The origin of our lab goes back to the foundation of the UCLA Mental Retardation Research Center (MRRC, now IDDRC) in 1969. Nathaniel Buchwald, PhD was the founder and Group Coordinator of the Neurophysiology Group of the MRRC. He became the Associate Director for Research in 1971 and Director of the UCLA MRRC in 1973, a position he held until 1993. The neurophysiology group included Drs. Jennifer Buchwald, John Garcia, Stephan Soltysik, Jaime Villablanca, and Charles Woody.

Dr. Buchwald was one of the first neuroscientists to study electrophysiology in subcortical brain nuclei of awake, unrestrained animals. His lab pioneered the use of intracellular recordings of the basal ganglia. His early studies on evoked potentials garnered much recognition in the late 1950s. Starting with his classic experiments on the “caudate spindle” published in the major journal of the early 1960s Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology. Nat and his colleagues, especially his closest and longest collaborator, Chester D. Hull, Ph.D., maintained a continuing examination of how neurons in the basal ganglia communicate with each other and how this communication is altered in models of diseases and during maturation.

Michael S. Levine, PhD was admitted to UCLA in 1970 as a postdoctoral fellow and soon climbed the ranks and became full professor in 1985. He took over the direction of the lab after Buchwald retired.

Carlos Cepeda, PhD came to UCLA in 1985 as a postdoctoral fellow. When Dr. Levine became interim Vice-chancellor of Academic Personnel, Dr. Cepeda became the head of the lab.