My
laboratory studies brain networks involved in vision. Seeing requires active processes of
spatiotemporal analysis, cognition, and eye movement generation. These
processes are coordinated by circuits that are well understood
anatomically but not physiologically. The research in my laboratory
seeks to discover the information content and function of each
circuit. For example, we recently studied a loop that reciprocally
links the prefrontal cortex and the brainstem. We showed that the
prefrontal cortex instructs the brainstem to make specific eye
movements, and that the brainstem reports back to the cortex on how
well the behavior was performed. Our current projects examine
circuits that link the prefrontal cortex with the cerebellum and basal
ganglia. Also, we are studying how the brain analyzes the passage of
time, how higher areas of prefrontal cortex monitor the decisions made
in visual areas (metacognition), and how circuits mediate spatial
attention. In the longer term we have two main goals: to implement our
findings in a new generation of visually sophisticated robots, and to
understand how the disruption of brain circuits contribute to
disconnection syndromes such as schizophrenia.
