Oscar Gonzalez

Dr. Gonzalez received his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of California, San Diego in 2019. He then moved to Stanford University where he completed his post-doctoral training in the lab of Dr. Luis de Lecea. Dr. Gonzalez joined the faculty of CU Boulder in the Department of Integrative Physiology in 2026.

Dr. Gonzalez’s research interests include biophysics of brain state dynamics, sleep/wake regulation, sleep disturbances in aging and neurodegeneration, infra-slow resting state fluctuations, computational modeling, and the interaction between sleep and epileptic seizures. His lab focuses on developing a comprehensive understanding of the biophysical mechanisms underlying the regulation of sleep architecture and brain state transitions.

Selected Publications:

· Donovan L.J., Brewer C.L., Bond S.F., Laslavic L.M., Lopez A.P., Colman L., Jordan C.E., Hansen L.H., González O.C., Pujari A., de Lecea L., Quarta M., Kauer J.A., Tawfik V.L., (2025). Aging and injury drive neuronal senescence in the dorsal root ganglia. Nature Neuroscience 28, 985-997.

· González O.C., Timofeev I., Bazhenov M. (2024). Role of ion concentration dynamics in epileptic seizures. In: Noebels JL, Avoli M, Rogawski MA, Olsen RW, Delgado-Escueta AV, editors. Jasper’s basic mechanisms of the epilepsies, 5th edition.

· Bian W., González O.C., de Lecea L. (2023). Adolescent sleep defects and dopaminergic hyperactivity in mice with a schizophrenia-linked Shank3 mutation. SLEEP 46:7, zsad131

· Tyree S., Jennings K., González O.C., Li S., Nicholson J., von Heimendahl M., de Lecea L. (2023). Optogenetic and pharmacological probing of hypocretin neurons in impulsivity. Communications Biology, 6:74

· González O.C., Sokolov Y., Krishnan G.P., Delanois J.E., Bazhenov M. (2020). Can Sleep Protect Memories from Catastrophic Forgetting? eLife, 9:e51005