Elizabeth Chrastil, PhD
Elizabeth Chrastil is an associate professor in the Department of Neurobiology & Behavior at the University of California, Irvine Charlie Dunlop School of Biological Sciences. She studies how the human brain supports navigation, spatial memory and learning — research that helps explain how people orient themselves and move through complex environments.
Elizabeth Chrastil, PhD
Elizabeth Chrastil is an associate professor in the Department of Neurobiology & Behavior at the University of California, Irvine Charlie Dunlop School of Biological Sciences. She studies how the human brain supports navigation, spatial memory and learning — research that helps explain how people orient themselves and move through complex environments.
Chrastil leads the Spatial Neuroscience Lab, where her team combines immersive virtual reality environments with neuroimaging techniques such as functional MRI to investigate how the brain processes self-motion and environmental cues during navigation. Her work explores how different sources of information — such as landmarks, body motion signals and decision-making processes — contribute to building mental maps of the world and learning new spaces.
She earned her PhD in cognitive science from Brown University in 2012 and joined UC Irvine after faculty and research positions at institutions including the University of California, Santa Barbara and Boston University. Chrastil’s research broadly examines how brain systems like the hippocampus and related networks support navigation and memory, as well as why individuals differ in their navigational abilities.
