Kendall Stewart

Research Description

I work in the Hanks lab where I study the neural mechanisms and temporal dynamics of decision making. In order for decision making to occur, sensory information must be accumulated over time and integrated as evidence in support of a choice. I am primarily interested in how cortical and subcortical brain regions selectively integrate relevant sensory information as evidence while filtering out irrelevant information. My work thus far in the lab has involved pharmacological and optogenetic perturbation studies of various cortical regions while rats perform change-point detection behavioral tasks in order to determine their causal role in the decision making process. I am currently implementing a flexible decision making paradigm in order to study how brain regions integrate information in a context-dependent manner. I plan to use a combination of behavior, high-density electrophysiological recordings, optogenetics, and computational modelling to understand how dynamics within decision making circuits support differential encode relevant versus irrelevant sensory information.