Dr. Ethan Blackwood

Ph.D. · Associate Professor · Principal Investigator

Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) · MIT

e.blackwood@mit.edu scholar.google.com/blackwood csail.mit.edu/blackwood ORCID: 0000-0002-4891-3221 Cambridge, MA 02139

Research Interests

Computational Neuroscience Neural Network Interpretability Cognitive Architectures Brain-Computer Interfaces Predictive Coding Machine Consciousness Spiking Neural Networks

Academic Positions

Associate Professor2021 – Present

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Dept. of EECS · CSAIL

Postdoctoral Research Fellow2018 – 2021

Stanford University

Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute · Advisor: Prof. Karl Deisseroth

Visiting ResearcherSummer 2020

DeepMind

Neuroscience Team · London, UK

Selected Publications

Sparse Attention Mechanisms in Biological Neural Systems: A Unifying Framework

Blackwood, E., Chen, L., Patel, R., Rodriguez, M.

Nature Neuroscience, 27(4), 612–628

2024 · IF: 28.3 · 234 citations · DOI: 10.1038/nn.2024.047

Toward Unified Theories of Consciousness: Bridging Global Workspace and Integrated Information

Blackwood, E., Tononi, G., Bayne, T.

PNAS, 120(12), e2215902120

2023 · IF: 11.2 · 189 citations · PMID: 36917320

Predictive Coding in Deep Neural Networks Mirrors Cortical Hierarchies

Blackwood, E., Kumar, A., Singh, P.

NeurIPS 2022 · Oral Presentation

2022 · 421 citations · arXiv:2206.03291

Optogenetic Dissection of Prefrontal Circuits Underlying Working Memory Consolidation

Blackwood, E., Lee, J., Deisseroth, K.

Science, 378(6623), 1004–1010

2022 · IF: 56.9 · 312 citations

Curriculum Vitae · Dr. Ethan Blackwood · Updated March 2026 · Cambridge, MA