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

Faculty

Hillel Adesnik, Associate Professor. Neural basis of sensation, perception, and action.
Research Profile

Helen Bateup, Associate Professor. Molecular basis of synapse and circuit changes associated with epilepsy and autism.
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Diana Bautista, Professor. Molecular mechanisms underlying the sensations of itch, touch, and pain.
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Eric Betzig, Professor. Development of new tools for imaging and image analysis to enable biological discovery.
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Sonia Bishop, Associate Professor. Neural basis of attention, emotion, and anxiety. Individual differences in cognitive control and emotional responsivity.
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Kristofer Bouchard, Adjunct Assistant Professor. Functional organization and dynamic coordination of sensorimotor networks underlying learned, skilled behaviors.
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Steve Brohawn, Assistant Professor. Molecular basis of sensory transduction and electrical signaling, especially mechanosensation.
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Silvia Bunge, Professor. Neural mechanisms, development, and plasticity of higher cognitive functions in humans.
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Jose M. Carmena, Adjunct Professor. Neural basis of motor skill learning. Application to neural prostheses and development of neural dust technology.
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Christopher J. Chang, Professor. Chemical tools for imaging and optogenetics in neurobiology.
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Anne Collins, Associate Professor. Computational modeling of human learning, decision-making, and executive functions.
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Emily Cooper, Assistant Professor. Computational modeling of visual perception.
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Mark T. D'Esposito, Professor. Neural basis of high-level cognitive processes such as working memory and executive control.
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Yang Dan, Professor. Neural circuits controlling sleep; mechanisms of executive control. .
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Michael Deweese, Associate Professor. Neural mechanisms underlying auditory processing and selective attention in the cerebral cortex and artificial neural networks.
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Andrew Dillin, Professor. Genetic and molecular mechanisms regulating aging and aging-related disease.
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* Dan Feldman, Professor. Sensory processing and plasticity in the somatosensory cortex.
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* Marla B. Feller, Professor. Functional development and organization of neural circuits in the retina.
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Yvette Fisher, Assistant Professor. Flexibility of neural circuits for spatial navigation.
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John Gerard Flannery, Professor. Gene therapies for inherited retinal degenerations.
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David Foster, Associate Professor. Encoding of spatial memory and navigation toward rewards by neural ensembles in the hippocampus.
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Jack L. Gallant, Professor. Identifying cortical maps to discover how the brain represents information about the world and its own mental states.
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Andrea Gomez, Assistant Professor. Instructive cues for neural form and function.
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Ming Hsu, Associate Professor. Neural basis of economic and consumer decision-making.
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Ehud Y. Isacoff, Professor. Mechanisms of ion channel function, synapse development, plasticity, and neural circuit function.
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Richard Ivry, Professor. Cognition and action, with an emphasis on how people select actions, learn skills, and produce coordinated .
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William J. Jagust, Professor. Anatomic, biochemical, and neurochemical bases of brain aging and dementia.
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Na Ji, Associate Professor. Novel imaging methods to understand the brain.
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Daniela Kaufer, Acting Associate Dean and Professor. Molecular mechanisms of brain plasticity in response to stress and neurological insults.
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Robert Thomas Knight, Professor. Novel chemical reagents for non-invasive optical sensing and manipulation of ion channels and synapses.
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Richard H. Kramer, Professor. Novel chemical reagents for non-invasive optical sensing and manipulation of ion channels and synapses.
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+ Lance Kriegsfeld, Professor . Brain and endocrine regulation of circadian rhythms.
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Stephan Lammel, Associate Professor. Midbrain dopamine circuits in reward-based behaviors and pathological changes in addiction, depression and schizophrenia.
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Markita Landry, Assistant Professor. Exploiting nanomaterials to probe and characterize complex biological systems at the nano-scale; nanosensors for brain chemistry.
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Lexin Li, Professor. Statistical neuroimaging analysis, brain connectivity analysis, imaging causal inference, multimodal and longitudinal imaging analysis, and imaging tensor regression.
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Chunlei Liu, Associate Professor. MRI technology development for the study of neural circuits and modulation.
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Ellen Lumpkin, Professor. To elucidate force transduction mechanisms that initiate the senses of touch and pain.
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Michel Maharbiz, Adjunct Professor. Building micro- and nano- scale machine interfaces to cells and organisms, including development of neural dust technology.
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Evan W. Miller, Associate Professor. Development and application of molecular tools for studying neuroscience.
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Bruno Olshausen, Professor. Computational models of sensory coding and visual perception.
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Steven Piantadosi, Assistant Professor. Understanding what computational processes support language acquisition, math learning, and general cognition.
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Teresa Puthussery, Assistant Professor. Processing of visual signals in the healthy and diseased retina.
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Michael Rape, Professor. Molecular Mechanisms of Cell Fate Decisions in Development and Disease.
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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. Microglial cell maintenance of homeostasis in the brain and sex dimorphism in diseases.
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David Schaffer, Professor. Engineering stem cell and gene therapeutics.
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Randy Schekman, Professor. Membrane assembly, vesicular transport, and membrane fusion among organelles of the secretory pathway.
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Kristin Scott, Professor. Taste detection, processing, and behaviors.
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Karthik Shekhar, Assistant Professor. Single-cell genomics and statistical inference.
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Michael Silver, Professor. Neurophysiological and neurochemical substrates of human visual perception, attention, and learning.
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Friedrich Sommer, Adjunct Professor. Theoretical principles of learning and perception.
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Rowland Taylor, Professor. Structure and function of neural circuits in the retina.
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Frederic Theunissen, Professor. Perception of complex sounds.
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Doris Tsao, Professor. The Tsao lab seeks to understand how the brain builds a model of the visual world.
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Matthew P. Walker, Professor. The impact of sleep on human health and disease.
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Joni Wallis, Professor. Neuronal mechanisms underlying high-level cognitive and behavioral processes.
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Kevin Weiner, Associate Professor. Models to explain how brain structure and function contribute to measurable behaviors (e.g. face perception).
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David Whitney, Professor. Visual perception and attention.
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Linda Wilbrecht, Associate Professor. Experience dependent plasticity and the development of circuits involved in value based decision making.
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Ke Xu, Associate Professor. Super-resolution fluorescence microscopy to interrogate cellular processes at the nanoscale.
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Michael Yartsev, Associate Professor. Neural basis of complex spatial and acoustic behaviors.
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Emeritus Faculty

Martin S. Banks, Professor Emeritus. Visual space perception and sensory combination.
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John Clarke, Professor of the Graduate School of Physics. Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices such as ultralow-frequency MRI.
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Howard Fields, Adjunct Emeritus Professor. Mesolimbic circuits involved in goal directed behaviors, opioid regulation of synaptic function.
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Ralph D. Freeman, Professor Emeritus. Central Visual Pathways: Systems and Computational Neuroscience.
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John Ngai, Professor Emeritus. Understanding the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying the function, development and regeneration of the vertebrate olfactory system.
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Geoff Owen, Professor Emeritus. Comprehensive theory of retinal image processing.
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Mu-Ming Poo, Professor Emeritus. Formation and plasticity of synapses, and activity-dependent modification of neural circuits.
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Gerald Westheimer, Professor of the Graduate School Division of Neurobiology. Perceptual learning in spatial visual tasks.
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Bob Zucker, Professor of the Graduate School Division of Neurobiology. Mechanisms underlying regulation of synaptic transmission.
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