Research

If scientists understood the origins of diseases like Alzheimer’s or depression, we might have a better understanding of effective treatments and ultimate cures.

Our neuroscience research falls into three broad categories: We describe the fundamental parts of the brain, its cells, synapses and circuits. We study the brain’s computation, how those parts come together to represent information about our environment. Ultimately, we aim to understand cognition itself, or how the millions of different molecules and electrical synapses that crisscross the brain translate into thoughts, memories, behavior.

We’re looking at normal brain development, and we’re generating cell-type targeting tools that may have the potential to meet certain therapeutic needs, in terms of repairing genes or circuits in specific genetic brain diseases.

We are studying cell type changes in the aging brain, which will be relevant to age-related neurodegenerative diseases. We also aim to look at addiction to understand how brain circuits are hijacked by or chronically changed by drugs of abuse.