Department of Bioengineering
The Christenson Wick Lab
Neural patterns of brain function in health and disease
OUR mission
Our mission is to understand how the timing of neural activity contributes to healthy brain function, and build better therapies for epilepsy and age-related cognitive decline.
The brain’s activity is highly organized, much like an orchestra, with each neuron spiking at specific times to support everyday brain functions. When this carefully orchestrated spike timing breaks down, problems arise. Our lab precisely manipulates neural spike timing to uncover how its disruption drives deficits in learning and memory, and how restoring proper spike timing can rescue brain function. We're especially interested in how the brain's rich diversity of cell types and connectivity patterns, which normally give the brain resilience and adaptability, break down with age and disease. A major goal of our work is to develop new, scalable strategies for realigning the brain's natural rhythms that can help people regardless of their access to specialized medical care.
Research
Our lab leverages in vivo and in vitro electrophysiology, circuit dissection, closed-loop control of neural activity relative to endogenous brain rhythms, signal processing, and animal models of epilepsy and aging.
People
Meet the Christenson Wick Lab, a growing team of neuroscientists and bioengineers. Now hiring!
Resources
Explore tools for inhibitory spike timing and theta phase-locked optogenetic manipulation (PhaSER)
Christenson Wick Lab News
The Christenson Wick Lab
Founded in 2026, the Christenson Wick Lab is a neuroscience research group within the University of Oregon's Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact. Based in the Department of Bioengineering in Eugene, Oregon, the Christenson Wick Lab explores the neural patterns behind healthy brain function, diseases like epilepsy and age-related cognitive decline.