External committee

The external committee members are:

• Prof. James Fawcett, University of Cambridge (UK): James Fawcett is Chairman of the John van Geest Centre for Brain Repair in the University of Cambridge. His main interest is the repair of CNS damage, particularly in the spinal cord. The main focus has been to work out how both axon regeneration and plasticity are turned off in the adult CNS, and how to restart them. He also works on interfacing electronics with the damaged nervous system and on the design of protocols for clinical trials in spinal cord injury.
• Prof. Patricia Janak, Johns Hopkins University (USA): Prof. Janak leads a research group at the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA. She is interested in the behavioral and neural mechanisms underlying learning, as well as the neural systems that control expression of stimulus-guided behavior after the learning process.
• Prof. Kamran Khodakhah, Albert Einstein College of Medicine (USA): Dr. Khodakhah is Professor in the Department of Neuroscience, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and Department of Neurology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. The aim of his research is to understand the role of the cerebellum and basal ganglia in motor function and in movement and neurologic disorders.
• Prof. Jean-Philippe Pin, Institute for Functional Genomics of Montpellier (France): Dr. Pin studies G protein-coupled receptors (GPCR) function and theirmechanisms of activation at molecular and cellular levels. Specifically he focuses on metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGlu) and GABAB receptors, and their potential as promising therapeutic targets for the treatment of various neurological and psychiatric disorders, such asParkinson’s disease and pain
• Prof. John Salamone, University of Connecticut (USA): Prof. Salamone belongs to the Department of Psychological Sciences at the University of Connecticut (USA), where he is Head of the Behavioral Neuroscience Division. He is interested in a broad range of disciplines such as psychopharmacology, neurochemistry and behavior, behavioral functions of dopamine and acetylcholine, Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia, or depression.