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The Nyhus Lab is focused on human executive function and episodic memory. We approach these topics from a cognitive neuroscience perspective with the goals of understanding the characteristics of mental processes and how they are realized within the brain. Currently, students in my lab are using brain electrical activity (EEGs) to study how neural oscillations provide a mechanism for interaction among brain regions during memory retrieval. The lab regularly uses EEG along with behavioral paradigms to examine the moment by moment neural dynamics involved in human learning and memory.

The goal of my current research is to understand how neural circuits are able to flexibly produce a variety of outputs from the same set of underlying neurons and how they maintain functionality when stressed with naturally occurring environmental perturbations. We use two well-defined nervous systems found within crabs and lobsters, meaning that we know the precise connections between the neurons in each circuit of interest. Each nervous system contains at least one central pattern generator meaning that these circuits rhythmically produce stereotyped motor patterns without the need for exogenous input. Because we know how the neurons in these circuits synapse with one another, and because these circuits generate known behaviors, we can understand how experimental manipulations to the circuit's physiology would impact those behaviors.