David Presti, senior lecturer of neurobiology

David E. Presti is a neurobiologist and cognitive scientist at the University of California in Berkeley, where he has taught in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology for more than twenty years (since 1991). Between 1990 and 2000 he also worked in the treatment of addiction and of post-traumatic-stress disorder (PTSD) at the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in San Francisco. He has doctorates in molecular biology and biophysics from the California Institute of Technology and in clinical psychology from the University of Oregon. Since 2004, he has also been teaching neuroscience to Tibetan monks in India, in a program initiated by the Dalai Lama. His areas of expertise include the chemistry of the human nervous system, the effects of drugs on the brain and the mind, the treatment of addiction, and the scientific study of the mind and consciousness. His primary research interest is the relation between mentality, consciousness, and brain physiology, the so-called mind-body problem. Classes taught at UCB include “Brain, Mind, and Behavior,” “Drugs and the Brain,” and “Neurochemistry.”