Talk Title: “Cognitive Neuroscience and Neurotechnology: From the Laboratory into the ‘Real World”
Bio: Matthias Stangl is an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Psychological & Brain Sciences, and Neurosurgery at Boston University. Trained in electronics, computer science, and brain–computer interface research, he earned his PhD at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases, where he investigated the neural mechanisms of spatial navigation and the sources of age-related decline in navigation abilities. As a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles, he developed and applied neuroengineering approaches for mobile intracranial recordings and stimulation of human deep brain activity, enabling pioneering studies on how the human “cognitive map” operates during natural movement and behavior in real-world settings. He then launched his lab at Boston University in 2024, where his team combines invasive human electrophysiology, non-invasive neuroimaging, and computational methods to investigate how the human brain supports spatial navigation, memory, and other cognitive functions in everyday life — and how these functions are disrupted in aging and neurodegeneration. Matthias is an elected member of the Memory Disorders Research Society, a faculty member of BU’s Center for Systems Neuroscience, Cognitive Neuroimaging Center, and Neurophotonics Center, and a co-organizer of the annual Neuroscience of the Everyday World Conference.