Howard C. Nusbaum

Howard Nusbaum's research engages questions around the fundamental nature of wisdom and on the basic cognitive and neural mechanisms that underlie wisdom. In addition, he studies the cognitive and neural mechanisms that mediate communication and thinking from an interdisciplinary perspective. His research combines a wide range of methods from different disciplines, including behavioral research methods of experimental psychology, computational modeling, analytic methods of linguistics and neuroscience methods such as functional neuroimaging.

Prof. Nusbaum’s past research has investigated the effects of sleep on learning, adaptive processes in language learning and the neural mechanisms of speech communication. His current research is investigating how experience can lead to increases in wisdom and changes in insight and economic decisions, as well as the role of sleep in cognitive creativity and abstraction.

In addition, he is co-director of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience.