Visual Spatial Attention and Excitability of Visual Cortex

我来放映。你的视觉系统不断地受到来自智能手机、计算机屏幕和电视的视觉输入的轰炸。广告是专门为吸引你的注意力而设计的。甚至当你在电视上看新闻时，新闻提要也会在屏幕底部滚动，不断向你更新更多的新闻。当你在网上冲浪时，视觉边缘会弹出明亮的闪烁广告，试图把你吸引进来。考虑到所有这些视觉刺激不断地争夺你的注意力，你的大脑如何决定何时参加，何时忽略，以及何时让注意力完全偏离？我的研究致力于从认知神经科学的角度来理解这些问题，并理解注意力的神经生物学机制。这一大规模的长期研究计划将包括未来五年要调查的三个研究主题。在我的指导下，每个研究主题将由一名研究生与其他研究生和本科生合作领导。

Screentime. Your visual system is constantly bombarded with visual inputs, from smartphones, computer screens, and televisions. Advertisements are specifically designed to grab your attention moment-to-moment. Even as you watch the news on television a newsfeed scrolls across the bottom of the screen, constantly updating you with even more news. While you surf the internet bright flashing ads pop up in the visual periphery, trying to draw you in. Given all these visual stimuli constantly vying for your attention, how does your brain decide when to attend, when to ignore, and when to allow attention to wander off completely? My research strives to understand these issues and to understand the neurobiological mechanisms of attention, from a cognitive neuroscience approach. This large scale, long-term program of research will include three research themes to be investigated over the next five years. Under my supervision, each research theme will be led by a graduate student in collaboration with other graduate and undergraduate students.