Cognitive neuroscience of selective and central attention control

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This research program investigates two major aspects of human perception and cognition, using the most recent tools to study human brain function. The first major area of investigation seeks to understand how the human brain is able to pay attention to objects perceived through vision. We call this selective visual attention. This is how we are able to focus on one object (e.g., a person about to step into the street while we drive a car) as we monitor many different objects (other cars, street signs, signaling lights). My laboratory has provided a leadership role in the field for how to devise brain measures of visual spatial attention based on electroencephalography (EEG, which is the measure of electrical brain activity non-invasively in neurologically normal adults using electrodes placed on the surface of the scalp). I also magnetoencephalography, the non-invasive measure of magnetic fields produced by electrical activity in the human brain, to study these processes with greater precision (in terms of locations in the brain). Members of my laboratory also use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to discover how the brain selects visual information and stores this information over the short term (short-term memory that lasts several seconds, and then is replaced by new ones). The second major focus of research examines processing limitations revealed by multitasking. Often, when we try to perform more than one task at the same time, performance suffers (we become slower, or we make more mistakes, or both). Multitasking appears to create costs at many different levels in the brain, and my laboratory has been at the forefront of research in this domain. In coming years I will continue to combine state-of-the-art measures of brain function (EEG, MEG, fMRI) and paradigms in cognitive psychology used to study multitasking under well-controlled conditions, to understand why, where, and when, in the brain, processing mechanisms of attantion, short-term memory, and semantic memory are adversely affected by multitasking.