About
My Work:
I have had a longstanding interest in consciousness that started with my undergraduate study of philosophy. My research group investigates consciousness across multiple disciplines (neuroscience, anesthesiology, biomedical engineering, psychology, philosophy) as well as multiple models and species. We are primarily interested in how the brain synthesizes or binds information to generate normal conscious experience and how these integrative processes are disrupted during sleep, general anesthesia, and other altered states. To quantify this, we use various brain connectivity measures, surrogates of information transfer, and graph-theoretical approaches to state transitions in networks. I also direct (and founded) the Center for Consciousness Science at the University of Michigan Medical School, which is devoted to the multidisciplinary study of consciousness. This is an exciting time to be investigating this topic, which has deep scientific, clinical, philosophical, ethical, theological, artistic and existential implications.
