Research
I work across cognitive neuroscience, neuromodulation, psychophysiology, and multimodal signal processing. My projects investigate relationships between brain activity, behavior, and conscious experience, alongside the practical question of how to build systems that can measure and influence those relationships.
Cognition and conscious experience
I am interested in how attention, self-related processing, and our relationship to sensory experience change during meditation and other states of consciousness. My work combines neural and physiological measurements with behavioral measures and descriptions of subjective experience. Phenomenology matters here because how we distinguish and describe experiences shapes the questions an experiment can answer.
This research includes a published study of posterior cingulate stimulation and changes in default mode network activity and subjective experience, a randomized meditation-training study I co-designed, and two retreat studies I co-designed and co-led. Together, these projects examine meditation through laboratory experiments, repeated measurements during training, and research in naturalistic settings.
Neuromodulation and individual differences
I use transcranial focused ultrasound and photobiomodulation to investigate how stimulation affects neural activity and experience. Understanding why people respond differently has interested me for years. At SEMA Lab, responder–non-responder variability was a recurring problem, and individualized approaches seemed a natural direction to pursue.
Several projects have explored aspects of this question, including individualized fMRI targeting and stimulation related to individual alpha frequency. My 2025 paper in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging advocates for a precision wellness approach that uses individual neurocognitive profiles to guide meditation and stimulation protocols. It emphasizes equanimity as a target, alongside more precise stimulation, clearer psychological measurement, and longitudinal research.
Measurement, signal processing, and brain–computer interfaces
I develop acquisition and analysis systems that bring together EEG, imaging, eye tracking, physiology, and behavior. My work includes synchronized EEG–tFUS systems, real-time EEG pipelines, and a current BCI project integrating EEG and eye tracking.
I also investigate what these measurements reliably tell us. My published EEG complexity research examined both the reliability of candidate measures and their relationship to depression. More recent computational projects explore EEG reconstruction and light transport in photobiomodulation. These projects connect signal processing with experimental interpretation: understanding how acquisition, processing, and modeling decisions affect the conclusions we draw.
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My methods include EEG and fMRI analysis, multimodal psychophysiological recording, neuromodulation, and experimental instrumentation, with programming in Python, MATLAB, and R. See my publications and CV for the full research record.