The Cortical Circuits & Cognition Lab is jointly led by Drs. Jong-Cheol Rah and Joon Ho Choi, who believe that combining experimental and theoretical approaches is essential to uncover how the cortex works.
Lab Head
Jong-Cheol Rah, Ph.D.
Dr. Rah leads the Cortical Circuits & Cognition Lab, focusing on the experimental dissection of cortical and thalamocortical circuits using electrophysiology, imaging, and behavioral paradigms. His work aims to uncover how transient neural dynamics support perception and short-term memory—and how these processes are disrupted in neuropsychiatric disorders.
He received his Ph.D. in neurophysiology from the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, and completed postdoctoral training at the NIH (NINDS), and HHMI Janelia Research Campus.
Lab Head
Joon Ho Choi, Ph.D.
Dr. Joon Ho Choi is a physicist with a deep interest in computational neuroscience. He received his Ph.D. in nonlinear dynamics from Korea University, and completed his postdoctoral training at the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience.
He co-leads the lab with a focus on modeling thalamocortical circuits to understand how the cortex processes information. His theoretical and data-driven approaches complement the lab’s experimental efforts, bridging systems-level neuroscience with mechanistic modeling.