Timothy Hanks is associate professor at the Center for Neuroscience and Department of Neurology at the University of California, Davis. His research focuses on elucidating the neural mechanisms that underlie decision-making and executive function. For his graduate training, he worked with Michael Shadlen at the University of Washington to study decision-making processes in both humans and non-human primates using a range of techniques including electrophysiology, microstimulation and computational modeling. For his postdoctoral training, he worked with Carlos Brody at Princeton University to develop a rodent model that could be used to probe the neural mechanisms of deliberative decision making and expanded his toolkit to include pharmacological and optogenetic techniques.

The Hanks lab’s primary approach is to train humans and rodents to perform complex behavioral tasks that are carefully designed to allow us to develop mathematical descriptions of the underlying decision processes. In rodents, his lab combines high-throughput, automated training methods with the rapidly expanding toolkit of cutting-edge techniques available for rodents such as optogenetics, high-density neural recordings and optical methods to both measure and manipulate neural activity and neuromodulation across a range of brain regions, including cortical and subcortical networks. He uses the knowledge gained from these experiments to develop and constrain neural population and circuit-level descriptions of the computations that underlie decision making and executive control. The long-term goal of his research is to connect general principles of decision making and executive control to neural mechanisms, thus paving the way for the development of more principled treatments for neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders.