brain structures of rodents

  Biosensors and Bioelectronics · 2023-08-21 · 24 citations

  articleOpen access

  We developed a flexible "electrode-thread" array for recording dopamine neurochemicals from a lateral distribution of subcortical targets (up to 16) transverse to the axis of insertion. Ultrathin (∼10 μm diameter) carbon fiber (CF) electrode-threads (CFETs) are clustered into a tight bundle to introduce them into the brain from a single-entry point. The individual CFETs splay laterally in deep brain tissue during insertion due to their innate flexibility. This spatial redistribution allows navig…

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Jill R. Crittenden

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  128 shared

• Ken‐ichi Amemori

  121 shared

• Tomoko Yoshida

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  75 shared

• Yasuo Kubota

  McGovern Institute for Brain Research

  64 shared

• Satoko Amemori

  Japan Society for the Promotion of Science

  59 shared

• Helen N. Schwerdt

  Research Network (United States)

  56 shared

• Daniel J. Gibson

  Columbia St. Mary's Hospital

  56 shared

• Dan Hu

  The Seventh Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University

  55 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Psychology and Brain Science

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  1971

• A.B., Biology

  Harvard University

  1964

Awards & honors

• National Medal of Science
• James R. Killian Faculty Achievement Award
• Woman Leader of Parkinson’s Science award from the Parkinson…
• Harold S. Diamond Professor by the National Parkinson Founda…
• Kavli Prize in Neuroscience

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