Neural Synchrony and Selective Attention

Hosted by Boston University Center for Neuroscience

Robert Desimone, a professor of neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, gives the first President’s Lecture in Neuroscience of the Center for Neuroscience, introduced by BU President Robert Brown. Desimone knows how hard it is to concentrate on the task at hand — it’s what he studies.

“The ability to selectively attend can have a profound effect on our visual awareness,” says Desimone, who focuses his research on disorders of perception, attention, and memory that frequently accompany the major mental diseases. In his lecture Neural Synchrony and Selective Attention, Desimone looks at the neural bases of attention, perception, and executive control. The impact of his research extends beyond perception to the subject of memory.

“The very simple process of the initial sensory input resulting in attended stimulus in the brain, seems to require the use of most of the brain,” he says. “It’s given us a lot to try and understand.”

The lecture is the first official function of the Center for Neuroscience, which was created to bring scientists from the Charles River and Medical Campuses under one umbrella, to facilitate and promote collaboration and innovation among them.

February 27, 2008, 4 p.m.
Metcalf Trustees Ballroom

Video length is 00:54:43.

About the speaker:
Robert Desimone is the director of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT and a professor in MIT’s brain and cognitive sciences department. His research focuses on the neural bases of attention and executive control, which are frequently abnormal in major mental diseases. His lab combines neurophysiological recording in animals and MRI and MEG brain imaging techniques in humans to understand how neural circuits filter out distracting information. His lab is particularly interested in the role of synchronized neural activity in attentional control.

Prior to coming to MIT, he was the director of the Division of Intramural Research Programs of the National Institute of Mental Health, the largest scientific organization in the world dedicated to mental health research. Desimone earned a B.A. from Macalester College and a Ph.D. from Princeton University. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Troland Prize of the National Academy of Sciences and the Golden Brain Award of the Minerva Foundation.

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