Cognitive neuroscience of attention and sensory working memory.

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My resarch program seeks to understand functional and neuronal characteristics of basic mechanisms of attention, working memory, and cognitive control. Proposed experiments build on past successes in the use of EEG, MEG (methods with high temporal resolution), and guide new studies designed to understand cognitive funtions reflected by electromagnetic oscillatory brain activity.******New measures of dynamic changes in phase-amplitude coupling and inter-regional inter-trial phase synchrony, will be developed and used in the analysis of oscillatory brain activity. However, phase synchrony alone is not informative in terms of the direction or nature of interaction among brain sites. Recent work based on on Granger causality holds promise to disambiguate the direction of information flow among nodes of identified networks. I propose to use this approach to understand the dynamics of network communcation in spatial selection and the encoding of information into visual working memory.******Specific experiments will examine selection in space with the N2pc event-related lateralization, and the N2pb bilateral posterior attention response. Visual working/short-term memory will be indexed by the SPCN (sustained posterior contralateral negativity). Some experiments will examine the distractor positivity (Pd) posited to reflect distractor suppression.******Target-distractor interactions will also be examined in the attentional blink (AB) paradigm, with a focus on measures of phase synchrony and asymmetries in Granger causality, but with the attentional dwell approach, which does not induce strong steady-state evoked responses that make it difficult to distinguish between 'natural' oscillations from stimulus-driven oscillations (a problem in previous work). AB studies will be extended by including conditions with or without task switching, providing information concerning cognitive control of underlying network nodes.******Analyses based on standard signal-averaging methods (N2pc, N2pb, SPCN, P3), guarantee short-term successes, while sophisticated analyses of oscillatory activity promise to advance the field to a new level of understanding of mediating brain activity.******The research will be carried by undergraduate and graduate students studing in cognitive neuroscience, postdoctoral fellows, and thus will contribute the training of HQP in an exciting and expanding area of NSE research.