My name is Daniel Toker, and I am a neuroscientist at UCLA dedicated to understanding and treating unconsciousness.
After graduating magna cum laude from Princeton, I pursue my Ph.D. in neuroscience at UC Berkeley. There, with the support of a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, I worked on characterizing information flow through large-scale brain circuits, and how that information flow is disrupted during unconscious states like generalized seizures and anesthesia.
In my post-doctoral fellowship at UCLA, I continued this line of research, diving deeper into the neurobiology of unconsciousness. This has involved a diverse array of tools, from growing and studying human brain organoids, to analyzing patterns of neural information flow across different brain states, to creating new large-scale simulations of the brain, to investigating new medical treatments for disorders of consciousness like coma and vegetative states. This work is supported by several grants, including a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) Individual Postdoctoral Fellowship from the NIH.
Beyond my research, I am committed to making science accessible and inclusive, which is why I make all my papers and code freely available online. That’s also why I’m here, blogging, Tik Tok-ing, Instagramming, and working with folks in Hollywood to share my love for science and the brain.
For more details, please see my Curriculum Vitae.