Amit Etkin, Alto Neuroscience CEO (Alto via Vimeo)

A star Stan­ford pro­fes­sor leaves his lab for a start­up out to re­make psy­chi­a­try

About five years ago, Amit Etkin had a break­through.

The Stan­ford neu­rol­o­gist, a soft-spo­ken de­mi-prodi­gy who be­came a pro­fes­sor while still a res­i­dent, had been ob­sessed for a decade with how to bet­ter de­fine psy­chi­atric dis­or­ders. Drugs for de­pres­sion or bipo­lar dis­or­der didn’t work for many pa­tients with the con­di­tions, and he sus­pect­ed the rea­son was how tra­di­tion­al di­ag­noses didn’t ac­tu­al­ly get at the heart of what was go­ing on in a pa­tient’s brain.

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