Krigolson Lab · Discovery
How people learn and decide, measured where it happens.
The Krigolson Lab is the Theoretical and Applied Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Victoria. Its theoretical work asks how the brain learns from outcomes and chooses between options. Its applied work takes brain measurement out of the laboratory, with mobile EEG and fNIRS, to problems that will not come to a lab.
Visit the lab at krigolsonlab.com →01 The research programme
Model first, then measure.
The theoretical research is model-driven: theoretical and computational models make predictions about neural systems, and neuroimaging data test how far the brain’s computations agree with them. A long thread of this work concerns prediction errors, the gap between what was expected and what happened, and how EEG responses to feedback change as people learn.
The applied research uses the same measurements in the field: cognitive fatigue in hospital and industrial settings, performance in sport, and brain function under the demands of an isolated habitat.
- Principal investigatorDr. Olav KrigolsonProfessor: Neuroscience, Psychology, Kinesiology
- MethodsEEG, fNIRS, fMRIeye-tracking, motion-tracking, virtual reality, computational modelling
- TheoreticalLearning and decision-makingreward, feedback, prediction error
- AppliedBrain health and human performancefatigue, cognitive impairment, sport
02 EEG
A waveform is a map you have not unfolded yet.
EEG records voltage at the scalp, thousands of times a second. Averaged around an event, each electrode gives a waveform, the event-related potential. Read every electrode at the same instant and the waveforms become a spatial map of that moment.
Drag the time marker. The early component and the late one are different maps, which is the evidence that they are different processes. It is also the limit of the method: a map at the scalp says where the voltage was measured, not where in the brain it was generated.
The lab’s P300-based measure of cognitive fatigue rests on exactly this kind of component: smaller when a person is tired, and measurable in minutes with a portable headset.
03 fNIRS
Light in, light out, and an inference in between.
Functional near-infrared spectroscopy shines two wavelengths of light through the scalp and counts what returns a few centimetres away. Oxygenated and deoxygenated haemoglobin absorb the two differently, so the pair of measurements becomes a pair of concentration changes. When a region works harder, oxygenated haemoglobin rises and deoxygenated falls, a few seconds later.
The stage shows a prefrontal optode array on a template cortex, with a simulated response to a block of task. Each channel is the straight line between a source and a detector. The wash underneath marks the cortex the array is nearest to. It is a picture of where the instrument looks, not a reconstruction of activity.
The lab works with portable and laboratory systems, including a NIRx NIRSport 2 and headbands that combine EEG with fNIRS.
The 3D stage loads when it comes into view.
04 Out of the laboratory
Mobile EEG, where the question is.
The lab is known for mobile electroencephalography: validating low-cost portable systems for research, and then using them where a laboratory cannot go.
Cognitive fatigue
A five-minute task on a tablet with a portable EEG headband, used to measure fatigue directly from brain activity in hospital, mining and sport settings.
Fatigue research →A Mars habitat
Brain performance and cognitive fatigue tracked daily by a crew living in a Mars habitat simulation, from the lab’s collaborative project with the NASA HI-SEAS Mars Habitat in Hawaii.
The mission blog →Open methods
Guides, software and sample data for running event-related potential research on portable EEG systems, kept free for other researchers to use.
Mobile EEG resources →05 People and publications
A lab is its students.
The lab trains doctoral, master’s and honours students in Neuroscience and Kinesiology at the University of Victoria, alongside a team of research assistants. Graduate students join through the university’s Neuroscience graduate programme.
The people of the lab · Information for prospective students
More than 100 peer-reviewed journal articles and more than 250 conference presentations are listed at the lab. Three recent ones:
- Working memory performance is reduced following a marathon race and associated with low energy availability in females Boere et al. (2026). Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.
- Task evoked EEG reveals neural processing differences in aphantasia Boere et al. (2025). Scientific Reports.
- Using EEG to assess cognitive fatigue in real time: a medical simulation study Krigolson et al. (2025). Medical Science Educator.
The Krigolson Lab is academic research. It is separate from Krigolson Consulting and Krigolson Technologies, and nothing on those pages is endorsed by the University of Victoria or by the lab’s collaborators.