Basal Ganglia

Jean-Jacques Soghomonian received a doctorate in neuroscience from the University of Aix-Marseille and a Ph.D. in neurological sciences from the University of Montreal. He completed postdoctoral training at the Medical College of Pennsylvania and the University of Pennsylvania and joined the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology at Boston University School of Medicine in 1998. Dr. Soghomonian maintains an active research program on the anatomical and functional organization of the basal ganglia in the normal brain and in experimental models of Parkinson’s disease. Dr. Soghomonian teaches medical histology and medical neuroscience to undergraduate and graduate medical students, and is director of the graduate course Methods in Neuroscience. He currently serves on the MD-PhD admission committee at Boston University School of Medicine and on the qualifying committee in the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology.

• General organization of the basal ganglia circuitry.- Parallel circuits of the basal ganglia: motor, associative and limbic circuits.- Integrative networks across basal ganglia circuits.- Limbic inputs to the ventral striatum.- Organization of prefrontal-striatal connections.- Subcortical inputs to the basal ganglia: cerebellum and brainstem.- Chemical neuroanatomy of the basal ganglia.- Motor functions of the basal ganglia: what and when.-  Motor sequence consolidation.- Phasic dopamine signaling and basal ganglia function.-  Motor and non-motor disorders in Parkinson’s disease: role of the basal ganglia.- Reward and addiction: role of the striatum.-  Encoding reward prediction errors.- Obsessive-compulsive disorders. – Sub-thalamic nucleus firing encoding and functions.- Inhibitory control system in the brain: role of the basal ganglia.- Striatal encoding of habits anprocedural learning.-  Habit learning.- Ensemble neuron encoding of instrumental learning and habits in the striatum.- Cerebellum and basal ganglia: their interaction and role in cognitive control Cerebellum and basal ganglia: their interaction and role in the pathophysiology of rapid-onset dystonia–parkinsonism.- Cognitive impairments in Parkinson’s disease: the basal ganglia-thalamo-cortical circuit.- Social behavior and the basal ganglia: insights from Autism Spectrum Disorders.- Dopamine, consciousness and cognitive processing in the striatum (Palmiter)​.