We are a computational neuroscience research lab in the Neuroscience department at the University of Texas at Dallas, and affiliated with the Texas Artificial Intelligence Research Institute.

Intelligent behavior arises from the activity of billions of neurons interacting through trillions of synapses that are continuously modified by experience. Our group aims to elucidate this process by developing computational theories of learning, memory, and decision-making that causally relate changes at the synaptic, neural, and behavioral levels. Examples of questions we tackle using theory-driven approach include: What wiring constraints and plasticity rules enable the brain to rapidly learn meaningful structure from high-dimensional sensory input and generate complex movements? How is the resulting knowledge stored reliably in memory despite ongoing plasticity? How is that knowledge recruited to navigate cost-benefit trade-offs in decision-making?

A complementary aim is to develop data-driven statistical methods to generate compact descriptions of data across these levels. These methods respond to the growing need for characterizing data collected from naturalistic paradigms. Can we discover the vocabulary of animal behavior from multimodal recordings? Are there interpretable hidden states such as motivation and exploration that jointly dictate neural and behavioral dynamics over long timescales? Can we understand inter-individual differences and psychiatric traits in terms of the relative prevalence of those states?

We seek answers to questions like these by building mathematical models informed by neurobiology, and based on artificial neural networks and other tools from machine learning, and testing them in close collaboration with experimentalists. Projects in the lab range from analyzing data from collaborators to simulating models of neural circuits. We welcome students on campus interested in computational neuroscience and comfortable with math and programming to get in touch to discuss research opportunities. If you’re interested in pursuing a PhD in our group, you should apply to the Cognition and Neuroscience PhD program. Prospective postdocs may reach out by email.