Joel Frohlich is a neuroscience postdoc at the University of Tübingen in Germany, where he studies brain stimulation. He loves writing about science almost as much as he loves doing it, and his lay articles have been featured in online publications such as The Atlantic, Psychology Today, Aeon, Nautilus, and Motherboard.
Graduate
UCLA (Ph.D. 2018, Neuroscience Interdisciplinary Program)
Undergraduate
College of William and Mary (B.S. 2012, Neuroscience Major, Computational Biology Minor)
Skills
MATLAB
EEG Analysis
Neural signal entropy
Your ideal research study
I’m really fascinated by float tanks. These are special tanks filled with skin-temperature water and Epsom salt that allow a person to float effortlessly with no muscle tension in a dark, silent environment–no external stimuli. In the near future, I’d like to get funding to study the effects of this sensory reduction experience on both EEG and behavior. My hypothesis is that the float tank facilitates the same mental state as mindfulness meditation, but much faster and without explicit instructions.
What drew you to consciousness
As a teenager I was fascinated with the question of whether an artificial intelligence like HAL 9000 from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey could be conscious. It actually didn’t occur to me that consciousness was something that could be studied scientifically though until I read Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction by Susan Blackmore in college. From that point on, I was hooked.
Hobbies
In my free time, I love traveling with my wife Kathy and our dog Quark, exploring nature, and photographing the night sky: https://www.joelfrohlich.com/new-index#/astrophotography/
