How do cognition and behavior emerge from the collective activity of large neuronal circuits in our brain? Can we simulate these neural circuits in silico to build artificial neural networks that explain brain function? Can we use our knowledge of circuit dynamics to build brain-machine interfaces to ameliorate cognitive abilities? Our lab leverages close collaborations with several experimental groups to address these questions, in particular:

• Neural mechanisms underlying optimal performance and flexible behavior. What happens in your brain when you are "in the flow"? How does your internal arousal level affect cognitive function? 
• Effects of psychedelic drugs and serotonergic neuromodulators on neural dynamics and behavior. What is the neural mechanism underlying hallucinations in the psychedelic state?
• Targeted manipulation of brain activity and cognition using brain-machine interfaces. Can we build bidirectional interfaces to communicate with machines directly via brain activity in prefrontal cortex?
• Neural circuits enabling complex naturalistic behavior. How does social behavior arise from neural circuits?

Our lab addresses these questions blending methods from physics, machine learning, dynamical systems and network theory.Our lab is part of the International Network for Bio-Inspired Computing (IN-BIC), a research consortium funded by the NSF Accelnet program including nodes in the US, Canada, and France, whose goal is to identify and implement novel approaches to understanding cognitive function and biologically inspired artificial intelligence.

Center for Computational Neuroscience and Artificial Intelligence