Attention and memory

Dr. Liat Goldfarb and her students are studying the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying attention in humans. In their research, members of the group use a variety of techniques to study attention, including behavioral tasks geared at revealing attentional influences on performance, and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) methods capable of identifying and modulating biological properties of attention in the brain. Both healthy populations and individuals with learning difficulties are studied in the lab. Specifically, the team studies attention mechanisms in individuals with dyslexia, dyscalculia, and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Sharon Sadan-Levy, a graduate student, is studying cognitive inconsistency in developmental dyscalculia. She has found that individuals with dyscalculia have an attentional deficiency similar to that of individuals with ADHD, but restricted to the numerical domain. Graduate student Ram Naaman aims to improve arithmetic abilities using brain stimulation and emotional stimuli in a group of normal learners and a group of individuals with dyscalculia. Graduate student Klodin Alali is conducting research on ways of improving cognitive control using brain stimulation and on mind wandering tendencies in normal learners and individuals with ADHD.

Focusing on the development and optimization of protocols for enhancing human cognitive abilities and neuroplasticity in healthy and special populations, Dr. Maria Korman studies the specific contributions of different neuro-behavioral conditions to the triggering, consolidation, and maintenance of brain plasticity mechanisms subserving optimal skill performance and knowledge.  She focuses on how brain and behavior change as a function of extra- and intra-training factors, such as sleep and chronotype, arousal, sensory stimulation, competing experiences, and training environment.  In addition to a laboratory research program, these broad questions entail a translational perspective to up-regulate cognitive functioning.

Dr. Korman promotes laboratory based as well as real-world setting research, focusing on the exploration of “time factors” in the neurobiology of cognition. She is implementing a comprehensive person-environment-task-time approach, taking into account the history and the time-course of quantifiable intra- and extra-personal factors to assess neurocognitive functioning. This challenge is now feasible due to the rapid technological development of wearables, allowing unobtrusive multi-day biometric monitoring (e.g., accelerometry, sympathetic tone (arousal)), co-aligned with monitoring of relevant environmental factors (profile of exposure to light, noise) and cognitive performance (behavioral, kinematic, and imaging). Dr. Korman uses a combination of automated sensing of behavioral and physiological traits, along with momentary cognitive assessments, to model chrono-behavioral patterns, detect disruptions, and drive in-situ interventions. Such personalized, data-driven tools are capable of providing biologically attuned support in cognitive performance, sleep quality, rehabilitation therapy, and overall wellbeing, via behavioral and sensory stimulation therapy.

Dr. Korman is also developing non-drug neuromodulatory intervention protocols, such as sensory stimulation and light therapy, to optimize emotional regulation, executive functioning, skill learning, and memory, including technologies and assessment tools for enhanced neuro-wellness. These are relevant for both healthy young and elderly populations and for rehabilitating patients with developmental and acquired neurological conditions, such as ADHD and traumatic brain injury (TBI).

At his Visual Cognition Lab, Dr. Amit Yashar is studying the mechanism of crowding. Objects that are too close together (below the ‘critical spacing’) can become perceptually indistinguishable, or ‘crowded.’ Crowding is considered to be the most widespread impediment to reading, object recognition, and the identification of basic stimuli such as letters and faces. Crowding impairs not only discrimination of object features and contours, but also the ability to recognize and respond appropriately to objects in clutter. Thus, studying crowding might lead to better understanding of the processes involved in object recognition.

In one study, Dr. Yashar is investigating whether and how variation in crowding errors between dimensions relates to variation in location uncertainty between color and orientation and spatial frequency and orientation.

In another study, he examines the effects of feature-based attention (FBA) on crowding. FBA is the prioritization of a certain feature, such as the color green or vertical orientation. Because FBA operates globally, it might be an effective means for overcoming the spatial interference of crowding by operating selectively on target features. To this aim, researchers ask observers to perform an orientation estimation task on a peripheral target. In crowded displays, two flankers are presented with the target. An eye-tracker is used with on-line eye monitoring to ensure that the stimuli are presented in the visual periphery.

An additional study at the Visual Cognition Lab investigates statistical learning and representation in Autism. Recent studies have revealed that people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) demonstrate lower perceptual flexibility than the typical population. This study examines how adults with ASD build statistical representations of their environment.