Get Bernardo Sabatini on Dwarkesh Podcast

Bernardo Sabatini is not just a top neuroscientist, he is co-director of Harvard’s Kempner Institute that is rapidly shaping NeuroAI, fresh off convening more than 1,000 researchers at its June 5–6, 2025 Frontiers in NeuroAI symposium. With AI and brain science colliding in real time, his vantage point spans both cutting-edge research and the institutional levers that will determine where the field goes next.

In May 2025 he co-authored a definitive review on the striatal indirect pathway and his lab published new Nature results showing the striatum enables fast learning but not recall, concrete insights that recalibrate how we think about dopamine circuits and action selection. Having him unpack what these findings mean for Parkinson’s, habit formation, and AI architectures is urgent today, not someday.

Sabatini has also been a rare, candid voice on the research funding crisis, warning in June 2025 that federal actions were scaring trainees and disrupting labs, exactly the kind of stakes-and-solutions conversation this audience needs right now.

To our knowledge he has not appeared on the Dwarkesh Podcast before as of January 17, 2026, so this would be a first and a timely one. Support this nomination today.