Self-Organizing Units Lab
Engineering brains, minds, and
consciousness
Biocomputing
Consciousness
Cybernetic Agents
The law of uphill analysis
and downhill invention
Over billions of years, living systems gradually developed bodies to survive and thrive within their environments. Among all the products of natural selection, brains are the most complex; teasing apart the Gordian Knot of their functional anatomy demands extraordinary levels of analysis. The counterpart to this uphill approach to understanding the brain is the downhill process of invention. Tissue engineers can now build minimally complex brains in a dish - playing the role of biological architects, sculpting new living structures from biomaterials and cells. At the SOUL, we use tissue engineering and brain-machine interfaces to build agential cybernetic organisms (cyborgs) with customizable nervous systems to understand goal-directed behaviour and consciousness.
What is the SOUL?
The Self-Organizing Units Lab (SOUL) is an incubator for scientific and philosophical ideas related to brains, minds, agency, consciousness, and biocomputing. Ultimately, we aim to engineer minds.
Consciousness engineering
Closed-loop feedback
Cybernetic agents
Research Themes
UNCONVENTIONAL MINDS
Humans are surprisingly bad at recognizing minds that look or behave differently from our own. But could minds exist in animals, machines, or even small networks of living cells? Our research explores what it takes for a system to have a mind, regardless of what it's made of. We connect living brain cells to computers and robotic bodies to investigate how they learn, make decisions, and interact with the world. We also study how information flows through these systems and how their internal parts influence one another, looking for clues that might help us recognize consciousness in unexpected places.
MINIMAL AGENTS AND SUBJECTS
How do minds work, and what does it take to build one? Brains allow us to learn, solve problems, make decisions, and experience the world. But which of these abilities could exist in simpler systems, like small networks of brain cells grown in a dish? Our laboratory connects living neural networks to computers and robotic bodies, allowing them to interact with their surroundings, respond to feedback, and pursue goals. By studying how these systems behave and how their internal activity changes, we hope to discover the essential building blocks of intelligence, agency, and consciousness - and ultimately, what it takes to build a mind.
MINIMAL MODELS OF DISEASE
Brain injuries and diseases like Alzheimer's can dramatically affect memory, thinking, behaviour, and quality of life. Our laboratory grows miniature models of brain tissue to better understand how these conditions develop and to test potential treatments. By recreating important features of the human brain in simpler, carefully controlled systems, we can isolate the biological processes that contribute to injury and disease.
Lab Members
We are neuroscientists, philosophers of mind and action, electrophysiologists, and bioengineers with a passion for discovery.
The Rouleau Lab (SOUL) is part of the Center for Tissue Plasticity and Biophysics (TPAB) at Laurier, which is co-directed by Dr. Nirosha J. Murugan and Dr. Nicolas Rouleau.
Dr. Nicolas Rouleau - Principal Investigator
Dr. Jesse St. Jean - Post-Doctoral Fellow
Cooper Kansala - Ph.D. Student
Etienne Sellar - MSc. Student
Kainaath Batool - Scientific Illustrator
Interns and Thesis Students:
Trinity Saad - Undergraduate researcher