Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience
 | Wael Asaad Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery My lab is interested in how the frontal cortex and basal ganglia work together to enable rapid learning and highly-contingent decision making. Our methods involve multi-electrode neuronal recordings as well as neurostimulation in human and nonhuman subjects, in both the operative and laboratory settings. We're interested in developing ways to foster or augment learning to improve recovery from neurologic illness or injury. Read More |
 | David Badre Assistant Professor How do we choose our actions given our goals, knowledge, and circumstances? Humans can avoid habitual tendencies and pick the right action for the right situation, an ability termed "cognitive control" or "executive function". Losing cognitive control, due to neurological or psychiatric condition, severely diminishes independence and quality of life. Our lab studies cognitive control of memory and action, using cognitive neuroscience methods that include fMRI and testing of patient populations. Read More |
 | Kevin Bath Assistant Professor of Neuroscience (Research) My program of research is heavily focused on understanding emotional development and how environmental or pharmacological stressors incurred early in life alter the developmental trajectory of brain centers involved in cognitive and emotional regulation. Read More |
 | Sheila Blumstein Professor My research is concerned with delineating the neural basis of language and the processes and mechanisms involved in speaking and understanding. The research methodologies used include behavioral measures of aphasic patients correlated with structural measures of neuropathology and functional neuroimaging of normal subjects. I am interested in how the continuous acoustic signal is transformed by perceptual and neural mechanisms into the sound structure of language, how the sound structure of language maps to the lexicon (mental dictionary), and Read More |
 | Rebecca Burwell Professor of Psychology My research program uses neuroanatomical, experimental lesion, optogenetic, and electrophysiological approaches to examine the contribution of brain regions adjacent to the hippocampus (including the perirhinal, postrhinal/parahippocampal, and entorhinal cortices) to memory and to other higher cognitive functions. Read More |
 | Daniel Dickstein Associate Professor; Director PediMIND Program The ultimate goal of my research is to identify bio-behavioral markers--scans and tests--that will make the diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric disorders starting in childhood better--more specific, targeted, accurate, and earlier. This same approach has revolutionized the war on childhood cancer. Together, we can make a powerful difference! In particular, we have ongoing projects involving (a) bipolar disorder, ADHD, and anxiety, (b) teen suicide and self-cutting (non-suicidal self-injury), and (c) autism spectrum disorders. To learn more, to participate, or to partner in support our Read More |
 | John Donoghue Professor of Neuroscience Our laboratory investigates how the brain turns thought into voluntary behaviors and how that knowledge can be used to help persons with paralysis. We study how populations of neurons represent and transform information as a motor plan becomes movement. This approach has required the creation of a novel recording array to study neural ensembles. With the knowledge we have gained about movement representation, we have translated our findings to a clinical application in which humans with paralysis can use their Read More |
 | Michael Frank Associate Profressor Read More |
 | Roger Hanlon Senior Scientist, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA The visual mechanisms of camouflage are a key interest of ours. How are predator visual systems deceived by certain features of pattern, color, contrast, brightness and even 3-dimensional skin texture? We study cephalopods (octopus, cuttlefish, squid), which have evolved nature's most sophisticated system of rapid adaptive coloration. Cephalopod vision provides a unique model system to study perception of complex visual environments, and the subsequent integration of visual stimuli that immediately (ca. 700msec) produces the neuromuscular motor output that results in Read More |
 | Leigh Hochberg Associate Professor of Engineering Our Laboratory for Restorative Neurotechnology focuses on developing strategies to restore communication, mobility, and independence for people with paralysis or limb loss. In addition to endeavors related to the pilot clinical trial of the BrainGate2 Neural Interface System, we are interested in understanding human intracortical neurophysiology during the planning and production of voluntary movement, and understanding neuronal ensemble function in a variety of neurologic diseases or injuries. Read More |
 | Barry Lester Professor of Psychiatry & Human Behavior, Professor of Pediatrics Barry Lester's research is on the study of developmental processes in children at risk. This includes children at risk because of biological factors and children at risk due to social factors. Read More |
 | Eric Morrow Assistant Professor in Biology and Psychiatry & Human Behavior The Morrow lab investigates the genetic and molecular mechanisms underlying disorders of cognitive development, such as intellectual disability and autism. The long-term aim of this research is to establish a basic foundation for improved genetic diagnosis and treatment interventions designed to enhance cognitive and functional gains for patients. Because these disorders are highly genetic and in order to identify core molecular mechanisms, genome-wide "forward genetic" strategies to identify genetic mutations have been a principal focus. In complement Read More |
 | Michael Paradiso Sidney A. and Dorothea Doctors Fox Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Professor of Neuroscience Humans are highly visual animals and the processing of visual information appears to involve a significant fraction of the brain. Vision involves interactions between neurons spread widely across the brain and it dynamically adapts to the needs of ongoing behavior. The aims of Dr. Paradiso's research are to elucidate the encoding of visual information in cerebral cortex, the computations performed by interacting neurons, and the adaptive use of neural circuitry, with the goal of understanding the mechanisms underlying Read More |
 | Jerome Sanes Professor of Neuroscience I study brain mechanisms underlying motor control and learning. Several brain regions, including the frontal and parietal lobes, the basal ganglia, and the cerebellum, have involvement in voluntary movements, and these areas become engaged when humans learn and then consolidate new motor skills. Currently, we study these problems with magnetic resonance imaging technology that assesses focal changes in blood flow and by assessing movement patterns while humans perform various movement tasks. Read More |
 | Thomas Serre Assistant Professor of Cog Ling & Psych Sci My long-term goal is to help realize one of the oldest dreams in artificial intelligence: To reverse-engineer the brain and build machines that can see and interpret the visual world as well as we do. Achieving such an ambitious goal would give scientists a powerful tool to uncover and understand key mechanisms of human perception and cognition as well as to create a new generation of "seeing" machines. Read More |
 | David Sheinberg Professor of Neuroscience Research in my lab explores how we identify objects and events in the real world, where both the observer and the environment change over time. The brain must process a dynamic stream of sensory information and efficiently parse this information to reach conclusions about the presence or absence of noteworthy objects to which actions should be directed. By studying the activity of neural circuits involved in this process, we aim to better understand mechanisms underlying perception. Read More |
 | Andrea Megela Simmons Professor My laboratory studies how the nervous system develops, matures, and reorganizes in response to damage. We use frogs as a model system because these animals go through a lengthy larval stage during which their bodies and brains transform to accommodate the transition from an aquatic to an amphibious lifestyle. As adults, frogs can regenerate damaged hair cells and cranial nerves, making them excellent models to understand the molecular bases of how the brain might recover from injury. Read More |
 | James Simmons Professor of Biology I'm interested in understanding how the bat's sonar works and how the bat's brain makes sonar images. They make sounds, listen to echoes, and then see objects. To study echolocation, we go into the field and videotape bats using sonar for different purposes. These observations tell us in what situations bats use their sonar, and what sorts of sounds they use. If we know where the objects are in the videos, we can figure out what sounds get back to Read More |
 | Joo-Hyun Song Assistant Professor of Cognitive, Ling & Psychological Sci Read More |
 | Tara White Assistant Professor Dr. Tara White is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences at Brown. Dr. White has strong research interests in the biological bases of personality and temperament, and differences between people in effects of alcohol and drugs on mood, behavior, and brain function. Her research is conducted at the Brown University Tim Trio 3 tesla MRI facility in Sidney Frank Hall and the Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies. Read More |