Current Team
My goal is to understand how the brain allows us to sense, evaluate and respond to the world around us. We are actively working on methods to re-wire and repair eye-to-brain connections in common blinding diseases such as glaucoma. A second line of work deals with visually-evoked emotions and how perception combines with internal states to drive behavior.
Andrew D. Huberman, Ph.D.
Principal Investigator/Lab Head
My goal is to understand how the brain controls visually-evoked fear.
I am identifying the specific areas and circuits in the brain where fear resides and where fear responses can be modified.
I am learning to design and carry out experiments with genetic tools to control neuronal activity such as optogenetics and DREADDS. Currently I work with Dr. Heekyung Jung to understand the neural circuits for visually evoked contagion/empathy. I do histology and visual behavior analysis. I am also learning data analysis and statistics.
My goal is to learn applications of statistical methods to human behavioral data. I currently work with Dr. Melis Balban to quantify human cognitive performance after exposure to anxiety evoking heights in Virtual Reality. In particular, we are looking at the difference between healthy participants versus those with generalized anxiety. I use Matlab and R to clean, analyze, and present the data.
Lindsey Salay
Ph.D.
Jasmine Heu
Undergraduate Student,
B.S. Candidate Biology 2020
Lauren Saue-Fletcher
Undergraduate Student,
B.S. Candidate Mathematical and Computational Science, 2022
My goal is to understand the neural circuits for visually evoked empathy.
Currently I am focusing on where in the brain empathy stems from and how this trait is represented in the brain as an action-inducing neural circuit.
I am responsible for Lab Management and Operations. I am the contact for: Health and Safety, facilities, maintenance, space management and operations. I manage lab equipment, contracts, order and stock supplies and process and monitor financial transactions. I assist with organizing animal protocols, teaching materials, grant proposals, maintenance of the lab website and more.
My goal is to sleep 9 hours a night and 8 hours a day, and in between eat steak, run and make sure everyone in the Huberman Lab remembers that bulldogs are the best breed. I was born in Wilmington (port of Los Angeles), raised in San Diego and Oakland. I am afraid of nothing, kind to everyone and my partner’s name is Rory (Sphynx cat).
The goal of my project is to understand how levels of internal arousal impacts human responses to visual threat. I am working with Dr. Melis Balban, who has established Virtual Reality based heights paradigm that reliably evokes physiological and behavioral responses to the virtual presentation of heights. By analyzing the data from healthy subjects with low internal arousal and subjects with generalized anxiety and high internal arousal we are gaining a quantitative understanding on how arousal impacts behavior and cognitive performance.
Gary Holl
Lab Operations Manager & Admin
Costello Huberman
Lab Mascot
Marlon Joseph Washington
Undergraduate Student,
B.S. Candidate Bioengineering 2022
Heekyung Jung, Ph.D.
Post Doctoral Fellow
My goal is to understand visual fear: where in the brain it occurs and where and how it becomes linked to pathological states such as PTSD and trauma.
I am doing this work in humans, using state-of-the-art brain imaging, measures of autonomic arousal and custom virtual reality platforms.
My goal is to understand the molecular and cellular signals that promote regeneration of visual circuits after injury. I aim to do so by: 1) understanding how developmental mechanisms, such as axon guidance, establish precise connections from the retina to the brain 2) study how their expression patterns change in adults and 3) develop tools to reactivate these cues after injury
My goal is to learn neuroanatomy by hands-on experiments. Currently I work with Lindsey Salay, a Ph.D candidate. I am learning techniques used to run experiments, capture and analyze data, formulate traceable questions/hypotheses and test those questions in a scientifically rigorous manner. I am working on experiments related to how the brain controls visually evoked fear, where fear circuits resides, and where fear circuits can be modified. Some of the skills practiced include histology and behavioral measurements.
My goal is to learn more lab skills and also gain a better understanding of how visual circuits work. Currently I work with Dr. Supraja Varadarajan in her research to regenerate visual circuits. I am doing neuroanatomical work and behavioral measures, and learning data analysis and statistical approaches.
Supraja Varadarajan, Ph.D.
Post Doctoral Fellow
Alyssa Rivera
Certificate in Medical Humanities and B.S. Molecular Biology and Biochemistry w/ expected graduation date in 2021
Phung Le
Undergraduate Student,
B.S. Candidate Biology 2020
Melis Yilmaz Balban, Ph.D.
Post Doctoral Fellow
Huberman Lab
Department of Neurobiology