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Linking Brain and Mind:
Hongbin Wang, Ph.D., assistant professor, SHIS
Hongbin Wang, Ph.D.
How do people perceive, remember, make decisions and act? Wang is interested in understanding how the neural activities in the brain lead to knowledge and behavior.
His main approach is to use computers to model human cognition, at both the neural networks level and the observable behavioral level, and investigate relationships between the two levels. He also collects empirical data, through neuroimaging (FMRI and EEG) and psychological experiments, in order to evaluate the computer models.
“I have long been fascinated by the idea of using the computer to simulate human cognition,” Wang said. At Ohio State University, he earned his doctorate in cognitive psychology and an additional master’s degree in computer and information science with a specialty in artificial intellgience. This interdisciplinary background has played a role in his pursuing a unified computational link between the brain and the mind.
Working in the Center for Computational Biomedicine at SHIS, and the Keck Center for Computational Biology, he has been principal investigator on several grants from the Office of Naval Research and NASA.