Our Research
We create new treatments for mental disorders, including depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, addictions, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. These illnesses are the biggest source of disability and suffering, and current treatments (medications and talk therapy) do not work well enough. We design medical devices and systems that make precisely targeted changes in the electrical activity of specific brain circuits. By restoring normal brain circuit function, we hope to reverse the symptoms of mental illness with far fewer side effects than existing treatments. Our work spans animal models (mostly rodents), healthy human volunteers, and patients living with mental illness. Part of the lab conducts clinical trials of these new therapies, bringing our ideas off the benchtop and into the clinic.
Making A Difference In Real Patients' Lives
We only take on projects that have a real chance of turning into a new medical device (or a new use for a device that already exists). Because people will make serious medical decisions based on our findings, everything we do is held to high standards of methodological and mathematical rigor. That includes publishing the experiments that didn’t work or that contradict what “everybody knows is true”. We share our code and our data as openly as we can, especially through open source and open science projects. We work hard, because patients are counting on us, but we take the time to get together as a team and to support each other both technically and emotionally.
Be Part Of The Change
We need two key kinds of support: smart, dedicated people and the resources to help those people do their best work. For the first, we are always looking for team members, from undergraduate to staff scientist, who want to put their energy and their passion into creating new treatments. The “Join Us” link describes more about current opportunities and the type of people who do well in our lab. For the second, we pride ourselves on ideas that go just beyond the cutting edge — but those research projects are the hardest to support. Learn more about how you can help seed those potential breakthroughs, the ones that might be a little unusual but might also change everything.