Keith Hengen

Keith Hengen is an Assistant Professor of Biology at Washington University in St. Louis, leading research on neural computation and sleep mechanisms. His laboratory investigates how biological systems generate cognition, why sleep is essential for neural function, and how diseases disrupt neural information processing.

Experimental approaches include large-scale neural recordings in behaving animals, machine learning analysis, and molecular interventions. Recent publications examine neural homeostasis across sleep-wake cycles, anesthetic resistance in specialized physiological states, and activity-dependent plasticity in visual cortex.