Prof. Yuval Nir

We study sleep, anesthesia, neuromodulation, and sensory processing across states, with combination of human research (EEG, fMRI, behavior, and intracranial recordings in patients) and rodent models (electrophysiology, optogenetics, and pharmacology). Sleep is a universal behavior that is present across the animal kingdom and is essential for maintaining normal brain activity, health, and cognition, but what exactly is it about brain activity during sleep that is so crucial for restoring our normal cognition? Ongoing research directions investigate (1) what mediates loss-of-consciousness and disconnection from the external world during sleep and anesthesia, (2) how sleep promotes learning and memory consolidation, and (3) how sleep can be used as a powerful window into brain health, improving diagnosis prognosis and offering novel therapeutic interventions in a wide array of neuropsychiatric diseases and neurodegeneration.