Dr. Anish Mitra is a neuroscientist and psychiatrist interested in understanding how neural activity in large-scale networks causes mental illness.

Mammalian brain activity is organized into large-scale networks that span the entire brain. Such networks include primary sensory and motor networks like the visual and somatosensory networks, but also higher order cognitive networks such as the default mode and salience networks. Despite decades of correlative research relating the function of these networks to various behaviors, causal tests of the cognitive functions of large-scale networks have remained elusive. In our work, we aim to combine large-scale optical imaging and optogenetics in mice with human studies to develop causal understandings and control principles for how large-scale networks contribute to behavior in health and disease.