Neural Mechanisms of Visual Attention

Featured Speaker: Professor John Reynolds

John Reynolds and his team are working to decipher the neural mechanisms that enable us to perceive, understand, and interact with the world around us, capacities that are impaired in brain disease. Scientists have identified approximately 600 diseases of the nervous system, but we still lack a full understanding of how the brain normally works and how it fails in disease. At this stage, there is little to assist with the treatment and prevention of these diseases, and the cost of neurological diseases to society is enormous. Dementias alone cost more than heart disease and cancer. Treatments for schizophrenia and autism are also stalled. Aside from cost, the toll in human suffering is steep in these disorders, to both patients and their families.
 

Presenter Biography

Presenter: John Reynolds is a Professor at the Salk Institute’s Systems Neurobiology Laboratory. He has a BS in economics from the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD in cognitive and neural systems from Boston University.
 

Coordinator: Paul Michelson