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Draft:Vadim Bolshakov

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Vadim Bolshakov is a Russia-born American neuroscientist, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School[1], and, since 1999, he has been Director of the Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory at McLean Hospital. He received The Esther A. and Joseph Klingenstein Fund award in 2001[2][3] and NARSAD Distinguished Investigator award in 2013[4]. Bolshakov is an associate editor of Frontiers in Neural Circuits, published by Frontiers[5], and consulting editor of Amino Acids, published by Springer[6]. He presently serves on the Scientific Council of the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation[7].

In his work, he focuses on understanding the cellular and neural network-level mechanisms of learned and innate behaviors with an emphasis on studies of fear mechanisms in the brain. He demonstrated that negatively-charged memories, resulting in uncontrollable fear and anxiety, are associated with long-term functional changes at synaptic contacts in the amygdala[8][9][10][11]. He also demonstrated that these aversive memories, as well as synaptic modifications associated with them, can be controlled by the expression of specific genes in brain regions responsible for emotional states[12][13]. Overall, his findings provide evidence that synaptic plasticity in specific projections within behavior-controlling neural circuits may serve as a cellular mechanism of memory formation[14].

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