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Our research focuses on the neurobiology of attention. We utilize multiple technologies in our approach to this problem that includes functional imaging, cellular recording and microstimulation, and pharmacology in the behaving organism. We take a comparative approach to attentive behavior and study humans, non-human primates and rodents. The long term goal in these studies is to identify the brain regions that participate in attentive behavior, develop a model that describes how these regions are coordinated during attention, discover the neurotransmitters that mediate attention, and to use this information to better understand and treat individuals with attention deficit disorders.
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| Coronal rat brain slice |
Currently, several projects are under way. In humans, we are studying how visual stimuli not only control where attention is reflexively allocated, but how these stimuli alert the subject and the effects of alerting on stimulus discrimination at the attended location. Also in humans, we are using a newly developed procedure to simultaneuosly assess frontocortically mediated stimulus conflict, parietally mediated attentional orienting to visual stimuli, and parietally mediated stimulus alerting in young adults with attention deficit disorders. In non-human primates, we are asking how the drugs known to affect attentional processing are altering the animal's behavior and the activity of parietal neurons. In hooded rats, we are studying how the cholinergic basal forebrain controls attentive behaviors.