His primary contribution to computational neuroscience is a theory of neural processing called the normalization model.
[30] Heeger's current research focuses on developing and testing a unified theory of cortical circuit function.
There is considerable evidence that the brain relies on a set of canonical neural circuits that perform a set of canonical neural computations, repeating them across brain regions and modalities to apply operations of the same form.
But we lack a theoretical framework for how such canonical computations can support a wide variety of cognitive processes and brain functions.
His father, Alan J. Heeger, is an American physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2000.