Born in Faridabad, a city in north India, Pratap did his Ph.D. with Prof. Sumantra Chattarji at National Centre for Biological Sciences (Manipal University), Bangalore, India.

During his Ph.D. (2007-2013) Pratap examined effects of repeated stress on hippocampal place cell activity and one-trial contextual fear learning.

In McHugh lab, he was studying the effects of current emotional state of rodents on their subsequent performance on a familiar two-choice operant task. He employs a combination of behaviour and in vivo electrophysiological recordings to test his experimental ideas.