In day-to-day life, we seek to optimally respond to challenging tasks, such as successfully attending to the words of a person in a crowded and busy environment, or preparing a complex homework assignment for school. While seeking to solve these difficult tasks, our level of performance is subject to profound moment-to-moment fluctuations. These fluctuations are largely caused by changes in behavioral state including the level of arousal, motor movements, stress and attention. On the neuronal level, behavioral states are associated with distinct electric activity patterns, which comprise the baseline activity that ultimately gates sensory input and shapes performance during tasks. The neural mechanisms that generate these state-dependent neural dynamics are still poorly understood in the waking brain. Understanding these mechanisms is particularly critical in the light of evidence that altered state-dependent neural dynamics have been been observed in various psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. Our research aims to dissect the neural mechanisms that underlie state-dependent neural dynamics and performance in sensory-guided tasks and to reveal how perturbations in these mechanisms contribute the etiology of psychiatric disorders.