Staff Profiles

Josh Siegle joined the Allen Institute in 2014 as part of the Neural Coding research program. He received his PhD in Neuroscience from MIT, where he studied hippocampal circuits with Dr. Matthew Wilson and cortical and thalamic circuits with Dr. Christopher Moore. In both labs, he combined optogenetics and extracellular electrophysiology in order to investigate the impact of neural oscillations on behavior. In addition to his scientific work, Josh has been heavily involved in the design and distribution of open-source tools for electrophysiology. He co-founded Open Ephys in order to centralize some of the development efforts occurring across the community. Josh has also carried out research at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics and Brown University, where he earned an Sc.B. in Neuroscience.

Research Interests

The effortless way in which we see the world around us belies the complexity of the neural circuits that make our perceptions possible. All of our experience requires the precise coordination of distributed networks of cells, which fluidly converge and diverge in response to novel external challenges and shifting internal goals. I'm interested in studying how neural activity on the timescale of milliseconds underlies the brain's tremendous versatility. At the Allen Institute, I will apply new techniques for multichannel electrophysiology and optogenetics in order to observe and perturb the visual system in real time.

Expertise

• Large-scale electrophysiology
• Optogenetics
• Open-source tool development

Research Programs

• Neural Coding