Research

Click here for TIME's coverage of the lab's research:

"A group of really, really smart people thinking really, really hard about things"

What is the difference between a blink, a wink, and the dilation of a pupil? The basic nuts and bolts underlying human action remain mysterious from a mechanistic point of view.  At our laboratory, we investigate action control from an integrative cognitive neuroscience perspective, focusing on both unconscious brain mechanisms and conscious mechanisms (e.g., voluntary action and cognitive conflict, urges, working memory, impulse control).  One aim of the lab is to home in on the neural and cognitive mechanisms responsible for conscious states.  Many of our insights are synthesized in the publication, "Homing in on consciousness in the nervous system: An action-based synthesis" (2016), which appeared as a "target article" in the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences.  The current research of the laboratory has been supported by the Toyota Motor Corporation.