The Big Picture

Current work in the lab focuses on investigating how short-term maintenance of information allows brain networks to produce continuous, connected perceptual experiences based on noisy, disconnected inputs. Ultimately, we hope to use knowledge derived from this research to develop new approaches to treat complex neuropsychiatric disorders as well as to improve artificial intelligence using novel, biologically inspired architectures.

Ongoing Projects

Perceptual Working Memory

How do we construct a coherent view of the world? The brain creates and continuously updates a model of relevant aspects of the outside world. This model is more than just our memories, containing detailed images, implicit relationships and subtle impressions all based on our experience which together make up our perceptual working memory. Using behavioral approaches combined optogenetics and advanced recording techniques, we seek to understand the brain circuits that make it possible to create this internal mode.

Brain Circuit Interactions

Circuits in the brain form complex, dynamically changing networks and the interactions and activity of these networks underlies everything that we do and think. By simultaneously recording activity in multiple structures while engaging cognitive functions using tasks and manipulating neurons using optogenetic approaches, we seek to better understand how multi-area dynamics give rise to behavior.