Overview

The Neuroscience Graduate Group is a unique, diverse PhD training program that offers intensive, integrated training in multiple areas of neuroscience research. The program involves more than 55 faculty from different campus departments, with expertise ranging from molecular and cellular neuroscience to developmental neuroscience, systems and computational neuroscience, and human cognitive neuroscience.

The group provides a highly interdisciplinary, intellectually dynamic training environment of course work, research training, and mentoring within a strong research program that produces fundamental advances in knowledge and cutting-edge techniques. The program welcomes highly qualified applicants to join in better understanding the brain and its functions and disorders.

Faculty in the Neuroscience Graduate Program are involved in three broad research areas: Cellular, Molecular, and Developmental Neuroscience; Systems and Computational Neuroscience; and Cognition, Brain, and Behavior. Individual faculty may be involved in more than one research area.

The Neuroscience Graduate Program also sponsors an annual campus-wide Neuroscience retreat, weekly seminar series, and a graduate student Neuroscience Journal Club.

Undergraduate Program

There is no undergraduate program in Neuroscience.

Graduate Program

Neuroscience: PhD

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Courses

Neuroscience

Faculty and Instructors

+ Indicates this faculty member is the recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award.

Faculty

Hillel Adesnik, Assistant Professor. Neural basis of perception, neuroscience, neurobiology .
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Martin S. Banks, Professor. Stereopsis, virtual reality, optometry, multisensory interactions, self-motion perception, vision, depth perception, displays, picture perception, visual ergonomics.
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Helen Bateup, Assistant Professor. Molecular and cellular neuroscience, neurodevelopmental disorders, autism, epilepsy.
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Diana Bautista, Associate Professor. Ion channels, sensory physiology, chemosensation, touch, thermosensation, somatosensory system.
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George Bentley, Professor. Hormones and behavior, neuroendocrinology of reproduction.
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Eric Betzig, Professor. Biophysics.

Sonia Bishop, Assistant Professor. Neural mechanisms supporting attention, emotion and their interactions; individual differences in cognitive control and emotional responsivity; neural substrate of anxiety; genetic factors modulating recruitment of cortical control and limbic affective mechanisms.
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Kristofer Bouchard, Adjunct Professor. Biology, Engineering.

Steve Brohawn, Assistant Professor. Neurobiology.
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Silvia Bunge, Professor. Cognition, human brain function, development.
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Jose M. Carmena, Professor. Brain-machine interfaces, neural ensemble computation, neuroprosthetics, sensorimotor learning and control.
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Christopher J. Chang, Professor. Chemistry, inorganic chemistry, neuroscience, bioinorganic chemistry, general physiology, organic chemistry, new chemical tools for biological imaging and proteomics, new metal complexes for energy catalysis and green chemistry, chemical biology.
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Anne Collins, Assistant Professor. Human learning, decision-making and executive functions, Computational modeling at multiple levels (cognitive and neuroscience), Behavioral, EEG, drug and genes studies in healthy or patient populations Human learning, decision-making and executive functions, Computational modeling at multiple levels (cognitive and neuroscience), Behavioral, EEG, drug and genes studies in healthy or patient populations .
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Emily Cooper, Assistant Professor. 3D vision, depth perception, computational neuroscience, augmented and virtual reality, perceptual graphics.
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Mark T. D'Esposito, Professor. Cognitive neuroscience, psychology, working memory, frontal lobe function, functional MRI, neurology, brain imaging, dopamine.
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Yang Dan, Professor. Neuronal circuits, mammalian visual system, electrophysiological, psychophysical and computational techniques, visual cortical circuits, visual neurons.
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Michael Deweese, Assistant Professor. Machine learning, computation, systems neuroscience, auditory cortex, neural coding.
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Andrew Dillin, Professor. Endocrinology, genetics of aging.

David Feinberg, Adjunct Professor. MRI technology development, mapping columnar and visual circuitry, modeling neurovascular coupling.
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+ Dan Feldman, Associate Professor. Neurobiology, learning, neurophysiology, sensory biology.
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+ Marla B. Feller, Professor. Neurophysiology, developmental neuroscience.
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Yvette Fisher, Assistant Professor. Neurobiology, Flexibility of neural circuits for spatial navigation.
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John Gerard Flannery, Professor. Neurobiology, optometry, vision science, cell and molecular biology of the retina in normal and diseased states.
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David Foster, Professor. Behavioral neurophysiology of spatial learning and memory, hippocampus replay, computational models of reinforcement learning and navigationf.

Jack L. Gallant, Professor. Vision science, form vision, attention, fMRI, computational neuroscience, natural scene perception, brain encoding, brain decoding.
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Andrea Gomez, Assistant Professor. Neurobiology, instructive cues for neural form and function.
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Ming Hsu, Assistant Professor. Cognitive neuroscience, experimental economics, behavioral economics, neuroeconomics.
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Ehud Y. Isacoff, Professor. Ion channel function, synaptic plasticity, neural excitability, synaptic transmission, the synapse.
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Rich Ivry, Professor. Cognitive neuroscience, behavior, cognition, brain, attention, coordination, psychology, motor and perceptual processes in normal and neurologically impaired populations, temporal processing, executive control.
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Lucia F. Jacobs, Professor. Cognitive and brain evolution, adaptive patterns in spatial memory, spatial navigation, cognitive sex differences and decision making.
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William J. Jagust, Professor. Neuroscience, cognition, brain aging, dementia, imaging, Alzheimerandamp,#039,s disease.
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Na Ji, Associate Professor. Biophysics.
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Daniela Kaufer, Professor. Neuroscience, stress, neural stem cells, epilepsy, traumatic brain injury, blood brain barrier, prosocial behavior.
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Stanley A. Klein, Professor. Optometry, vision science, spatial vision modeling, psychophysical methods and vision test design, corneal topography and contact lens design, source localization of evoked potentials, fMRI, amblyopia.
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Robert Thomas Knight, Professor. Cognitive neuroscience, language, physiology, memory, attention, psychology, working memory, neuropsychology, human prefrontal cortex, neural mechanisms of cognitive processing, sensory gating, sustained attention, ad novelty detection.
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Richard H. Kramer, Professor. Cells, synaptic transmission, chemical signaling between neurons, ion channels, electrical signals, chemical reagents, synapses.
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+ Lance Kriegsfeld, Associate Professor. NeuroendocrinologyCircadian Biology, Neuroimmunology, cancer biology, animal behavior.
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Stephan Lammel, Assistant Professor. Neuroscience, Optogenetics, dopamine, addiction, depression.
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Markita Landry, Assistant Professor. Chemistry.
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Dennis M. Levi, Professor. Optometry, vision science, pattern vision, abnormal visual development.
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Lexin Li, Professor. Neuroimaging data analysis, networks data analysis, personalized recommendation, statistical genetics, computational biology, dimension reduction, variable selection, high dimensional regressions, statistical machine learning, data mining, computational statistics.
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Chunlei Liu, Professor. Brain imaging, magnetic resonance imaging, remote neural modulation, biosystems and computational biology, signal processing.

Ellen Lumpkin, Professor. Cell and Developmental Biology, research focus: to elucidate force transduction mechanisms that initiate the senses of touch and pain.
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Michel Maharbiz, Professor. Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. Research Focus: Building micro- and nano- scale machine interfaces to cells and organisms, including development of neural dust technology.
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Evan W. Miller, Assistant Professor. Chemical biology, organic chemistry, fluorescence microscopy, neuroscience, imaging .

Bruno Olshausen, Professor. Visual perception, computational neuroscience, computational vision.
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Steven Piantadosi, Assistant Professor. Psychology, Research Focus: Understanding what computational processes support language acquisition, math learning, and general cognition.
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Teresa Puthussery, Assistant Professor. Retinal Neurobiology and Neurophysiology.
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Austin Roorda, Professor. Vision Science and Optometry, development of adaptive optics to track, measure, and correct the eye's imperfection.
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Kaoru Saijo, Assistant Professor. Molecular Cell Biology.

David Schaffer, Professor. Neuroscience, biomolecular engineering, bioengineering, stem cell biology, gene therapy.
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Kristin Scott, Professor. Nerve cell connectivity in developing nervous systems, taste perception in the fruit fly, taste neural circuits, sensory maps in the brain.
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Karthik Shekhar, Assistant Professor. Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Single-cell genomics and statistical inference.
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Michael Silver, Associate Professor. Cognitive neuroscience, pharmacology, learning, attention, visual perception, neuroimaging.
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Fritz Sommer, Adjunct Professor. Bayesian methods, information theory, memory, sensory processing, visual system.
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Mark A. Tanouye, Professor. Genetics, neuroanatomy, electrophysiology, mechanisms of nervous system structure and function, drosophila mutants.
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W. Rowland Taylor, Professor. Retinal circuit function, neural architecture, immunohisochemical studies.
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Frederic Theunissen, Professor. Behavior, cognition, brain, psychology, birdsong, vocal learning, audition, neurophysiology, speech perception, computational neuroscience, theoretical neuroscience.
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Doris Tsao, Professor. Neurobiology, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. The Tsao lab seeks to understand how the brain builds a model of the visual world.
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Matthew P. Walker, Professor. Plasticity, learning, memory, fMRI, emotion, sleep, EEG.
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Jonathan David Wallis, Professor. Prefrontal cortex, neurophysiology, executive control, decision making.
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Kevin Weiner, Assistant Professor. Psychology.
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David Whitney, Professor. Cognitive neuroscience, cognition, attention, visual perception, vision, visually guided action.
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Linda Wilbrecht, Assistant Professor. Neuroscience, addiction, early life adversity, adolescence.
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Ke Xu, Assistant Professor. Biophysical chemistry, cell biology at the nanoscale, super-resolution microscopy, single-molecule spectroscopy.
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Michael Yartsev, Assistant Professor. Neuroscience, engineering.
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