Research

For a complete bibliography, please see Publications or this list at the US National Library of Medicine. Below we highlight some of our most recent work.

High density electrical stimulation applied to the head create electrical fields inside the brain.

Even weak fields create substantial changes in adaptation and functional connectivity in the brain. (J Neurophysiology, 2020)

Transcranial Current Stimulation

There is growing evidence that weak electrical currents applied to the head can improve brain function.

How this works, however, remains poorly understood. We combine non-invasive (fMRI and psychophysics) and invasive techniques (single cell recordings and two-photon imaging) to better understand this exciting new technique:

  • Kar K, Ito, T, Cole MW, Krekelberg B. Transcranial current stimulation attenuates BOLD adaptation and increases functional connectivity. Journal of Neurophysiology. 123(1):428-438 (2020)

  • Liu A, Vöröslakos M, Kronberg G, Henin S, Krause MR, Huang Y, Opitz A, Mehta A, Pack CC, Krekelberg B, Berényi A, Parra LC, Melloni L, Devinsky O, Buzsáki G. Immediate neurophysiological effects of transcranial electric stimulation. Nature Communications. 9(1):5092 (2018).

  • Kar K, Duijnhouwer J, Krekelberg B. Transcranial alternating current stimulation attenuates neuronal adaptation. Journal of Neuroscience 2266-16 (2017).

Funded by the Army Research Office, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institue of Aging, and the NIH Director's Office (R21MH113917,R01MH111766, R01NS120289).


V1 knows where you're looking. Activity distributed across many V1 neurons accurately reflect eye position, even when the eye is in motion. (Current Biology, 2019)

Visual Stability

We move our eyes about 3 times per second. Imagine what a video would look like if you moved the camera that often. How does the brain create a stable percept from its ever changing input?

  • A Stable Visual World in Primate Primary Visual Cortex. Morris & Krekelberg, Current Biology 29, 1471-1480 (2019).

  • Perisaccadic visual perception. Klingenhoefer & Krekelberg, Journal of Vision. 17(9): 1-14 (2017).

  • The Dorsal Visual System Predicts Future and Remembers Past Eye Position. Morris, Bremmer, & Krekelberg. Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience 10:9 (2016).


Funded by the National Eye Institute (R01 EY017605).

A shallow, but recurrent network with a single hidden layer has remarkable computational abilities that capture many of the properties of early visual processing.

Recurrent Connections

Cortical networks are dominated by local recurrent connections; what does this feedback do?

  1. Quiroga, M, Morris, A. P., & Krekelberg, B. Short-Term Attractive Tilt Aftereffects Predicted by a Recurrent Network Model of Primary Visual Cortex. Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience. 13, 1–14 (2019).

  • Joukes J, Yunguo Y, Victor J, Krekelberg B. Recurrent network dynamics; a link between form and motion. Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience 11:12 (2017).

  • Quiroga M, Morris AP, Krekelberg B. Adaptation without plasticity. Cell Reports 17(58):68 (2016).