Research Areas
My laboratory has worked on developing and applying high-resolution tools for controlling (optogenetics.org) and mapping (clarityresourcecenter.org) specific well-defined elements within intact and fully-assembled biological systems. We continue to develop and apply these and other tools (integrated with optical, electrophysiological, computational, molecular, and behavioral approaches) for the study of neural physiology and behavior in freely-moving mammals. We are interested both in natural behaviorally-relevant neural circuit dynamics, and in pathological dynamics underlying neuropsychiatric disease symptomatology and treatment.
My laboratory is based in the Bioengineering Department in the basement of the James H. Clark Center at Stanford. I also operate an optogenetics training facility (the Optogenetics Innovation Laboratory built on the second floor of the Clark Center with support from the BioX program at Stanford), and our 1050B Arastradero site where many of our newer technologies are being developed (the Arastradero campus is part of the Stanford CNC program and the site of CLARITY development and training).
I am also an inpatient/outpatient attending physician in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, focusing clinically on treatment-resistant depression and autism-spectrum disease. I treat these conditions and comorbid symptoms using among, other clinical tools, medications and high-speed neural stimulation. I've written about some of these experiences and stories in Projections (2021; karldeisseroth.org).