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Buzsáki Lab

A search for a neural syntax

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Buzsáki Lab

A search for a neural syntax

Continue

NewsPeter Petersen ADMIN2026-09-10T10:59:24-04:00

Research Goals

Today’s cognitive neuroscience largely follows the tradition of empiricism by looking for correspondences between ‘stimuli’ in the external world and their responses or ‘representations’ in the brain. This approach works well (sort of) in primary sensory areas but typically fails when cognitive or emotional mechanisms are to be investigated. The empiricist method is a bit like learning words in a foreign language, i.e., collecting correspondences between a known and a new language. The initial progress is fast. One can get by in a foreign country with just 100 words of vocabulary. However, when it comes to truly understanding a language, one needs to know the grammar, the syntactical rules that allow for the generation of virtually infinite combinations from finite numbers of lexical elements. Syntax allows for the segmentation of information into a temporal progression of discrete elements with ordered and hierarchical relationships (e.g. tempo, punctuation, etc), resulting in congruent interpretation of meaning. We endeavor to study the syntax, and not just the vocabulary, of the brain.

People

Meet our team of passionate researchers.

Publications

Complete list of peer-reviewed publications, books, chapters, reviews and essays.

Resources

Buzcode, CellExplorer, data standards and our Github repository.

News

Follow our latest scientific advances, read interviews, find newly published papers, and meet the new researchers in our lab

New PBS program: What’s your brain’s role in creating space and time?

Thomas Hainmueller2023-04-24T09:35:42-04:00March 21st, 2023|

https://youtu.be/OV9MnAZLmMQ New Program by PBS: Drawing from figures and comments by ourselves and others they give a thorough introduction to space and time in the brain!

Congratulations to Marisol Soula and Manuel Valero

Thomas Hainmueller2023-03-08T17:18:34-05:00March 8th, 2023|

Congratulations to Marisol for defending her PhD thesis on 2/21/2023! She now continues her journey to become a physician-scientist. Congratulations to Manu, who completed his postdoc and will have is [...]

Congratulations to…

Peter Petersen2022-12-22T15:27:30-05:00December 22nd, 2022|

Anna Maslarova for receiving a two-year fellowship from the Deutsche Forschunggemeinschaft (Federal Republic of Germany) Noam Nitzan for receiving a two-year fellowship from the Swiss National Foundation and Christopher Lafferty for receiving [...]

NPR News: Time cells in the brain help record memories in the right sequence

Peter Petersen2022-12-22T03:29:27-05:00December 22nd, 2022|

For 'time cells' in the brain, what matters is what happens in the moment. Listen to the 4 minutes news section on NPR on how the brain keeps [...]

Interview: How does your brain perceive the world around you?

Peter Petersen2022-06-19T16:27:00-04:00June 19th, 2022|

Neuroscientists have struggled for decades to fully understand how the brain takes in information from the outside world and makes near instantaneous decisions. Dr. György Buzsáki is [...]

The Chinese edition of The Brain From Inside Out is released

Peter Petersen2022-06-03T02:47:46-04:00June 3rd, 2022|

Buzsáki, G. The Brain from Inside Out - In Chinese Is there a right way to study how the brain works? Following the empiricist’s tradition, the most [...]