The Neural Engineering Research and Design of Colorado (N.E.R.D. Co) lab, jointly run by Daniel R. Kramer MD, and John A. Thompson, PhD. Our group is a systems neuroscience lab interested in two foundational aspects of brain function and how aberrations result in disease states. Our lab utilizes intracranial recordings obtained during surgery as rare and privileged opportunities to record directly from the human brain.

First, we aim to understand how the human brain achieves the nearly infinite flexibility of Executive Function (EF). Executive Function describes the set of cognitive control mechanisms that allow for future planning, problem solving, and abstraction. The subcomponents include working memory, task-switching, inhibition, behavior sequencing, and feature selection and although present in virtually all animals, are present in humans at a level that separates us from even our closest ancestors. As such, disruption of EF has devastating consequences and is often the feature that is most challenging to treat in disorders from Alzheimer’s disease to traumatic brain injury to Parkinson’s disease. Our work aims to understand these mechanisms at the level of neural populations and to work towards solutions to disrupted states in EF.

Second, at the core of many disease states, particularly movement disorders like Parkinson’s disease and essential tremor, are a set of critical circuits that involve the basal ganglia, the thalamus, the cerebellum, and the cortex. Although important work has been done establishing the connections between these areas, and the molecular and network disruptions that result in disease states, we lack a good understanding of the true function of these areas. Through intracranial recordings acquired as part of surgical interventions, our lab aims to understand the functional role the thalamus, basal ganglia, and cortex play in normal action and in disease states.