Michael J. Goard, PhD

Dr. Michael Goard received his B.A. in Psychology from Reed College and his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of California, Berkeley. As a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he developed approaches for imaging and manipulating the activity of large populations of neurons in behaving mice. The overarching goal of Dr. Goard’s current research at the University of California at Santa Barbara is to understand the cortical circuits underlying visual processing, decision-making and navigation. To this end, the lab employs large-scale two-photon calcium imaging, multi-unit electrophysiology, and optogenetic manipulation of neural activity in behaving mice.