Goals and Approach

The Brain and Consciousness group at the Allen Institute seeks to understand the physical substrate of consciousness in the mammalian brain with different techniques. Here at the Institute, we use multi-scale electrical recordings (both EEG and Neuropixels silicon electrodes) to record cortico-thalamic activity in behaving mice to a variety of perturbations – such as brief electrical pulses or small current steps delivered to cortex, anesthesia, or psychedelics. We also study the effects of different psychedelics on human and mouse cortical neurons in slices and in the whole mouse. Of further interest are ephaptic effects mediated by low-amplitude electrical fields that synchronize the timing of action potentials and a detailed biophysical understanding of intra- and extra-cellular electrical fields in cortical tissue, including the local field potential and the EEG, via computer simulations.

This work is carried out in collaboration

Scientists and teams across the Allen Institute and around the world are contributing to this research.

Collaborating teams and organizations