Rate My Professor Geoffrey Schoenbaum

Geoffrey Schoenbaum, M.D., Ph.D., serves as Distinguished Investigator and Chief of the Cellular and Neurocomputational Systems Branch at the National Institute on Drug Abuse Intramural Research Program. He earned a B.S. in Biology from the University of Georgia at Athens in 1989. He received a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1994, where his advisor was Dr. Howard Eichenbaum, and an M.D. from the same institution in 1996. He completed post-doctoral training at the University of North Carolina and Johns Hopkins University under the guidance of Dr. Michela Gallagher.

His research centers on the neural circuits that mediate associative learning and decision-making and the ways in which alterations in these circuits contribute to maladaptive behaviors in neuropsychiatric disorders such as addiction. The laboratory employs rat models to investigate behaviors and neural circuits relevant to the human brain, with particular emphasis on the orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala, striatum, and midbrain dopamine system. Experiments combine behavioral tasks derived from learning theory principles with techniques including single-unit recording, lesions, pharmacological manipulations, and genetic approaches to examine how these brain areas interact to support learning and adaptive behavior.