Thomas W. Elston, Ph.D.

Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow

The Institute for Neurobiology (Nieder Lab)

University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

email: thomas.elston@mnf@uni-tuebingen.de

Short Biography

Thomas received his B.Sc with honors in neuroscience from Baylor University (USA) in 2014 and his Ph.D in psychology and neuroscience from the University of Otago (New Zealand) in 2018. In 2018, Thomas was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship to study the neuronal basis of rule-switching in non-human primates in the Andreas Nieder’s lab at the University of Tübingen (Germany).

Thomas uses a combination of experimental and theoretical approaches to study the neuronal mechanisms underlying high-level cognitive functions which enable flexible, intelligent behavior. Thomas’ focus is on the frontal lobe, particularly the prefrontal cortex, as this brain area is the most developed in humans and its damage is related to a number of neuropsychiatric disorders.