Zachary Williams

M.D./Ph.D. student
Vanderbilt University

Zack Williams is an M.D./Ph.D. student at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, Tennessee, currently pursuing a joint Ph.D. in neuroscience and hearing and speech sciences. His research focuses on the development and evaluation of psychological measures for use in adults on the autism spectrum. He is particularly interested in the assessment of co-occurring psychiatric and psychosomatic disorders in autistic adults and the development of evidence-based treatments for these conditions.

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Illustration of waterfall inside a woman's brain.

Revisiting the neural correlates of consciousness

Life happens in real time, but experience may be composed in ragtime—like the music genre, full of offbeat notes and uneven rhythms. The assumption that waking life consists of a “stream” of conscious representations has inadvertently led consciousness science to its current impasse.

By Francis T. Fallon, Michael Pitts
28 September 2026 | 7 min read
Illustration of rolling dice.

Grant review needs reform. How about we add an element of chance?

A process that uses a lottery system saves time, reduces strategic resubmission and accepts that, above a quality threshold, luck has always played a part in science funding.

By Adrien Peyrache
25 September 2026 | 6 min read
Research diagram of gene expression.

Fly neurons carry molecular signatures of their origins

The pattern of transcription factors a Drosophila neuron expresses offers clues to its lineage and birth order—and ultimately how neural circuits emerge.

By Alissa de Chassey
25 September 2026 | 5 min read