.: Magistretti, Pierre

Pierre Magistretti was born in 1952; he has received his MD from the University of Geneva and his PhD from the University of California at San Diego, while working at the Salk Institute with Dr Floyd E. Bloom.

Pierre J. Magistretti has made significant contributions in the field of brain energy metabolism. His group has discovered some of the cellular and molecular mechanisms that underlie the coupling between neuronal activity and energy consumption by the brain. This work has considerable ramifications for the understanding of the origin of the signals detected with the current functional brain imaging techniques used in neurologic and psychiatric research.

The group directed by Pierre J. Magistretti consists of 20 scientists, over two thirds of which are supported by grants awarded on a peer-review basis (e.g. Swiss National Science Foundation, European Community, Human Frontier Science Organization).

He is the author of over 100 articles published in peer reviewed journals. Over the last five years he has given over 80 invited lectures at international meetings or at universities in Europe and North America, including the 2000 Talairach Lecture at the Functional Mapping of the Human Brain Conference. In November 2000 he has been a Mc Donnel Visiting Scholar at Washington University School of Medicine and he has been awarded 2002 Emil Kraepelin Professorship of the Max-Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich.