Rate My Professor Stephen Cowen

Stephen Cowen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at The University of Arizona, serving as Director of the Cognition & Neural Systems Program and Director of the Decision Making and Learning Laboratory. He directs the Cowen Laboratory, which investigates neural mechanisms underlying learning, decision-making, motor control, and sleep. Cowen earned his Ph.D. in Psychology with a minor in Neuroscience from the University of Arizona in 2007, where his dissertation examined selective delay activity in the medial prefrontal cortex. He previously obtained a B.A. in Business Administration from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1992. After completing postdoctoral fellowships and research positions at The Neurosciences Institute in San Diego from 2007 to 2012, he joined The University of Arizona as an Assistant Professor in Psychology in 2012, advancing to Associate Professor in 2019. He holds affiliate appointments in the Evelyn F. McKnight Brain Institute, Cognitive Science Graduate Interdisciplinary Program, Neuroscience Graduate Interdisciplinary Program, Physiological Sciences Graduate Interdisciplinary Program, Applied Biosciences Graduate Interdisciplinary Program, and Biomedical Engineering.

Cowen's research employs advanced techniques including Neuropixels extracellular recording, optogenetics, fast-scan voltammetry for dopamine measurement, and custom behavioral assays to study how neuron ensembles coordinate activity in brain regions such as the hippocampus, striatum, motor cortex, and prefrontal cortex. His lab explores age-related declines in memory consolidation during sleep, neural disruptions in Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, and chronic pain, and the therapeutic potential of sub-anesthetic ketamine in correcting pathological neural patterns like L-DOPA-induced dyskinesia. Key publications include “Decoupling of motor cortex to movement in Parkinson’s dyskinesia rescued by sub-anaesthetic ketamine” (Brain, 2024), “Dopamine Release Dynamics in the Nucleus Accumbens Are Modulated by the Timing of Electrical Stimulation Pulses” (ACS Chemical Neuroscience, 2024), “Automated system for training and assessing reaching and grasping behaviors in rodents” (Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 2024), “Aged rats exhibit altered behavior-induced oscillatory activity, place cell firing rates, and spatial information content in the CA1 region of the hippocampus” (Journal of Neuroscience, 2022), and “Age-associated changes in waking hippocampal sharp-wave ripples” (Hippocampus, 2020). Cowen has secured funding from the Michael J. Fox Foundation, Evelyn F. McKnight Brain Research Foundation, G. Harold and Leila Y. Mathers Charitable Foundation, Blasker-Rose-Miah Award, and LuMind Foundation. He serves as a referee for journals including Neuron, The Journal of Neuroscience, and PNAS.