Ignacio Saez, PhD

Dr. Saez’s research focuses on the study of the neural basis of human cognition, particularly decision-making, through the examination of invasive brain activity in neurosurgical patients. He combines human electrophysiological and electrochemical recordings during decision-making tasks with computational models of reward and choice. This experimental combination provides access to fast, highly detailed, high signal-to-noise, multi-areal neural activity from the human brain, which is highly suited to studying the relationship of distributed neural activity to aspects of cognition and the use of neurostimulation techniques to modulate behavior and treat cognitive aspects of disease. Dr. Saez completed his postdoctoral training in the laboratories of Drs. Read Montague (Virginia Tech), Robert T. Knight and Ming Hsu (UC Berkeley), where he trained in invasive recordings (DBS, ECoG, sEEG), behavior and computational (RL) models of reward. Prior to that, he obtained his PhD in Neuroscience in Michael Friedlander’s lab (Baylor College of Medicine), where he carried out in vitro electrophysiological recordings in animal models. Before joining Sinai, Dr. Saez held a faculty position at the University of California, Davis.