Research Group Projects and Descriptions

Our brains and nervous systems mediate everything we perceive, feel, decide, and do—and act as our ultimate interface to the world. An outstanding challenge for humanity is to understand the brain at a level of abstraction that enables us to engineer its function—repairing pathology, augmenting cognition, and revealing insights into the human condition. We are inventing and applying tools for the analysis and engineering of brain circuits in both humans and model systems, with a current focus on devising technologies for interfacing to specific circuit targets, and controlling the processing within. We hope that our research will help us better understand—and engineer improvements upon—the nature of human existence.

Despite promise in treating depression, headache, stroke, tinnitus, and other disorders, brain stimulation technology is bulky, power-hungry, and requires precision alignment with neural structures. We are applying modern engineering techniques to create a wearable brain stimulator that is safe and efficacious.

Alumni Contributor(s): Margaret Kim

Neuroeconomics has traditionally been limited to the determination of where in the brain a particular function resides. A much more profound question is: how do high-level cognitive functions emerge from primitive neural computations? We are developing precise, focal ways of investigating phenomena such as trust and risk-taking, in order to understand how they play roles in purchasing, decision-making, social interaction, and other real-world scenarios.

Funk2 is a novel process description language that keeps track of everything that it does. Remembering these causal execution traces allows parallel threads to reflect, recognize, and react to the history and status of other threads. Novel forms of complex, adaptive, nonlinear control algorithms can be written in the Funk2 programming language. Currently, Funk2 is implemented to take advantage of distributed grid processors consisting of a heterogeneous network of computers, so that hundreds of thousands of parallel threads can be run concurrently, each using many gigabytes of memory. Funk2 is inspired by Marvin Minsky's Critic-Selector theory of human cognitive reflection, and is the foundation for the Neural Models of Mind project.

Hypnosis and related practices have been clinically proven to help relax patients and reduce pain and anxiety. We are applying software engineering principles to automate, and make customizable and adapatable, hypnosis via a Web-based application. The technology also provides a new platform for studying the cognitive process and neural circuitry of hypnosis to further non-pharmacological methods of health interventions and management. In the future, such distributed platforms for customized, adaptable relaxation may be applied to a variety of media, including cell phones and MP3 players.

Alumni Contributor(s): Cinjon Resnick

We have engineered molecular sensitizers that make genetically specified neurons that can be activated by pulses of blue light, and silenced by pulses of yellow light. This revolutionary technology enables us to reprogram neural networks at the millisecond timescale, opening up the systematic analysis and engineering of the brain, as well as completely novel methods of therapy. We are applying molecular engineering, viral engineering, and optical engineering to make this dream a reality.

This project addresses human cognitive models of reflective problem solving in terms of psychology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence. A programming language describing reflective human thought processes is being developed for the purpose of understanding the biological process of thought. This description language allows distributed reflective monitoring and control of parallel threads. In addition to being a novel method for the robust control of distributed computer programs, this technology is directed toward consumer HCI and medical cures for neuropsychological problems, and has applications for neural-interface computer gaming peripherals, aging population cognitive evaluation, and training.

Distributed collaboration across the Internet may enable new kinds of innovation to take place. We are designing, as a community, a brain stimulation device that will be low-cost, safe, and versatile. We are also developing software that enables professionals and individuals to share protocols and insights that emerge from use of such technology.

Alumni Contributor(s): Margaret Kim

Neural stimulation hardware has traditionally been either electrical or magnetic in nature. Our lab has recently developed molecular methods for making neurons able to be activated or silenced by blue and yellow light respectively. We are engineering optical systems for targetedly stimulating neurons precisely, even in dense tissue in the living brain. Our goal is to find ways to cure intractable psychiatric and neurological disorders.