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Dr. Benabid received his MD in 1970 and his PhD in Physics in 1978 at the Joseph Fourier University of Grenoble (UJFG), and completed his basic neurosciences training during a sabbatical at the Salk Institute from 1979 to 1980. He was appointed Staff Neurosurgeon in 1972, and Professor of Experimental Medicine at UJFG in 1978. He is Professor of Biophysics. since 1983, Director of the Laboratory of Preclinical Neurosciences at INSERM since 1988, Head of Neurosurgery at the Joseph Fourier University Hospital since 1989 and additionally Coordinator of the Center for Functional Neurosurgery "Claudio Munari", Milano, since 1999. He has been elected as a Member of the French Academy of Medicine in 1999, of the Royal Academy of Medicine in Belgium and of the Academy of Sciences at the Institut de France in 2002. Since his discovery, in 1987, of the effects of high frequency stimulation on neural elements, he established the Deep Brain Stimulation therapy for movement disorders, which he extended to several targets and to other pathologies such as dystonia, epilepsy, and experimental models for obesity, psychosurgery. He authored or co-authored a large number of papers in peer reviewed journals and book chapters. His current research, from the neurosurgery department to animal models, explores the acute and long term biological effects of high frequency stimulation, from neural firing to gene expression, and to understand its mechanisms of action. For this he has received several international awards. | 