André Parent was born in Montreal in 1944. After obtaining a baccalaureate in sciences (BSc)(biology-physiology) from the Université de Montréal in 1967, he undertook graduate studies in neurosciences at the Université Laval under the learned tutorship of Dr Louis J. Poirier, who was well known as an experimental neurologist. After obtaining a Philosophiae Doctor degree (PhD) from the Université Laval in 1970, he went to work as a postdoctoral trainee at the Max-Planck-Institut for Brain Research in Frankfurt, Germany. There he studied with Professor Rolf Hassler, whose investigations shed a new light on the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease. He then came back to the Faculty of Medicine at the Université Laval where he became Full Professor in 1981. He is currently member of the Psychiatry and Neuroscience Department at the Faculty of Medicine. He did his research work first at the Enfant-Jesus Hospital Research Center from 1976 to 1996, and then at the Institut universitaire de santé mentale de Québec (IUSMQ). He acted as Scientific Director of the Enfant-Jesus Hospital Research Center from 1985 to 1992 and he is currently the Scientific Director of the Neuroscience Thematic Research Center at the Université Laval.