Christopher D Harvey

Christopher D. Harvey, Ph.D.

Professor of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School
Director of Admissions, Program in Neuroscience
Harvey Lab Website

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Christopher Harvey, PhD

Professor of Neurobiology
Department of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School

Email: christopher_harvey@hms.harvard.edu
Website: Harvey Lab website – more information about Christopher Harvey’s research (opens in a new tab)

The Aim

The Harvey Lab studies how brain circuits guide navigation, memory, and decision‑making.

The Impact

Finding your way from point A to point B requires the brain to integrate memory, sensory information, and ongoing decisions in real time. The Harvey Lab uses virtual‑reality environments and advanced imaging tools to watch these computations unfold in living neural circuits, identifying the specific cell types and connection patterns that make them possible. Because working memory and navigation are impaired in Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, and traumatic brain injury, this research lays important groundwork for understanding what goes wrong in such conditions, and what interventions might be possible.

A Closer Look

Publications View
Data-derived agents reveal dynamical reservoirs in mouse cortex for adaptive behavior.
Authors: Authors: Zhou S, Badman RP, Arlt C, Rajan K, Harvey CD.
bioRxiv
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Specialized structure of neural population codes in parietal cortex outputs.
Authors: Authors: Safaai H, Wang AY, Kira S, Blanco Malerba S, Panzeri S, Harvey CD.
Nat Neurosci
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An optical brain-machine interface reveals a causal role of posterior parietal cortex in goal-directed navigation.
Authors: Authors: Sorrell E, Wilson DE, Rule ME, Yang H, Forni F, Harvey CD, O'Leary T.
Cell Rep
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POCO: Scalable Neural Forecasting through Population Conditioning.
Authors: Authors: Duan Y, Chaudhry HT, Ahrens MB, Harvey CD, Perich MG, Deisseroth K, Rajan K.
Adv Neural Inf Process Syst
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An optical brain-machine interface reveals a causal role of posterior parietal cortex in goal-directed navigation.
Authors: Authors: Sorrell E, Wilson DE, Rule ME, Yang H, Forni F, Harvey CD, O'Leary T.
bioRxiv
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The influence of cortical activity on perception depends on behavioral state and sensory context.
Authors: Authors: Russell LE, Fisek M, Yang Z, Tan LP, Packer AM, Dalgleish HWP, Chettih SN, Harvey CD, Häusser M.
Nat Commun
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Synaptic wiring motifs in posterior parietal cortex support decision-making.
Authors: Authors: Kuan AT, Bondanelli G, Driscoll LN, Han J, Kim M, Hildebrand DGC, Graham BJ, Wilson DE, Thomas LA, Panzeri S, Harvey CD, Lee WA.
Nature
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Specialized structure of neural population codes in parietal cortex outputs.
Authors: Authors: Safaai H, Wang AY, Kira S, Malerba SB, Panzeri S, Harvey CD.
bioRxiv
View full abstract on Pubmed
A cell-type-specific error-correction signal in the posterior parietal cortex.
Authors: Authors: Green J, Bruno CA, Traunmüller L, Ding J, Hrvatin S, Wilson DE, Khodadad T, Samuels J, Greenberg ME, Harvey CD.
Nature
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A distributed and efficient population code of mixed selectivity neurons for flexible navigation decisions.
Authors: Authors: Kira S, Safaai H, Morcos AS, Panzeri S, Harvey CD.
Nat Commun
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