Prof. Gordon Arbuthnott Okinawa Institute of Science & Technology, Japan

Professor Arbuthnott has worked on the basal ganglia for many years. With Prof. Urban Ungerstedt, he described the properties of a rat model for end stage Parkinson’s disease. Most of the current therapies for Parkinson’s disease are tested on this model. Gordon’s interest in Deep Brain Stimulation and in the... read moreeffects of dopamine depletion on striatal cell function are discussed in this talk. The talk challenges the usual model of the basal ganglia function in disease and puts forward a different model. Gordon spent most of his academic life at the University of Edinburgh in his native Scotland. In 2007 he moved to Okinawa to help found the OIST Graduate University, which opened in 2012.