Dr. Sohal studied applied mathematics at Harvard and Cambridge before completing his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees at Stanford. During his psychiatry residency at Stanford, he worked with Karl Deisseroth on some of the first experiments using optogenetics to study the function of brain circuits. In 2010, he started his laboratory at UCSF, which studies how circuits in the prefrontal cortex produce patterns of brain activity that contribute to normal cognition as well as symptoms of psychiatric disorders. Dr. Sohal is a board-certified psychiatrist and continues to see outpatients one half-day each week.