Michael Cole is professor of neuroscience and psychology at the Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience at Rutgers University-Newark, where he directs the Cole Neurocognition Laboratory. His research focuses on how the brain’s network organization gives rise to cognition, using functional MRI, EEG and computational modeling to understand the dynamics underlying cognitive control, intelligence and rapid instructed task learning.
He is the originator of activity flow modeling, an approach that uses empirically measured brain connectivity to predict and explain how cognitive activations are generated, with applications across psychiatric and neurodegenerative conditions. He is also the author of a forthcoming book, “Brain Flows: How Network Dynamics Compose the Human Mind” (Princeton University Press), in which he argues that the flow of activity across brain networks is the fundamental process composing mental function.
Cole earned his Ph.D. in neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh, where he was affiliated with the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, and his B.A. in cognitive science with highest honors at the University of California, Berkeley. He completed his postdoctoral training at Washington University in St. Louis. He has been recognized as a Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher and received the Cognitive Neuroscience Society’s Young Investigator Award. He serves as a senior editor at Network Neuroscience.
