Ann M. Graybiel, PhD, was trained at Harvard and MIT and received her PhD from MIT.

Research in the Graybiel Laboratory is focused on regions of the forebrain that influence movement, mood and motivation: the basal ganglia and neural pathways interconnecting the basal ganglia with the cerebral cortex.Dr. Graybiel and her group use methods ranging from multi-electrode recordings in awake behaving animals to genetic engineering to analyze these neural pathways.

Central to many of these studies is work on brain mechanisms underlying habit formation and repetitive behaviors and understanding how such mechanisms can become dysfunctional in neurologic and neuropsychiatric disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and in addictive states.

Graybiel was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1988, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1991, and the Institute of Medicine in 1994. She was awarded the National Medal of Science in 2001.