Sidarta Ribeiro is professor of neuroscience and director of the Brain Institute at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte. He has researched and published on memory, sleep and dreams; neuronal plasticity; vocal communication; symbolic competence in nonhuman animals; computational psychiatry; neuroeducation; and psychedelics and drug policy.
Ribero earned his bachelor’s degree in biology at the Universidade de Brasília in 1993, his M.Sc. in biophysics at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro in 1994 and his Ph.D. in animal behavior at Rockefeller University in 2000, followed by postdoctoral studies in neurophysiology at Duke University. He has written six books, including “The Oracle of Night: The History and Science of Dreams” and “The Flowers of Good: The Science and the History of Marijuana Liberation.”