Cognitive Neuroscience

BIOGRAPHY

ACADEMIC POSITION:
• Professor, Princeton Neuroscience Institute & Department of Psychology, Princeton University
• Scientific Director, Princeton Neuroscience Institute's Neuroimaging Facility, Princeton University

EDUCATION:
• 1994 PhD, University of Göttingen, Germany
• 1993 MD, University of Dusseldorf, Germany
• 1986 BA (History & Philosophy), Göttingen, Germany

HONORS/AWARDS:
• Young Investigator Award, Cognitive Neuroscience Society, 2005
• John Mclean Jr, Presidential University Preceptorship, Princeton University, 2003-2006
• Fellows Award for Research Excellence, National Institutes of Health, 2000
• Fellows Award for Research Excellence, National Institutes of Health, 1999
• Fellow of the German National Scholarship Foundation, 1985-1993

PROFESSIONAL SOCIETY MEMBERSHIPS:
• Society for Neuroscience
• Cognitive Neuroscience Society
• German Society for Neuroscience
• Organization for Human Brain Mapping
• Vision Sciences Society
• American Physiological Society

RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Attentional mechanisms are required to select relevant and to filter out irrelevant information from cluttered visual scenes. In my laboratory we are studying the neural basis underlying these processes using functional brain imaging, behavioral performance measures, and electrophysiology in humans and non-human primates. Using these techniques, we have found that neural mechanisms of selective attention operate at multiple stages in the visual system, including cortical and subcortical stages. The modulatory effects of attention at each stage appear to be determined by the visual processing capabilities of that stage. These attention signals are not generated in the visual system, but in a distributed network of higher-order areas in frontal and parietal cortex that exerts top-down control via feedback projections.