Helen Schwerdt
Our goal is to develop tools that will allow us to elucidate brain function in healthy and pathological states in order to improve diagnosis & treatment of neurological disorders. We build implantable tools capable of probing multiple forms of brain activity—e.g. electrical and chemical—to provide a new way of understanding how the brain works and to better target sources of neural dysfunction. A key scientific goal is to understand the operations of dopamine (and other neurotransmitters) and neural plasticity in mediating learning, decision making, and mood regulation, especially as relates to the impairments seen in Parkinson's and/or severe mood disorders. We strive to develop the tools needed to understand these neural operations as well as to produce clinically viable neural interfaces capable of lifetime diagnostics and treatment in humans suffering from these debilitating disorders.