RESEARCH
“Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought.”
Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
Each of the complex behaviors we humans regularly engage in require sophisticated coordination of various parts of the body with shifting attention and sensory perception. Such coordination is accomplished through structured patterns of neural activity which span the entire brain and unfold in real time. EEG and MEG (electro/magneto-encephalograms) are rhythmic signals, recorded conveniently on the scalp, which provide a window into this neural activity. My research uses EEG/MEG in conjunction with computational modeling to answer two primary questions: what are the physiological mechanisms by which motor planning and attention are realized within the brain? And how do these mechanisms develop with age to incorporate new behaviors?
I have argued that a functional network incorporating various frontal and parietal brain areas gives rise to EEG rhythms which can be used to predict various aspects of a motor plan (http://bit.ly/ST_BrainTop_2012). I've further shown that this network is detectable in infants as early as 1-year, and that the frequency content of these rhythms increases steadily with age (http://bit.ly/ST_JCN_2015). Currently, I am investigating the development of connectivity dynamics within this network, and using this understanding to develop a physiological cortical model which can be used to interpret and predict various aspects of human EEG/MEG (http://bit.ly/RS_fCN_2013).
