Department of Bioengineering
The Christenson Wick Lab
Neural patterns of healthy brain function 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.
Our lab manipulates neural timing directly to uncover how its disruption drives problems with learning and memory, and how restoring it can rescue brain function. We're especially interested in how the brain's rich diversity of cell types, which normally gives it resilience and adaptability, breaks down with age and disease. A major goal of our work is to find 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, controlling neural activity relative to endogenous brain rhythms, signal processing, and animal models of epilepsy and aging.
People
Meet the Christenson Wick Lab, a team composed of biologists, neuroscientists and bioengineers.
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.