Position Title
Distinguished Professor of Psychology & Neurology
Director, Center for Mind and Brain
- Center for Mind and Brain
- Department of Psychology
- Department of Neurology
Professor Mangun's work on the cognitive neuroscience of attention investigates how we perceive, attend, ignore and become aware of events in our environment. Recordings of event-related brain potentials (ERP) from healthy persons and special patient groups provide high temporal resolution measures of stimulus processing in the human brain. The goal of this research is to identify the mechanisms of attentional selection by permitting sensory analysis of attended and ignored stimuli to be studied under a wide variety of task circumstances. To identify the brain systems and circuits involved in various attentional processes (i.e., control and selection), tools such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) are used in conjunction with ERPs. fMRI permits the living human brain to be revealed as it functions to enable our sensations, thoughts and actions. Machine learning and modeling enable new analytic strategies and formal descriptions of cognitive-neural mechanisms. The information obtained from these combined behavioral, neuropsychological and neurophysiological studies yields insight into the computational and functional neuroanatomical structure of human cognition, and is essential for addressing the deficits in attention and awareness that accompany neurological and psychiatric disease.
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