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| Past Predoctoral Trainees Barton L. Anderson (1982-1990) [Lappin]: Bart received his Ph.D. in 1990. His doctoral thesis was on stereoscopic vision and was published in Perception and Psychophysics. Bart subsequently had postdoctoral fellowships with Ken Nakayama at Harvard and with Bela Julesz at Rutgers. He has published a number of influential articles on stereopsis and surface perception in prestigious journals such as Nature and Psychological Review. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. He has received support from the National Eye Institute via an R55 grant and more recently an R29 FIRST award. Barton Anderson's website. Chris Aslin (2000 - 2002) [Blake]: Chris entered the psychology graduate program with strong credentials (Dartmouth, Overall GPA 3.20, GRE V 630 (89%), Q 750 (89%), A 720 (90%)) and an equally strong pedigree; his father is the distinguished vision scientist Richard Aslin, William R. Kenan Professor in Brain & Cognitive Sciences and Director of the Rochester Center for Brain Imaging at the University of Rochester. Dick Aslin is a long-time colleague and good friend to many Vanderbilt faculty. Chris earned his opportunities independently, though. The letter of recommendations from Terrance M. Darcey (Dartmouth Medical School) stated, AMy first impression of Chris was to take note of his remarkable enthusiasm and willingness to work on any and all aspects of the research. He was instrumental in setting up a relational database, ERP experiments, individual datasets and data analysis. He then took the lead in systematically analyzing a larger set of auditory ERP data, and actively participated in our discussions of how best to quantify and tabulate the data statistically. He then helped to devise a flexible approach for electroanatomical visualization of these data across patients and in making dynamic spatio-temporal movies of our data on the computer. I have been very impressed with Chris= intellectual abilities. He is very bright and insightful, learns very quickly, and works meticulously with minimum supervision. I must say that I have come to see him more as a collaborator than a research assistant. I would say that he has a very high aptitude for carrying out independent research. I have no doubt that Chris would be an asset to your program. These comments were reinforced by those in a letter from another accomplished vision scientist at Dartmouth, Howard C Hughes. He wrote, AChris is among one of the finest young men I have had the pleasure of knowing in 20 years of teaching at Dartmouth college. I have great confidence in the accuracy of this highly favorable opinion, for it is based primarily on my experiences in having him work in my lab. His mind is sharp. His interest is keen. Please believe me when I tell you this young man has talents that are not fully revealed by looking at his Dartmouth transcript. Chris was also an astonishingly quick study. He obviously understood the statistics we were using, and could foresee problems that the rest of the team often had overlook. He has the interest and desire. Clearly, Chris was well-qualified for graduate training and expressed a clear desire through word and action to do vision research. His personal statement in his application stated, “I am interested in pursuing a PhD in order to obtain a teaching and research position in an academic institution. I have come to this decision only after a great deal of deliberation. I am excited about working with experienced and interesting faculty members at Vanderbilt. I am dedicated to working hard and rigorously pursuing studies of the visual system.” Chris was also being considered by the graduate programs at Brown Univ, Harvard Univ, MIT, Stanford Univ, UC Berkeley, UCLA and Univ Minnesota. Therefore, anxious to attract him to Vanderbilt, we offered support on the T32 to demonstrate our commitment to his training. During his time at Vanderbilt he was engaged by research and productive, coauthoring a paper in Vision Research with Marvin Chun and Blake. Unfortunately, after this positive experience Chris had the foresight to recognize that a career in academic research was not his preference. In his termination request he stated, “This decision was made for personal reasons unrelated to the training program and/or its staff. On the whole, my experiences in the training program have been very favorable. The program's resources, both physical and human, are excellent. I regret that outside considerations have led me to withdraw from the program. No one saw this decision coming, but we are pleased to note that after earning a master's degree in psychology at Vanderbilt, he has worked for United States Representative Sherrod Brown (Ohio) as a legislative fellow and for The Wilderness Society as a senior policy assistant on appropriations and budget issues. Chris earned a Master of Environmental Management from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and a JD from the Vermont School of Law in 2007 summa cum laude. He is currently a member of the Litigation and Energy Practice Groups of Burns Ray & Delano in Portland, ME. Chris Aslin Website. Carl Bassi (1980-1985) [Powers]: Carl received his undergraduate degree from the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. He came to Vanderbilt with a background in vision, and while here he worked on problems of circadian rhythms in the visual system, of sensitivity to light as a function of time of day, and anatomical correlates of each those problems. As a postdoc, Carl was at the University of Southern California, where he worked on problems of human vision especially emphasizing Alzheimer's disease and its effect on the retina. Carl is now Associate Professor at the University of Missouri, St. Louis School of Optometry. Carl Bassi's website. Pam Beck (1991-1998) [Kaas]: Pam's Ph.D. research led to four papers on the dorsomedial visual area of primates. As a graduate student, she published extensively on visual system organization and development. She also published comparative studies of cortical organization. Her postdoctoral research with Miguel Nicolelis at Duke University is on the visual system. Melanie Bernard, PhD (2004 - 2008) [Bonds]: Melanie has investigated the dynamic associations among small populations of neurons during natural stimulation to understand the form of the neural code for representation of visual structures. This was accomplished with microelectrode array technology that allowed simultaneous sampling of neurons with a variety of spatiotemporal preferences. This recording paradigm and a novel algorithm for quantifying synchrony were used to study the timing relationships among neurons in the primary visual cortex of cats to evaluate synchrony's role as a possible neural substrate for contour detection. Support by this training program offered her numerous platforms to share her work with fellow scientists and led to collaborations with two other labs investigating similar neurophysiological phenomena. Her research has resulted in three publications and a total of 20 conference presentations. In June 2008 Melanie began work as a Systems Engineer on a new biomimetics project for Northrop Grumman in Fairfax, VA. Narcisse Bichot, PhD (1993 - 1999) [Schall]: Narcisse completed his PhD under the supervision of Kyle Cave and Schall investigating the neural basis of visual selection and the guidance of overt and covert shifts of attention. He is one of the stars of this program, publishing 14 papers and then continuing his research career through postdoctoral training with Bob Desimone at NIMH during which he published 5 papers including one in Science. Subsequently, Narcisse is now a Research Scientist at MIT continuing this work with Desimone. Dana Carmichael (1999 - 2001) [Kaas]: Dana was an under-represented minority who entered the Vanderbilt IGP program with strong academic credentials (overall GPA 3.53, MCAT Scores: Verbal Reasoning 06, Physical Sciences 06, Writing Sample R, Biological Sciences 05). As an undergraduate at Morgan State University she participated in a Heart-Lung-Blood Minority Research Program at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, was distinguished as a Fogarty International Research Fellow working in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, and was selected as a Minority Biomedical Research Student at Morgan State. All of this research experience resulted in coauthorship of 3 presentations at national meetings. Her academic achievements have been recognized by placement on the Dean's List in seven semesters, and membership in the Golden Key National Honor Society, Phi Eta Sigma National Honor Society and Alpha Lamda Delta National Honor Society. The letter of recommendation from Dr. Joan Robinson stated, AI have known Dana Carmichael for the past three and half years. Dana is one of the most outstanding Minority Biomedical Research Support honor research oriented students. She is intelligent and clearly an outstanding candidate for your Program. Dana is a diligent worker, who has carefully planned her career. Dana is highly motivated student who is respected by her peers and associates. She is confident and has the maturity and focused outlook lacking in many undergraduates. She has been involved in summer research in the Netherlands and at the National Institute of Health (NIH) and has presented at the National Minority Symposium meeting in Florida and she will also be presenting a paper at the FASEB meeting in New Orleans in April of 1997.@ The letter of recommendation from: Dr. William H. Nelson stated, AMs Carmichael was a conscientious student on both courses, where Biology II was designated fro majors and honor students. Her performance in the courses reflected a level of maturity above that of their peers. Her laboratory skills were well above that of her peers as she appeared dedicated to doing her best possible work as she frequently led her peers in carrying out laboratory operations. She often presented the class with provocative, but cogent discussion. She was often among the first of her peers to relate the theory to practical aspects in the Genetics Course. It is my judgement that Dana has the resident capacity and motivation for further development in the natural sciences and her innate ability to grasp and apply scientific principles causes her to be an excellent candidate for consideration. We were pleased when Dana decided to pursue research training in neuroscience, and she was appointed to a Molecular Neuroscience Training Grant at Vanderbilt. Dana's application for a position on this T32 stated, ABefore enrolling at Vanderbilt, my research background focused on Molecular Biology, Pharmacology, Endocrinoogy, and Neurobiology. My current training in the Molecular Neuroscience Ph.D. Program and by the Molecular Neuroscience Training Gant has drawn upon this knowledge in addition to promoting the exposure and understanding of the gamut of neuroscience related topics in biomedical research today. It is this exposure that has lad me to the Kaas Lab in the Department of Psychology where my current research focuses on the developmental distribution of AChE in the cortex of marmosets and galagos and its implication in synaptic plasticity. In studying the development of the auditory cortex, however, I have begun to note the numerous parallels that exist between this and the development of the visual cortex, specifically the ability to delineate V1 in pre-and post-natal marmosets by the distribution of cholinergic innervation via AChE density in developing visual cortex. My desire is to now explore the multi-modal properties of plasticity in developing primary cortex by focusing on histo- and immunohistochemical, lesion, and mapping studies in developing visual cortex and the cortico-cortical connections that are made during that time. It is my belief that because Neuroscience is such an interdisciplinary field, a true understanding of its content involves embracing all of its subsets. To date, my experience in Neuroscience includes molecular, cellular, systems, and cognitive. It is my hope that from this experience, I will be able to acquire a grater understanding of the type and degree of plasticity that occurs in developing visual cortex in primates. I feel that my acceptance onto the Vision Training Grant will allow me to fulfill that goal. Dana's potential and interest in expanding her knowledge and abilities were recognized by a fellowship to attend the Summer Institute in Cognitive Neuroscience. After a promising start in the Kaas laboratory that produced one conference presentation, Dana was compelled to leave the program due to health issues. The letter from the coordinator of the neurocience graduate program that announced official medical leave of absence stated, AThis leave was granted upon the advice of Ms. Carmichael's attending physicians, due to the serious illness being experienced by Ms. Carmichael, and will remain in effect until her physicians release her to continue her studies.... At the time we anticipated that Dana would regain the ability to accomplish her academic training. Unfortunately, Dana's illness prevented such an outcome. Warren D. Craft (1989-1997) [Lappin]: Warren completed his dissertation in March 1997. He and Dr. Lappin are incorporating his thesis into a comprehensive theoretical paper to be submitted to Psychological Review. This work was presented last year at the annual ARVO meetings and at the International Conference of Vision and Action, York University, Toronto. Warren has been teaching courses in both the Mathematics Department at Vanderbilt and in Psychology at The University of the South (Sewanee, TN), and is scheduled to teach courses this summer in both Psychology and Mathematics at Vanderbilt. He is also currently conducting other experiments on visual perception. Heather Crouch Brown, PhD (1999 - 2003) [Bonds]: Heather had a productive graduate career, producing 3 papers describing how neurons in visual cortex interact to produce the receptive field properties. She is a lecturer at the University of Louisville. Kim Curby, PhD (2000 - 2006) [Gauthier]: Kim's research on face perception at Vanderbilt has resulted in 8 publications, including work in Nature Neuroscience, Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, Psychonomic Bulletin and Review and Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. She undertook postdoctoral work at Yale University's Child Study Center, where she applied her knowledge of visual learning towards understanding why such learning, as in the case of face recognition, can sometimes fail among children with autism. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology (Brain, Behavior, & Cognition) at Temple University where she directs the Object Perception and Learning laboratory to understand the changes that occur in both the strategies and neural substrates supporting cognitive performance after visual learning. Kim Curby Website. Paul DeMarco (1984-1989) [Powers]: Paul received his undergraduate degree from University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he carried out research in color vision. At Vanderbilt, he was supported mainly by departmental teaching assistantships but he also held a predoctoral slot on the former training grant (J. Elliott, P.I) from NEI, through Ophthalmology. His work was in color vision here, too; he developed an analytical method for comparing APB-treated retinas with controls, using the optic nerve response. He found that APB does not remove all ON-center activity in retina which was published in PNAS, while it does reduce eye movements and also interferes with color processing, especially in the opponent realm. Paul was a postdoc with Vivianne Smith and Joel Pokorny at the University of Chicago, and is now Assistant Professor at University of Louisville. He continues to be an active vision researcher. Paul DeMarco's website. Barbara Dillenburger, PhD (2003 - 2007) [Roe]: Barbara investigated illusory contour perception, the effects of contextual stimuli on the underlying processes and the feedforward-feedback pattern of signals constituting this mechanism. This research was conducted by means of psychophysical measures of human illusory contour perception, as well as using single cell recording in anaesthetized macaque areas V1 and V2. Her work has resulted in 5 conference presentations. 3 manuscripts are currently under review. She also collaborated with Peter Kaskan on imaging of owl monkey ocular dominance patterns in V1, which resulted in one publication, and with Robert Friedman on imaging of visuo-tactile integration in owl monkey MT+. She is currently a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Radiology at Vanderbilt, with Drs. Chen and Avison, where she is working on fMRI of processing of tactile and thermal stimuli in early somatosensory cortex of anesthetized squirrel monkey. In addition, she is training a macaque monkey to perform sensory perception tasks (tactile and visual) while being imaged in a vertical bore 4.7T magnet. This is aimed at investigating multisensory integration in awake behaving monkey. Hilda Fehd (2004 - 2009) [Seiffert]: Hilda is investigating how we visually keep track of several items at once through the allocation of covert attention and overt eye movements. This is accomplished using the multiple object tracking (MOT) task in which participants view a display of several items, a subset of which is flashed briefly to indicate that they were the target items to be tracked. Hilda has described the patterns of eye movements made during a MOT task, showing that participants tend to concentrate gaze near the center of gravity of the tracked objects. Thus, when people keep track of multiple items, they look at a location that is not occupied by any of them, relying on peripheral attention to keep up with the targets. She has also initiated a project using fMRI to determine if selective attention to adapted versus opposite motion directions after adaptation can be resolved via different patterns or strengths of activation using modern decoding techniques developed by Tong=s laboratory. Her dissertation will analyze how and why people engage in certain eye movement strategies during tracking. Her efforts have produced one first-author paper and three conference presentations. Hilda was recognized with the Lisa M. Quesenberry Foundation Award by the Community Foundation of Louisville. The Lisa M. Quesenberry Foundation was established by Irvin and Mary Ann Quesenberry and Kathryn Quesenberry to memorialize the accomplishments of their daughter and sister, Lisa M. Quesenberry and to recognize the accomplishments of female graduate students who are studying the field of psychology and who have overcome significant personal challenges to pursue their education. Her research to date has resulted in 4 presentations at meetings and a publication in the journal Cognition. Hilda completed her PhD in May 2009 and is currently considering postdoctoral training options. Emily Grossman, PhD (1997 - 2002) [Blake]: Another star of this training program, Emily's work the properties and neural basis of perception of biological motion at Vanderbilt resulted in 6 papers. Her postdoctoral training with Ken Nakayama in the Vision Laboratory at Harvard University was awarded an NRSA from NEI. Emily is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cognitive Sciences at UC Irvine where she directs a productive laboratory with three graduate students. In 2008 Emily was recognized with a National Science Foundation Career Award that provides five years of support for her work on perception of biological motion Susan Hanson, PhD (2002 - 2006) [Gurevich]: Sue worked on various aspects of arrestin structure and function, using a variety of methods from hard-core biochemistry and biophysics to visual arrestin translocation studies in mice in vivo. She published 14 papers. She is currently a post-doctoral fellow with Cynthia M. Czajkowski at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Doug Hanes (1992-1997) [Schall]: Doug's dissertation research described the role of frontal eye field in the control of saccadic eye movements. This was accomplished through the use of a behavioral paradigm that had, until Doug's efforts, been used only with humans. Doug was able to distinguish neurons in frontal eye field that generate signals sufficient to control whether or not the eyes would move and if so, when. Besides this work Doug was also instrumental in the development of a Poisson spike train analysis used to identify periods of neural activity; this algorithm is now in use or development in numerous laboratories in the US, Europe and Japan. He also contributed to the early description of the visual target selection process in frontal eye field neurons. Doug also spent several weeks in the laboratory of Audie Leventhal at the University of Utah where he learned to record from paralyzed, anesthetized monkeys. This short collaboration yielded the first direct comparison of the visual response latencies across layers of the LGNd and multiple visual areas. Beyond these efforts, Doug spent 6 months collaborating with Roger Carpenter at Cambridge University where he also interacted with vision investigators such as Barlow, Robson and Tolhurst. A manuscript for Vision Research describes their work with the countermanding eye movement paradigm in humans coupled with modeling efforts. Doug has also published in Experimental Brain Research, Journal of Neuroscience, Journal of Neurophysiology, Nature and Science. He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Laboratory of Sensorimotor Research at the National Eye Institute under the sponsorship of Robert Wurtz. Eric Hiris (1994-1995) [Blake]: Eric completed several projects dealing with motion perception. One project dealt with illusory changes in perceived direction of motion produced by motion transparency displays; that project included development of a neural model to account for direction integration vs transparency. In another project, Eric measured the fidelity with which information about brief motion sequences could be remembered. Those results demonstrated that observers are quite good at remembering the direction and speed of motion, with performance depending strongly on the number of discrete events that have to be retained in memory. In a final project, Eric collaborated on a project documenting that motion discrimination is best around "cardinal" directions of motion (up, down, left, right), whereas motion detection is uniform at all directions. Eric pursued postdoctoral training with Charles Duffy at the University of Rochester. After brief explorations of careers outside of academics, Eric spent a year as a visiting assistant professor at Auburn University. Currently Eric is an assistant professor at St. Mary's College of Maryland. His current research interests include motion transparency, motion segregation, motion after effects, and motion in naturalistic scenes. Eric Hiris's Website. Chou Hung, PhD (1997 - 2002) [Roe]: Chou is an Assistant Professor the Yang Ming Medical School in Taipei, Taiwan. Many of the same brain areas that are active when we view the world are also active when we imagine it in our minds. Chou is interested in understanding how real and imagined images are encoded in the brain, and how we might decode such maps. To address these issues, his lab employs a combination of optical imaging and electrophysiological techniques in the macaque visual cortex, with particular focus on the inferotemporal (IT) cortex. Optical imaging and electrophysiology in IT have suggested that the activity is spatially organized with ~500 micron clusters of neurons ('cortical columns') that process salient aspects of the image such as different views of faces. His laboratory investigates the rules underlying this cortical organization its relation to the neural codes and mechanisms underlying visual object recognition. Jennifer Ichida, PhD (1995 - 2002) [Casagrande]: Jennifer's research on the role of the corticogeniculate feedback to the lateral geniculate nucleus in primates resulted in 4 publications. She is continuing her training in visual neuroscience through postdoctoral training with Jennifer Lund and Alessandra Angelucci at the University of Utah where she is supported by an NRSA from NEI. Her work to date has produced a first-author publication in the Journal of Neurophysiology. Ashwath Jayagopal, PhD (2003 - 2008) [Haselton]: A real star of our program, Ash was supported by this grant from 2005-2008. He graduated in May, 2008 with a PhD in Biomedical Engineering and is now a Research Assistant Professor in Chemistry at Vanderbilt. Ash has also been included as an Associate among the faculty of the VVRC. His doctoral work was concerned with the applications of nanotechnology toward biology and medicine. Specifically, he developed an in vivo retinal fluorescence imaging system, capable of imaging cell trafficking and vascular molecular expression in real-time using quantitative methodology. To complement this technique, he adapted fluorescent semiconducting nanocrystals, commonly referred to as quantum dots, for fluorescent-encoding of trafficking cells and proteins, so that they could be imaged with high signal to noise ratios in the retina. This bioimaging technique was used to visualize molecular expression in the retina in animal models of diabetes and bacterial infection (uveitis). The technique was extended to accommodate studies of atherosclerosis as well; specifically, he found that molecular cues expressed on retinal vasculature may serve as predictive biomarkers which precede the initiation and progression of atherosclerotic disease, and thus can signal early therapeutic intervention to address plaque development. Additional work in his dissertation was focused on the development of multimodal lipid-based nanocarriers for the simultaneous targeting and intracellular delivery of imaging and therapeutic agents, such as quantum dot nanocrystals and chemotherapeutics. The highlight of this work was the report of a lipid-based nanocarrier capable of transport through tight endothelial junctions. The work conducted during his training has resulted in 8 peer-reviewed publications, and he has presented work nationally and internationally at several conferences. He was the recipient of three separate awards for best presentation at a conference, and was a finalist at an international nanotechnology commercialization competition in which he represented Vanderbilt University. His paper regarding the first report of nanotechnology-based retinal fluorescence imaging methodology received the Vanderbilt School of Engineering’s best paper award for 2008. Following graduation he was appointed Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Vanderbilt, where his research is focused on the development of nanoscale imaging and therapeutic agents for a broad spectrum of eye diseases. In April 2009 he was awarded a Knights Templar Eye Foundation pediatric ophthalmology research grant, which will support his work in nanoscale-mediated delivery of siRNA for the treatment of retinopathy. Ashwath Jayagopal Website. Walter Jermakowicz (2005 - 2009) [Casagrande]: Walter has been a student in the Vanderbilt Medical Scientist Training Program since 2003. His clinical interest in neural prosthetics attracted him to the Casagrande laboratory. Walter has been investigating the nature and propagation of stimulus dependent spike synchrony in V1, V2 and V3 of bush babies to test the hypothesis that spike synchrony is generated by the spatiotemporal properties of a stimulus and serves to provide stimulus dependent information above that gained from changes in firing rate. His PhD defense is scheduled for summer of 2009. His research has produced 12 vision-related abstracts at different meetings plus 3 publications --- a first author review article and 2 peer-reviewed papers including a first author on a publication in Journal of Neurophysiology. Also, 2 manuscripts and another review article will be submitted soon. Walter has been recognized with two travel awards, a 2006 Fine Science Tools Travel Award to the Society for Neuroscience Meeting and a 2009 Elsevier Vision Research Travel Award to the Vision Sciences Society Meeting. After completing his PhD Walter will return to medical school and plans to pursue neurosurgery to be involved with developing methods of implanting vision neural prosthetics. Joseph Kabara (1994-1996) [Bonds]: The response properties of striate cortical neurons have often been analyzed on the basis of their responses to one-dimensional sinusoidal gratings, under the presumption that their spatial integration and response functions to these stimuli are at least piecewise-linear. By this assumption, responses to a number of spectrally pure stimuli can be combined to predict a cell's response to spectrally complex, real world stimuli. Presentation of spectrally complex (multiple grating) stimuli shows that this assumption is incorrect. A second sinusoidal grating with a spatial configuration that does not drive the cell when presented alone can modify not only the amplitude of a response to a test grating, it can reorganize the receptive field. Perturbing gratings of differing orientations are generally repulsive, i.e., cause the orientation tuning peak to move in the opposite direction. Because of re-tuning, overall suppression is less than that measured at the single stimulus peak, and tuning bandwidth is generally broadened. While the spatial reorganization resulting from complex images challenges the modeling of higher processes of perception, it does offer advantages in discrimination between nearby angles. Joe is presently a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Joseph Kabara's website. Min-Suk Kang, PhD (2002 - 2008) [Blake with Schall]: Before focusing on his disseration research Min-Suk pursued several distinct projects with Blake and Schall. In Schall's laboratory he contributed to two major lines of research. He helped analyze the time when presaccadic movement-related activity began during visual search for targets that were easy or difficult to locate to address fundamental questions about the timing relation between perceptual and motor stages of processing. This work was published in Psychological Research. Min-Suk also contributed to the first description of an extracranial event-related potential indexing the allocation of visual attention in macaque monkeys homologous to the N2pc described in humans. This was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In Blake's laboratory, Min-Suk has explored several aspects of binocular rivalry. In one project, he demonstrated that sound synchronized to a dynamic, monocularly viewed stimulus boosted that stimulus' dominance in binocular rivalry. This finding was published in Psychological Research. His more recent work has focused on spatio-temporal dynamics of rivalry, and here he has completed two projects: 1) creation of a novel technique for producing waves of dominance whose properties can be inferred from records of alternations of rivalry dominance (the technique is now being used by our laboratory to examine traveling waves in binocular rivalry), and 2) a study of the determinants of stimulus contrast's influence on durations of dominance of a rival stimulus (this project reconciles conflicting results in the literature, by showing the crucial influence of stimulus size on rivalry dynamics). Finally, Min-Suk completed a study of a novel form of perceptual bistability dubbed "stimulus rivalry" whereby rapid, repetitive exchange of dissimilar, "rival" stimuli between the two eyes can produce slow alternations in perceptual dominance. As previously implemented, stimulus rivalry occurred within a relatively narrow range of contrasts and spatial frequencies. Min-Suk discovered that it is possible to increase the incidence of stimulus rivalry by brief, periodic presentation of a composite configuration created by superimposition of the two rival stimuli. The paper describing these results discussed them in the context of neural models of binocular and stimulus rivalry. Min-Suk earned his PhD in 2008 and is currently doing postdoctoral work with Geoff Woodman in the Department of Psychology at Vanderbilt University. Min-Suk Kang Website. Peter Kaskan, PhD (2002 - 2008) [Kaas with Casagrande & Roe]: Peter is another star of our training program. He earned his PhD in 2008 and is now in postdoctoral training with Elizabeth Murray in the Laboratory of Neuropsychology, Section on Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, NIMH. At Vanderbilt he conducted a range of anatomical and optical imaging studies, working with Kaas, Casagrande and Roe as well as Yuzo Chino at the University of Houston. One line of research has described differences in the cortical connections of the middle temporal area (MT) and the middle temporal crescent area (MTc) in prosimian galagos. These findings were published in Anatomical Record. A related line of research in collaboration with Roe uses optical imaging to reveal functional maps of visual cortex as a means for localizing the placement of neuroanatomical tracers and for correlating cytoarchitecture with functional maps. This work has concentrated on the organization and connectivity of areas V2 and MT in owl monkeys with an emphasis on comparisons with macaque monkey organization. This work has resulted in a publication in Frontiers in Neuroscience with two other manuscripts in preparation. Peter also collaborated in studies using optical imaging to describe activation patterns in area MT in prosimian primates normally and after inactivation of V1. This resulted in two publications in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In collaboration with Chino, Peter has examined the development of connections between V1 and V2 in infant macaque monkeys, to understand the how the organization of center surround response properties in V1 and V2 neurons change with age. This work has resulted in one presentation at the VSS meeting. Peter’s research at Vanderbilt has contributed to 5 publications, 3 of which were first-authored. His postdoctoral research now is investigating the pathways and processes that lead from sensation to action, and in how visual and other sensory signals acquire value. A variety of brain areas contribute signals to evaluative and decision making processes that allow for flexible responding. Dr. Kaskan is exploring the organization and connections of these areas, including the orbitofrontal cortex, the medial frontal cortex, the hippocampus, amydgala and striatum. Ilya Khaytin, PhD (2003 - 2008) [Casagrande]: Ilya is a student in the Vanderbilt Medical Scientist Training Program. He has been investigating the organization of parallel pathways in the visual system of primates. His efforts have resulted in 4 papers published in PNAS and Cerebral Cortex, 3 chapters and 12 abstracts with more on the way. He defended his dissertation successfully in Spring 2008 for a PhD in Neuroscience. He will return to Medical School to finish the MD portion of his training starting July 1, 2008. After receiving the MD he plans to go into Neurology and combine his clinical interests with a research program in neural imaging. Ilya is now completing his medical training. Chai-Youn Kim, PhD (2001 - 2006) [Blake]: Chai-Youn is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Korea University. At Vanderbilt she worked on synethesia (the illusory perception of colors associated with viewing alphanumeric characters). Her work shown that synesthetic colors interact robustly with real colors in determining visual grouping and motion correspondence. In addition, she has shown that grating patterns "colored" by synesthetia can generate a reliable McCollough effect, further documenting the perceptual nature of synesthetic colors. Chai-Youn is also actively involved in brain imaging studies of binocular rivalry and biological motion. From her work at Vanderbilt she has six publications, and she has presented her work at the Society for Neuroscience and Vision Science Society. Chai-Youn was recently recognized as a "Rising Star" by the Association for Psychological Science. Chai-Youn Kim Website. Leah Krubitzer (1984-1989) [Kaas]: Leah worked on the connections of the frontal eye fields as defined by microstimulation in monkeys. She obtained individual NRSA support and completed a Ph.D. thesis on cortical connections of visual area MT in primates. She went on to postdoctoral training in Australia, an impressive record of research on visual and somatosensory systems, and an appointment as Assistant Professor at the University of California, Davis where she has begun an independent, funded research career. In 1998 Leah was designated a MacArthur Fellow with an award of $240,000. Leah Krubitzer's website. Edward Lachica (1985-1990) [Casagrande]: Ed made several important discoveries. Perhaps his best known finding from this period was the discovery that the parallel visual pathways in primates, that had been proposed to remain quite parallel in both primary visual cortex (V1) and higher visual areas, actually are anatomically intermixed in V1. Ed demonstrated that this intermixing of parallel pathway input from the geniculate nucleus occurs in V1 not only in macaque monkeys, but also in several other primate species, indicating that it is a general feature of visual system anatomy. This finding stimulated others to rethink the proposal that specific visual properties are analyzed separately by parallel pathways that originate in the retina. Ed also showed, by reconstructing individually labeled axons, that there are not just two but three distinct pathways from retina via the LGN to primate V1. Ed showed that this third pathway (the K pathway) is unique in receiving input from four separate classes of axons, two sets from the retina and two sets from the lateral geniculate nucleus. These results, together with data from an earlier physiological study, suggested that the K pathway in primates may be made up of several functionally unique visual pathways. In addition, Ed published several significant papers on aspects of the development of the primate visual system and on the results of sensory deprivation on both the visual and somatosensory systems. Ed pursued postdoctoral training with Ed Rubel at the University of Washington. Julie Larson (2002 - 2003) [Marois]: Arriving with promising credentials, Julie soon discovered that she was not suited for an academic career.Julie was admitted to the graduate program in psychology with solid academic credentials (North Dakota State University Overall GPA 3.94, Psychology GPA 4.0, GRE V 550, Q 680, A 660, Psychology 720). Of particular note, a former trainee of this program, Mark Nawrot, who earned his PhD working with Blake, is on the faculty at North Dakota State University and directed Julie to this graduate program. Julie gained extensive research experience as an undergraduate student. She worked primarily with Dr. Karen Arnell who received her training with prominent researchers John Duncan, Pierre Jolicoeur, Ray Klein, and Kimron Shapiro. Thus, Julie's academic lineage was excellent. With Arnell she did behavioral and electrophysiology work on attention, focusing in particular on an event-related potential study of the attentional blink phenomenon. Julie also worked with Dr. Margaret Wilson on a behavioral study on the recency effect in memory. Julie's efforts resulted in one publication (Arnell, KM, & Larson JM Cross-modality attentional blink without preparatory task-set switching. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. 2002 9(3):497-506) plus coauthorship of abstracts presented at 6 scientific meetings including the Cognitive Neuroscience Society and the Psychonomic Society. Through her research experience Julie had gained broad computer skills (e.g, both Mac and PC, SPSS, SAS, E-Prime, Neuroscan, Unix-NAWK, PsyScope, and Director stimulus presentation software). Her undergraduate career was capped by receipt of the E.V. Estensen Outstanding Psychology Major Award given to the outstanding graduating psychology senior. Julie's personal statement in her application for graduate school was compelling, AMy third year of undergraduate school was a milestone in my life, because I was inspired by my professor and mentor Dr. Arnell to pursue research in my own academic career. I developed skills both in her classroom and in her lab that molded me into a researcher who could think critically about the world and apply that thought process to my work in the laboratory. My enthusiasm for science in Dr. Arnell's lab became evident to those around me. After only a few months of working as a Research Assistant, I was presented with the Junior Research Award by the North Dakota State University Psychology Department. My thesis was a way for me to experience all aspects of the research process. I began with an extensive literature search on attention and electrophysiology. With Dr. Arnell's guidance, I designed the experiment and applied for approval from the IRB. My work was partially funded by a grant awarded to me by the NDSU Psychology Department. I also coauthored a journal article on a project I worked on in her lab. I helped to prepare the methods section of the article and contributed to the editing process. This article has been accepted for publication in the Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. This past year, I have worked as a Teaching Assistant for Dr. Wilson's research Methods course. This has helped to further my skills in statistics and give me a chance to learn about the teaching process. Our positive impression of Julie was reinforced by the letter of recommendation from Dr. Karen Arnell which stated, AI am excited to have this opportunity to tell you about Julie Larson, for she is one of two top, if not the top, student I have ever worked with at any institution. Julie has the mind of a scientist. She convinced me that she would make an excellent scientist by clearly understanding the logic of complex experimental designs, and the theoretical implications of the results. In January of 1999 Julie began working in my attention lab, doing so voluntarily without pay. Although completely unfamiliar with the topic (or cognitive psychology in general) Julie dove into the work reading articles and becoming familiar with the experiment. Julie suggested a novel design change that I had not thought of, yet was exactly what was required. For her honor's thesis, Julie voluntarily chose to pursue a more time consuming and technically complex electrophysiological experiment in my lab. Julie readily learned the techniques, mastering the complicated NeuroScan software, and became proficient at analyzing brain wave signals. Julie produced an excellent, well-written thesis with interesting and potentially important results. At two conferences she gave a poster presentation, and at the third a talk. All were well received by her peers and mine. I flew her to Los Angeles last year to join me in presenting our work at the 40th annual Psychonomic Society conference. There she and I jointly presented our poster. Although intimidated by having to present the poster to premier scientists that she admired, Julie provided them with excellent presentations, and some commented to me that they were very impressed by Julie and asked where she was intending to go to graduate school. She is definitely one of those students who is not only smart, but naturally thinks and reasons as a scientist. Furthermore, she has the will and determination to make things happen, and an outgoing and engaging personality that will surely assist her in an academic career. I strongly encourage you to accept Julie into your graduate program. These comments were reinforced by the letter from Dr. Margaret Wilson who wrote, Julie is one of the sharpest and clearest thinkers that it has been my pleasure to mentor in my lab. She already has a well sharpened scientific intuition, and insists on being persuaded of the reasonableness of a proposed course of action. In addition, Julie has a superb sense of poise and professionalism that will serve her well in her career as a professor. She has both intellectual and personal qualities to succeed at whatever she puts her hand to, and I predict that she will make quite a name for herself. I recommend Julie without reservation. Julie's interests meshed powerfully with those of a then new faculty member, Rene Marois. Given her apparent dedication to an academic research career and our policy of supporting junior faculty, it was not a hard decision to appoint her to this T32. What training program would not have done the same? But like that program, we were stunned when in her first year of graduate school Julie announced her desire to leave the program. She wrote, AI received 6 months of research training under Rene Marois on a vision research project currently underway. I am voluntarily leaving the program early due to a desire to change my career path. No publications, grants, etc., are yet complete from this work. We were disappointed but resigned in the knowledge that predicting the future is challenging, especially the future of first year graduate students. Joey Latham, PhD (2004 - 2007) [Mchaourab]: Joey's graduate career at Vanderbilt was very successful. He used chip-scale interferometry to monitor the kinetics and thermodynamics of lens protein interactions. Joey was invited to present his work at the Bio-Photonics '05 meeting, sponsored by the Lund Institute of Technology in Sweden and the Riso National Laboratory in Denmark. Joey's efforts have contributed to three publications, including one in Science, with another paper in preparation that will demonstrate the application of the technology to lens proteins. Joey is currently receiving postdoctoral training from Richard Caprioli in the Mass Spectrometry Research Center at Vanderbilt University. Due to his exposure to eye research during his graduate training, Joey is applying his expertise to vision science. Joey is working on proteomic methods to visualize the patterns of protein expression in various tissues. The main method is MALDI MS (matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization) analysis of thin tissue sections to visualize up to 1000 individual protein signals. Based on his experience in the Vision Training Program Seminars, Joey identified an application of his methods in eye research, so he has begun working with John Penn's laboratory to use the novel in situ proteomics methods to determine the relative amounts and retinal locations of both endogenous retinal proteins and therapeutic drugs delivered to retinal targets systemically and locally. This approach will allow them to track the drugs and to determine their pharmacokinetics in ocular tissues. This will facilitate rapid optimization of the formulation of the drugs for delivery to sites within the eye. In sum, Joey's support by and experience with this Vision Training Program has led him to focus his considerable technical talents on problems of the eye. At the April 10, 2009, Vision Training Program seminar Joey presented an update on his current, postdoctoral research. Aberrant retinal neovascularization (NV) is the underlying condition in several debilitating ocular diseases. Among the many factors leading to NV, vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is thought to be a principal mediator. Joey’s current research investigates the global changes brought about by NV in the eye using mass spectrometry. Of particular interest is the discrete functions VEGF variants play in pathogenesis and the therapeutic effect of VEGF inhibitors. In vitro assays of distinct retinal cell types are used to determine splice variant specific VEGF protein expression in normal and altered environmental/genetic conditions. Imaging mass spectrometry is used to define the spatial distribution in situ of VEGF splice variants in both normal and pathological retinal vessel growth. This work will be presented at ARVO and at the American Society for Mass Spectrometry. Sang-Hun Lee, PhD (1996 - 2001) [Blake]: After earning his PhD as a star of the Department of Psychology and this training program, Sang-Hun spent two years at Stanford University and New York University as a post-doctoral fellow in David Heeger's laboratory. Sang-Hun is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Seoul National University, arguably the top university in the Korea. As an Assistant Professor, he has built up a transinstitutional cognitive neuroscience research network, revitalized research participation by undergraduate students, raised the profile of the psychology department, attracted major research grants, and gained the reputation among undergraduate students as a top teacher at Seoul National. Meanwhile, Sang-Hun's research productivity has remained outstanding. He has published in the very best journals in the field, including Science, Nature, and Nature Neuroscience. He is co-PI on an NIH grant. And in 2006, Sang-Hun received the William James Young Investigator Award from the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness. He is also the first winner of the Randolph Blake Early Career Award given by the Department of Psychology at Vanderbilt. Sang-Hun has recently assumed a leadership position in the development of a new Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences funded by the South Korean government to nurture universities into internationally competitive schools. Randolph Blake, a mentor in this program, is one of the team members. This initiative will provide significant new training opportunities for trainees in this program. Sang-Hun Lee Website. Amy Lindsey (1992-1996) [Powers]: Amy received her Masters degree from the University of Pittsburgh. At Vanderbilt she become involved in studies of regeneration of the retina and the behavioral implications of regeneration. She was supported by Powers' NEI R01 grant with a special supplement for disabled students. She succeeded in providing the first evidence that regenerated retina in adulthood can support visual function. Her studies were pioneering in the sense that they looked at both reflexive and conditioned behaviors and demonstrated that each of those did indeed return. She is now a postdoctoral fellow at Ohio State University, where she is continuing her studies in regeneration. David Lyon, PhD (1995 - 2001) [Kaas]: David accomplished several studies describing the organization of extrastriate visual cortex in nonhuman primates. Another star of our training program, with Kaas he published 15 papers. David continued his research career through postdoctoral work with Mriganka Sur at MIT that resulted in a paper in Nature Neuroscience. This was supported by an NRSA from NEI. Subsequently, David worked with Ed Callaway and published two papers in Neuron describing findings using transsynaptic tracing methods. David is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anatomy & Neurobiology at the University of California, Irvine and is a Visiting Scientist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. His laboratory now studies the fine scale cortical and thalamic circuitry mediating visual perception using a variety of anatomical and neurophysiological approaches. Overall, his work has helped to determine how neurons interact at the local and long-range level within the relatively large structure of visual cortex found in highly visual mammals. He has been recognized twice by the Cajal Club for research on the organization of primate visual cortex, receiving both the Krieg Cortical Scholar Award and the Krieg Cortical Explorer Award. Michael Mebane (2003 - 2006) [Schall]: After arriving with credentials and potential that merited support by this training grant, Michael decided not to pursue a career in academics.Michael was admitted to the Psychology graduate program as a star. His academic credentials were outstanding (Texas Tech University majoring in Psychology, Philosophy and Mathematics he earned an overall GPA of 3.95 and a major GPA of 4.0. GRE V 700, Q 750, A 650). Michael was recipient of the Arts and Sciences Academic Achievement Scholarship and was on the President's List three times and Dean's List once. Michael was deeply engaged by research with Bill Maki. His efforts were rewarded with a publication (Maki WS, Mebane MW. 2006 Attentional capture triggers an attentional blink. Psychon Bull Rev. 13:125-31). Michael was selected to be an Honor's College Undergraduate Research Fellow and was recipient of the Outstanding Undergraduate Award in Research from the Psychology Department at Texas Tech. Michael was also recognized nationally. He was 1 of 24 students selected from approximately 150 applications to attend the ten-week NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates at the University of Minnesota. Michael was accepted to the Fifth Annual Undergraduate Summer Workshop in Cognitive Science and Cognitive Neuroscience at the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He was accepted to the Insightful Brain Workshop at the University of Rochester. Michael was 1 of 32 students selected from approximately 400 applications to attend the American Psychological Association's Summer Science Institute at the University of Colorado, Boulder. In his Statement of Purpose Michael wrote, AThe study of the brain is rapidly maturing, marrying what fifty years ago would be considered widely disparate departments. Advances in neuroscience, neural imaging, and biologically-plausible modeling are what, in my view, have instigated this long-awaited hypostatization of formerly abstract mental concepts. Vanderbilt is well prepared to lead and lend power to this exciting era of the brain, as is evidenced by its integration of interdisciplinary scientists. However, an understanding of only the structure of the brain is not sufficient for an understanding of the processes which supervene on that structure. Computational modeling, especially that of biologically plausible neural network modeling, is what holds the most hope in shedding light on such processes. My professional goals, which I find hard to separate conceptually from my personal goals, are to earn a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience and to research and teach at a research university. This is my third year to work with Dr. William Maki at Texas Tech University investigating the nature of visual attention and the general nature of priming within a visual paradigm. I am continuing to work with Dr. Maki on the attentional blink as an Honors College Research Fellow. Thus, my research experience is robust and has prepared me well for graduate study. My majors of psychology, philosophy, and mathematics have also prepared me well for scientific study, providing me with an understanding of the nature of the mind, the nature of science, and the nature of mathematical analysis. Most importantly, however, I am very passionate about understanding the brain. To understand how neurons, which are matter themselves, can grasp and understand the matter in the world around them and how they can reflect on themselves seems to me a very beautiful and worthwhile endeavor. We were also influenced strongly by the letter of recommendation from recognized vision scientist William Maki, who wrote, AMichael Mebane has applied to your graduate program and I am writing to recommend his admission - enthusiastically and without reservation. As but one indicator of his academia capabilities, consider that I asked him to join a graduate seminar on attention I led during Fall semester 2001 (his junior year). His presentation and participation were easily on a par with those of the graduate students (some at the advanced PhD candidacy stage). Perhaps the one thing that really sets Michael apart from any of his peers is that he craves an academic career and thrives on research. He lights up when he talks about research and theory. And he acts on his belief. For the last year and half he's been a regular attendee at our weekly cognitive psychology brown bag. I've found Michael to be an exceptionally quick learner who takes instruction well and then can act quite independently. Michael strikes me as being exceptionally stable. As a further indicator of his ability to establish an independent research program, I offer his work on his Honors Thesis. He selected a recently discovered from of visual masking known as masking by object substitution. I confess (with some envy and embarrassment) that his solution to some programming problems were truly elegant and more creative than my own. Michael was a key player in this research, altering how we thought about some unusual results by his probing questions. The bottom line is that I believe Michael Mebane is the flat out best undergraduate I've ever had working with me. I'd place him right at the top of the list of abut 50 undergraduate students who I have mentored and who have worked in my lab during the last 25 years. (Actually, that's an understatement - I think he's a couple of JNDs ahead of the next best of that group). To demonstrate that this is not a unique perspective, consider the letter of recommendation from the philosopher Frederick Suppe, AHe was as good as any undergraduate philosophy of science student I have taught in my 35 years as a professor. He is the most engaged and curious science student in my recent memory. Of note, Michael attended a meeting of the Psychonomics Society at which Schall presented his research on the neural mechanisms of visual search in a Symposium. Michael's interest in the VVRC and Schall's laboratory was cemented there. Based on his credentials, experience and potential it was clear that one open position on this T32 should be allocated to Michael. Given similar circumstances, the Executive Committee for this training program would make the same decision every time. Michael performed very well in graduate course work, including an A+ in the Statistical Influence course, while maintaining an active research project testing the premotor theory of attention by probing saccade preparation through electrical stimulation of the frontal eye field of monkeys performing a task that dissociates attention allocation from saccade production. This was presented at the 2004 meeting of the Society for Neuroscience (M.W. Mebane, S.M. Shorter-Jacobi, J.M. Sherwood, J.D. Schall. Dissociation of spatial attention and saccade preparation during visual search. Program No. 332.4. 2004 Abstract Viewer/Itinerary Planner. San Diego, CA: Society for Neuroscience, 2004), and a manuscript was submitted to Cerebral Cortex. Michael also collaborated with mathematical psychologist Tom Palmeri in a theoretical analysis of the properties of visual cortex neurons related to the allocation of attention that tested a central premise of Bundesen's Neural Theory of Visual Attention. This was presented at the 2005 meeting of the Society for Neuroscience (Mebane, M.W., T.J.Palmeri, J.D.Schall, G.D.Logan. Testing the neural theory of visual attention: Mixture distributions of neural activity. Program No. 286.19. 2005 Abstract Viewer/Itinerary Planner. Washington, DC: Society for Neuroscience). Michael was clearly beginning a trajectory that would place him among the elite of any cohort of graduate students. This promise and productivity made it all the more stunning that he elected to drop out of graduate school. He completed a Master's degree and left Vanderbilt. Allen (Wally) Mensinger (1990-1994) [Powers]: Wally trained in Biology at UCSB. He came with a strong interest in vision, partly fueled by his predoctoral experience. He and Dr. Powers developed a means to assess retinal function following regeneration, using the ERG and a simple reflexive behavior. Two papers and several abstracts resulted from one collaboration. Wally continues visual system research at Washington University. His interests in regeneration continue. He and Dr. Highstein sent a fish vestibular system regeneration preparation up in the Neurolab space shuttle project. Allen Mensinger's website. Todd Monroe, PhD (1996 - 2001) [Haselton]: Todd obtained his PhD in the Haselton lab. His thesis work was focused on the development of a caging technology for selective DNA activation. He is currently the Mr. & Mrs C.W. Armstrong Associate Professor in Biological and Agricultural Engineering at Louisiana State University and has recently received a NSF Career Development Award to assist in further developing his academic career. Chris Pino, PhD (2002 - 2007) [Haselton]: Chris obtained his PhD while working in the Haselton lab. As part of his thesis, he developed and investigated a epithelial cell transfer system for accelerating corneal wound healing. He is currently a Research Associate in the Department Biomedical Engineering at Vanderbilt in the laboratory of Prasad Shastri. Mark Nawrot (1987-1991) [Blake]: During his predoctoral training, Mark studied interactions between stereopsis and motion. His experimental studies documented strong neural interactions, which he then successfully simulated in a neural network model. His work was published in Science, Vision Research and Visual Neuroscience. Mark received postdoctoral training in visual neuroscience with A. Damasio and M. Rizzo at the University of Iowa College of Medicine. Mark is currently the James A. Meier Professor of Psychology at North Dakota State University. His current NIH funded research is revealing the role of eye movements in the perception of depth from motion parallax. Mark Nawrot's Website. Sandy Neargarder (formerly Shimp) (1991-1997) [Fox/Oross]: Sandy Neargarder entered the program in the Fall of 1991. She received her Ph.D. in the Fall of 1997. She worked on a project that involved exploring Alzheimer's disease and Down Syndrome and their effects on visual perception and cognitive function. While she started her work here at Vanderbilt with Robert Fox, she completed it at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver Center in Massachusetts under the direction of Dr. Stephen Oross III who was also trained with Fox. Her work involved using sophisticated measures of visual perception (i.e., depth, motion, color, and contrast sensitivity) to try to determine the extent to which Down Syndrome deficits may be similar to Alzheimer's deficits. The overall goal was to discover similarities in brain function in these two disorders. Sandy is now an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Bridgewater State College in Massachusetts and a Research Associate at Boston University. Her main areas of research include Alzheimer's disease, colour-word synesthesia, and neuropsychological profiles of mitochondrial disorders. Sandy Neargarder's website. Farley Norman (1983-1990) [Lappin]: Farley's doctoral thesis was on the perception of solid shape from motion and parts of this work were reported in Perception and Psychophysics. Farley subsequently had a post-doctoral fellowship with James Todd at Brandeis University and then at Ohio State University. He has published many papers on the perception of surface structure and depth. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Psychology Department at Western Kentucky University and is actively engaged in vision research. Jeff Oliver (1996-1997) [Lappin]: Jeff conducted research on the effect of microscopic surface structure on the scattering of light and on the resulting shaded images of the surfaces. This was interdisciplinary research in collaboration with Richard Haglund (Dept. of Physics) and Alan Peters (Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering). Jeff collected data on the microscopic structure of several samples of glass and metal surfaces, which were roughened to various extents by mechanical abrasion and then measured by an atomic force microscope. The measured light-scattering characteristics for each sample were then compared with predictions by quantitative physical models of the surface microstructure, and the resulting image shading patterns for surfaces with arbitrary curvature and illumination were then described. In other experiments, Jeff also assisted in collecting data on visually perceived distances in varied environmental settings and on the visual acuity for bilaterally symmetric patterns. Jeff left our graduate training program in Summer 1997. Tony Raissian (2003 - 2005) [Blake]: Tony was accepted into the Neuroscience Graduate Program, but he was unable to fulfill the requirements of the program. He did complete a Masters degree, and his thesis was published in a major journal.Tony entered the neuroscience graduate program after earning a bachelor's degree in neuroscience at Vanderbilt (overall GPA 3.24; GRE V 530, Q 640, A 700). His credentials were not as good as other students, but he the integrative track of the neuroscience graduate program at Vanderbilt was new and so had not established a reputation that would eventually attract much more qualified applicants. Nevertheless, Tony did have research experience as an undergraduate with Blake, Marois and Timothy McNamara, a cognitive psychologist in the Department of Psychology. The letters of recommendation from our colleages spoke to Tony=s potential for graduate training. Leslie Smith wrote, ATony was in my PSY 201 class [the introductory neuroscience course]. What impressed me more than his aptitude for science was his motivation for the subject. He obviously wanted to excel in neuroscience and he certainly showed great enthusiasm for the topics. I think that Tony would make an excellent addition to the Neuroscience program at Vanderbilt. Isabel Gauthier wrote, AIt is my pleasure to write this letter of recommendation for Tony Raissian for admission. Tony took my class ABrain Damage and Cognition, an advanced lecture class in our Department. Tony has a very pleasant and energetic personality - I would take him as a research assistant without hesitation in my own laboratory. Finally, Timothy McNamara, who was Department Chair, wrote, AI have known Tony since August of 2001, having supervised his senior thesis in the neuroscience program this year. In my opinion, Tony is a very strong candidate for graduate school. Tony performed well in coursework, but the leadership of the neuroscience graduate program noted specific deficiencies especially during the qualifying examination. Tony embraced the challenge of overcoming those problems, but eventually realized that he was not suited for vision research. He completed a Masters degree, and his efforts did contribute to a publication (Blake R, Tadin D, Sobel KV, Raissian TA, Chong SC Strength of early visual adaptation depends on visual awareness. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2006 Mar 21:103(12):4783-8). In his letter of resignation Tony explained, AIt is after much deliberation that I have decided to withdraw from the Neuroscience program. This may well be the hardest decision I have had to make in my life, but I feel that it is the right one. Having excelled at the preliminary course work, I was unprepared for the sudden halt in productivity that I experience in the Doctoral portion. I was well versed in the material, and could solve problems that were brought to me. However, I seemed to lack something. I was missing the key ingredient to a successful scientist; interest. I did not have that fundamental craving to >know= about the topic I was studying. That drive that forms more questions, and keeps me in the lab to answer them. I will be applying to Master=s program on East Asian studies. Tony is currently a graduate student in Asian Studies at Cornell University. David Royal, PhD (1999 - 2005) [Casagrande with Schall]: David carried out single-unit recordings in the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (LGNd) of awake, behaving macaque monkeys under the direction of Casagrande and Schall. This resulted in 3 publications. David is currently a postdoctoral associate with Mark Wallace at Vanderbilt University. Jason Samonds, PhD (1999 - 2004) [Bonds]: Another star of our training program, Jason published 8 papers in top journals based on his graduate work. He is now a postdoctoral research associate with Tai Sing Lee in the Department of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. He is supported by and NRSA from NEI for studies of spatial integration of V1 horizontal disparity signals. Takashi Sato, PhD (1999 - 2003) [Schall]: Takashi published 6 very strong papers with Schall, including two in Neuron, and another with Ford Ebner based on his efforts at Vanderbilt. After working with Kirk Thompson at the NEI, Takashi began postdoctoral training with Karel Svoboda now at the Janelia Farm Research Center. He has coauthored 3 papers since leaving graduate school. Takashi has interviewed for faculty positions at Brandeis, Scripps and Yale. Jesse Shaver (2003 - 2007) [Piston & Mchaourab]: Jesse is perhaps our most creative trainee as an MD/PhD student in the Medical Scientist Training Program and graduate student in Molecular Physiology and Biophysics. He is co-supervised by David Piston and Mchaourab. (Piston is a professor of molecular physiology and biophysics and is not a mentor in this training program.) His work focuses on the biophysics of corneal transparency, with emphasis on the loss of cellular transparency during wound healing. To explore corneal cellular optics on a micro-scale, it is desirable to have the ability to cause micro-scale perturbations of the protein levels using a technique that is minimally-disruptive to the tissue structure. Jesse has been working on a system of micro-iontophoresis to introduce genetic materials and constructs (plasmid, siRNA, morpholino) in precise geometrical patterns on the cornea. Because the perturbations are micro-scale, neighboring undisturbed corneal tissue and cells may serve as the control within the same microscope field-of-view. It is known that both the optical and acoustic indices of the cornea change with hydration, but the magnitude of the acoustic index shift is only known to poor precision. With the growing clinical importance of corneal pachymetry, the acoustic index of the cornea deserves further study, as all ultrasound pachymetry systems rely upon basic assumptions regarding the acoustic index. Supported by an NIH/NIBIB Grant (R21 EB002382, PI Jin Shen), Jesse has completed a working prototype system of his low-cost confocal corneal pachymeter, a medical instrument designed for eventual clinical ophthalmic use. This work required optical system and engineering, advanced digital signal processing, and embedded system architecture. This research was presented at ASLMS and IEEE EMBS, and is published in IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. He has also worked to develop low-cost techniques for weak signal recovery in ophthalmic instrumentation, particularly intraocular Raman spectroscopy using low-power laser excitation. His presentation on this topic for the Vision Training Program Seminar was a fascinating discussion about the theory of measurement. Jesse defended his doctoral dissertation in Fall 2007, and resumed third-year medical training. He plans to pursue ophthalmology residency, and we are confident that Jesse will have a distinguished career in biomedical eye research. Stephen B. Smith, PhD (2005 - 2006) [Mchaourab]: After just three months of support by this training grant, Stephen elected to move to a laboratory not doing eye research.Stephen was admitted into the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in the Biomedical Sciences with reasonable credentials (overall GPA 3.39, GRE V 610, Q 640, A 530). After the first year of laboratory rotations, he joined Mchaourab's laboratory. Stephen was appointed to this T32 based on his qualifications and the nature of his research. The previous competing renewal of this training grant had been criticized for lacking training at the molecular level. Stephen represented an opportunity to address that concern, and Mchaourab was an outstanding new mentor affiliated with this training program. In his application to the Executive Committee, Stephen wrote, AI am honored to have been nominated for this training grant position, and am prepared for the responsibility which it will entail. I feel that under the mentorship of Hassane Mchaourab, I will be able to excel in the field of vision research. Shortly after beginning work, unexpectedly, Stephen discovered a poor fit in the laboratory. In his termination notice Stephen explained, AI must, however resign my position on the grant due to a change of preceptor and an accompanying change in thesis topics. My resignation from the program in no way has anything to do with the training grant or its administration. I feel that I have received valuable training during my brief stay in the program that I can now use in my new area of research. Stephen joined a different laboratory and has successfully earned his PhD working in the Department of Pathology on "The Molecular Mechanism of Factor IX Activation by Factor XIa". Duje Tadin, PhD (1999 - 2007) [Lappin, Blake]: Duje is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Brain & Cognitive Sciences at the University of Rochester. During his time at Vanderbilt, he was a predoctoral trainee under the supervision of Joseph Lappin. His work focused on several different aspects of motion perception, and for his dissertation he explored center/surround interactions in motion. For his postdoctoral work in my lab, Duje expanded his research to include perceptual bistability, and he completed several papers on this topic (including some important work on the role of attention in the resolution of perceptual ambiguity). During his last year at Vanderbilt, Duje's interests expanded to include the study of visual deficits in schizophrenia, a topic he is now pursuing in earnest at Rochester. It is widely agreed that Duje is one of the finest trainees to have come through our program, and we anticipate that he will enjoy a long, productive career in academia. Duje Tadin Website. James Todd, PhD (2002 - 2008) [Marois]: Jay earned his PhD in 2008 working with Marois. His dissertation entitled The neural mechanisms of visual short-term memory capacity aimed to understand the neural substrates and behavioral consequences of filling our visual short-term memory (VSTM) to capacity. The common theme in all Jay’s work was that a similar network of brain regions is recruited to support VSTM and visual selective attention. Thus, when a component of this network is heavily taxed by a VSTM process, our ability to selectively attend to and become aware of a part of the visual world is greatly impaired. Jay’s research has resulted in 3 peer-reviewed publications, another in press and 2 that will be submitted shortly. Jay’s publications in Nature and Psychological Science have been cited heavily. Jay is now a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Chicago, under the mentorship of Dr. Sian Beilock. His research is focused on exploring how and why our ability to perform tasks in high stakes situations (e.g., taking a standardized test) is partly dependent upon our short-term memory capacity limits integrating both behavioral and neuroimaging research. The ultimate goal of his research is to develop classroom interventions that will facilitate students’ performance in the testing environment by ameliorating the adverse effects of performance pressure. Jay notes that his research productivity Ais in large part because I was funded by a VVRC training grant during the first several years which Aprovided me with the rare and privileged opportunity of being able to focus my time and energy on my research, unabated by numerous funding constraints that many of my peers experienced. Amy Wiencken-Barger, PhD (1995 - 2001) [Casagrande]: Amy=s main line of research described the distribution of nitric oxide synthase (NOS) in the visual system of three primate species. Her efforts resulted in papers in journals such as Cerebral Cortex and Glia as well as numerous abstracts and two chapers. Amy was awarded a Women in Neuroscience travel award to attend the 2000 meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. Amy is currently a Research Fellow with Ken McCarthy in Pharmacology at the University of North Carolina. Heidi Wiesenfelder (1988-1992) [Blake]: Heidi performed and published a series of experiments on binocular rivalry. Her work demonstrated that apparent motion can be seen even when motion tokens are presented to an eye during suppression. In addition, she showed that neural adaptation to complex motion (rotation and expansion) are disrupted by suppression, an important finding in pinpointing the neural site of suppression. For her dissertation she produced a voluminous review of the literature on motion aftereffects and she performed a series of experiments to test models of motion adaptation. Heidi Wiesenfelder website Yuede Yang (1988-1994) [Blake]: Yuede has collaborated extensively with Blake, publishing papers on binocular rivalry, stereopsis and perceptual grouping. Her dissertation work focused on spatial frequency tuning in motion perception (paper published in Nature) and stereopsis (paper published in Vision Research). More recently, she has been investigating the role of contrast modulation in perceptual grouping, with an eye toward testing the role of synchronized neural activity in "binding" of visual features. Yuede is currently an Adjoint Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology. Chun-Nang (Alan) Wong, PhD (2002 - 2007) [Gauthier with Palmeri]: Alan's research on visual expertise in letter perception and subordinate-level object perception resulted in 7 publications and another submitted (4 first author). He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His current research concerns perceptual expertise in different domains (e.g., face perception, letter perception, music reading, etc.), the effect of culture on visual cognition, the neural basis of object perception, and the relationship between consciousness and perception. Techniques used include behavioral experiments, electroencephalogram (EEG), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and computational modeling. Chun-Nang (Alan) Wong Website. Xiangmin Xu, PhD (1998 - 2004) [Casagrande]: Xu's research at Vanderbilt on the organization of visual cortex resulted in 11 publications including several in collaboration with Bonds and Kaas. His research was recognized by the Kreig Cortical Kudos Award (Cortical Scholar Award) from the Cajal Club. Wishing to investigate fine-scale cortical connectivity and learn molecular and genetic methods to studying cortical circuitry, Xu carrid out postdoctoral training with Ed Callaway at the Salk Institute; this effort has produced a paper in the Journal of Comparative Neurology, another manuscript under review at Neuron and one more in preparation. He is also collaborating with David Kleinfeld from UCSD. Xu is currently supported by an NIH Pathway to Independence (K99/R00) Award. Xu is now an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anatomy & Neurobiology at University of California, Irvine. Xiangmin Xu Website. Karen Yu (1990-1994) [Blake]: Karen's predoctoral work centered around the question of the role of knowledge in visual perception. In one set of experiments, Karen showed that binocular rivalry predominance is influenced by structural aspects of a monocular image, but that structural information need not be consciously perceived. Her dissertation was an extensive set of experiments on the role of knowledge in motion perception. That work demonstrated that context and structural knowledge can influence perception of motion, particularly under conditions where the motion signal is ambiguous. She is currently an assistant professor in Psychology at the University of the South. Karen Yu's website. Past Postdoctoral Trainees David Alais, PhD (1996 - 1998) [Blake]: David investigates visual, auditory and cross-modal perception through human psychophysical experiments. He has been exceptionally productive. David is currently Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Univ of Sydney, Australia. David Alais's Website. John Allison, Ph.D. (1992-1996) [Casagrande/Bonds]: John was involved in several studies of spatial vision in cats and bush baby. John's major focus was on the role of inhibition in the generation of receptive field response properties of single cortical neurons. He examined the effect of blocking the neural activity in lower cortical layers with iontophoretic application of GABA on receptive field properties of cells in the upper cortical layers. His results showed that the orientation tuning of many cells in layers II and III is significantly affected by GABA application to layers V and VI as long as the GABA block is made within 400 to 600 µm of vertical register with the recording electrode. These results suggest that input from the lower layers is important in shaping the orientation tuning of cells in the upper cortical layers. John also examined the contributions of each of the three identified LGN pathways by blocking the input from sets of LGN layers temporarily with GABA and then examining whether the remaining LGN cell pathways are sufficient to maintain the striate cortical cells' spatial and temporal selectivity. Surprisingly, all cells tested, regardless of cortical layer or proposed functional compartment in V1, exhibited response changes when either LGN pathway was in-activated. Blocking M input reduced responses to all contrasts while blocking P input only reduced responses to high contrasts. These findings suggested that both M and P pathways influence the responses of a variety of V1 cells and that the relative impact of each pathway is dynamically adjusted in relation to stimulus contrast. John was responsible for 5 major publications and 5 abstracts. He continues to work on the visual system with Kevan Martin in the Institute for Neuroinformatics at the University of Zurich. John Allison's website. Joseph Bilotta, Ph.D. (1987-1991) [Powers]: Joe received his Ph.D. from the City College of New York. He came to the Powers lab to learn behavioral techniques for assessing vision in Carassutus auratus, the species in which he had studied retinal physiology before. Five publications resulted from his time in the Powers lab. They showed that goldfish CSFs (both spatial and temporal) resemble human CSFs, and they also dealt with how APB alters CSFs. Joe did important work as well on methodological issues. He is now an Associate Professor of Psychology at Western Kentucky University. Joseph Bilotta's website. Joshua Brown, PhD (2000 - 2001) [Schall]: Josh is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University, where he directs a laboratory with two postdocs and a graduate student. Josh spent just one year in Schall=s laboratory before beginning work with Todd Braver at Washington University; this move occurred because his wife got a faculty position in St. Louis. In spite of his short tenure at Vanderbilt, he was tremendously productive, coauthoring 6 papers including one in Science and another in Neuron. He was equally productive in his work with Braver, producing 8 papers including another in Science. His research at Indiana is supported by funding from NIH, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and a Young Investigator Award from the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression and has been recognized by invitations for reviews and the NARSAD Sidney R. Baer, Jr. Foundation Young Investigator award. Joshua Brown Website. Cindy Bukach, PhD (2003 - 2006) [Gauthier]: Cindy is currently an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Richmond where she investigates object recognition, cognitive and neural mechanisms of the development and loss of perceptual expertise across the lifespan, organization of semantic knowledge, category specificity in cognitively intact and impaired individuals and face recognition. Her work at Vanderbilt resulted in 3 publications. Jiyang Cai, PhD (1999 - 2000) [Sternberg at Emory Univ.]: Jiyang worked with Dean Jones and Sternberg at Emory to investigate mitochondrial dysfunction in the pathogenesis of macular degeneration in work supported by the National Eye Institute and Foundation Fighting Blindness. Cai is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences at Vanderbilt. His efforts since assuming the faculty position have resulted in 9 publications. He is currently supported by an R21 grant (Mitochondrial Oxidative Stress and Protection in Pesticide-induced Neurotoxicity) from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Sang-Chul Chong, PhD (2005 - 2006) [Blake]: Chong came to Vanderbilt after completing the PhD at Princeton, where he worked with Anne Treisman. At Vanderbilt, Chong studied the role of attention in the promotion of dominance of one eye's view during binocular rivalry. Although planning to stay at Vanderbilt for a longer period of time, Chong was offered and accepted an Assistant Professorship at Yonsei University, where he is currently employed. In the short time he has been there, he has established his own laboratory and is training graduate students. His current work deals with the ability of humans to extract statistical information from complex visual displays under varying conditions of attentional load. Sang-Chul Chong Website. Sam Crish, PhD (2006 - 2008) [Calkins]: Sam investigated the progression of retinal ganglion cell (RGC) dysfunction and degeneration in glaucoma. One paper is in preparation. Sam is now a Staff Scientist in the Vanderbilt Eye Institute working with Calkins. Paul Dux, PhD (2005 - 2009) [Marois]: Paul is currently an Assistant Professor of Psychology in the School of Psychology at the University of Queensland where he has established the Queensland Attention & Control Laboratory. His research is funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant through 2012. He is interested in the cognitive and neural mechanisms of attention and information processing. His research at Vanderbilt on repetition blindness and the attention blink produced 6 publications with another in press including two in Neuron. Paul Dux Website. Hideko Fukuda, Ph.D. (1992-1994) [Blake]: Hideko investigated spatial interactions in binocular rivalry. She established that the dominance of a given stimulus could be enhanced by contours imaged at neighboring regions of the visual field, especially when those contours were structurally related to the rival target itself. Hideko is now a Research Assistant Professor at Bowling Green University. Hideko Fukuda website. Lee Gilroy, PhD (2002 - 2006) [Blake]: Lee is currently Assistant Professor of Psychology, Middle Tennessee State University. During his time at Vanderbilt as a postdoc, Lee Gilroy worked on perceptual organization and 3D vision. Several of his studies, in collaboration with Sharon Guttman, dealt with the role of temporal synchrony in perceptual grouping, with particular emphasis on movement. Another project examined the kinetic depth effect produced by viewing optic flow displays simulating rotating, 3D objects. That project measured the extent to which our knowledge about frictional forces influences perceived rotation. Lee also was instrumental in several projects dealing with interocular suppression's effect on the build-up of adaptation and on detection of probe targets. Finally, Lee collaborated with Duje Tadin, Joe Lappin and Randolph Blake on a set of experiments documenting that motion signals are weakened when the moving stimulus is increased in size -- this paradoxical finding was described in a paper that published in Nature. Lee Gilroy Website. Bryan Gros, Ph.D. (1995-1997) [Fox/Blake]: Bryan joined Vanderbilt as a postdoctoral fellow in vision where he engaged in research on detection of decremental stimuli during rivalry suppression and as discrimination of motion direction. His application for an individual postdoctoral fellowship was successful but before activating it, he elected to return to Berkeley to accept a unique commercial opportunity to develop a medicine test device. After this venture collapsed abruptly, he accepted a position doing research on vision with Ted Cohn at Berkeley. Preston Garraghty, Ph.D. (1987-1992) [Kaas]: Preston's postdoctoral research concentrated on the plasticity of the somatosensory system in primates. He also published many important papers on the auditory system and on the visual system. His current research involves the plasticity of the somatosensory and visual systems in adult mammals. He is on the faculty of the Department of Psychology at the University of Indiana. Preston Garraghty's website. Sharon Guttman, PhD (2003 - 2005) [Blake]: Sharon is currently an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Middle Tennessee State University. Upon completing her PhD at UCLA, Sharon Guttman came to Vanderbilt to pursue two lines of research. One set of projects investigated the fidelity with which humans can perceive and remember complex temporal events portrayed using stochastic animations. In brief, observers viewed a relatively brief sequence depicting an object undergoing unpredictable changes in, say, contrast, and then after a brief interval is asked to select which of two animations matches the original. In a related vein, Guttman constructed displays in which local features group into global forms based on their common temporal structure. Her other line of research focused on bisensory interactions in the recognition of temporal synchrony. Sharon Guttman Website. Jason Ivanoff, PhD (2003 - 2006) [Marois]: Jason is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His tenure at Vanderbilt resulted in 3 publications (with a fourth under revision) concerning bottlenecks in information processing. Jason has now begun a research program investigating the dynamics and mechanisms of preparation as an example of top-down executive control with emphasis on intentional response preparation, inadvertent response activation, and attentional and decision biases. Jason=s work post-Vanderbilt has produced 3 more publications. Karin Harman James, PhD (2002 - 2004) [Gauthier]: Karin's post-doctoral work has focused on studying specialization in the brain for letters and letterstrings using fMRI. She found a surprising difference in the pattern of specialization for single letters of a familiar alphabet in visual cortex that could not be predicted from prior studies that almost exclusively focused on letterstrings. Interestingly, later work by Yetta Wong in the Gauthier laboratory has found a similar pattern with musical notation. Karin studies interactions between the perceptual and motor systems that led her to study interference between writing and reading, using a dual task technique. Her work at Vanderbilt resulted in two first-author publications, another paper submitted, and another in preparation, on interference between writing and letter perception. Karin is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University, where she directs the Cognition and Action Neuroimaging Lab that includes several graduate students. She was instrumental in the creation of the IU Imaging Research Facility and has established the developmental neuroimaging project. Karin Harman James Website. Thomas James, PhD (2001 - 2004) [Gauthier with Blake]: Tom came to Vanderbilt with a strong background in the use of fMRI to study questions about high-level vision and touch. His postdoctoral work at Vanderbilt has focused on behavioral and fMRI studies of the role of conceptual knowledge in visual perception. His work revealed that recent conceptual associations with novel objects can facilitate later visual judgments and also automatically recruit brain areas that are typically engaged in explicit semantic tasks. He is also conducting studies on haptic object perception, asking whether haptic expertise with objects that one has never seen generalize to vision and recruits visual areas in the brain. His work with Gauthier resulted in 6 publications, 4 of which were first-author. One of these papers, James & Gauthier (2006), received the 2006 Editor's choice award for the paper in Human Brain Mapping judged to best represent the highest standard of work in neuroimaging. Tom also collaborated with Blake to determine the influence of haptic motion on perception of ambiguous visual motion; this resulted in two papers, one of which appeared in Psychological Science. Tom is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University, where he directs the Perception and Neuroimaging Lab. The major research foci include the neural substrates of multisensory integration and accumulation models of object processing and are carried out with two graduate students and other investigators. In recognition of his outstanding independent work, Tom received the 2008 Randolph Blake Early Career Award. Janneke Jehee, PhD (2007 - Present) [Tong]: Janneke obtained her PhD in the Netherlands, working with Victor Lamme and Jaap Murre at the University of Amsterdam. She then worked with Dana Ballard for two years as a postdoc at the University of Rochester before joining Frank Tong's lab. Her main research interests are in understanding how the cortex represents visual information and how these representations change with attention or practice. To this end, she has developed computational neural network models of visual processing and visual learning. She is currently testing these models and other theories of cortical visual function using psychophysics and fMRI. Her short period in Tong’s laboratory has resulted in 3 first-author abstracts for different meetings. Kelly Johnson, Ph.D. (1990-1993) [Casagrande]: Kelly's research interest was in the development and organization of the mammalian visual system. He pursued this interest via three lines of investigation. First, the prenatal ferret visual system showed that the retina LGN anlage and visual cortex anlage establish connections very early and nearly simultaneously. Interestingly, the connections appear topographic from the earliest point at which contact can be established. Second, Kelly showed that the first retinal axons that cross the chiasm are in close contact with glial ependymal cells, suggesting that the glia may provide information to developing optic axons at this decision point. Third, Kelly examined the correlation of parvalbumin and calbindin with cytochrome oxidase histochemistry and the expression of GABA in the adult bush baby. This work has relevance to biochemical function and chemical phenotype of separate parallel pathway information channels and their internal inhibitory circuitry. In addition, Kelly examined the vertical connectivity of striate cortex in bush baby in an effort to better understand how information is processed and distributed to extrastriate areas. Kelly is currently Research Assistant Professor at the University of Kansas. Chi-Hung Juan, PhD (2002 - 2003) [Schall]: Chi joined the laboratory after earning a PhD at Oxford University with Vince Walsh and Alan Cowey where he used transcranial magnetic stimulation to investigate visual selection. He has set up a new experiment to probe the timecourse of saccade preparation during visual search to test the premotor theory of attention. Saccade preparation will be monitored through the magnitude of the deviation of saccades elicited by intracortical microstimulation of the frontal eye field in monkeys performing a task that dissociates the location of a singleton from the endpoint of the saccade. This work will be reported at the upcoming meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. Chi is currently an Assistant Professor in the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, National Central University, Taiwan. His research since leaving Vanderbilt has produced 6 publications. Of note, Chi will be supported through the Fulbright Scholar Program to collaborate with researchers at UC Irvine. Those researchers include Emily Grossman, a successful trainee of this program. Chi-Hung Juan Website. Keetaek Kham, PhD. (1997-1999) [Blake]: Kham was a post-doc fellow from Korea (Supported by Korea research foundation) who came to Vanderbilt in September 1997. Kham conducted experiments on the perceived depth of ambiguous regions where there is no explicit depth information. Specifically, he measured the depth of the horizontal 'Ribbon (line)' superimposed on the cylindrically curved surface defined by either disparity or relative speed of the dots. He found that the horizontal line appeared to be attached on the surface of vertical cylinder in both stereopsis and kinetic depth conditions (depth capture). These results imply that the similar neural operations involve in specifying surface layout of the ambiguous regions in structure from stereopsis and structure from motion. This work was reported at the 1999 ARVO meeting and published in Perception (2000, pp. 211-220). Haruyuki Kojima, PhD. (1996-Present) [Blake]: Kojima was a post doctoral fellow from Japan (supported by a Japanese JSPS Research Fellowship for Young Scientists) who came to Vanderbilt in November 1997. Kojima conducted experiments on the visual hyperacuity for detecting spatio-temporal phase differences in the motions of spatially separate visual features. This has proven to be a very fruitful line of research, relevant to retinal mechanisms involved in encoding the spatial positions, motions, and extended spatial organization of complex optical patterns. Kojima's findings include the following: (1) Vision is extremely sensitive to differential motion of separate features, with hyperacuities of a few arcsec. Indeed, acuity thresholds for discriminating in-phase and anti-phase motion are often lower than for detecting any motion at all when all features oscillate rigidly in phase. (2) This hyperacuity for differential motion is robust over rather wide spatial separations between features and also over a wide range of temporal frequency. Evidently, retinal mechanisms provide extraordinarily precise information about the coherent spatio-temporal relations among spatially separate features, extending beyond individual ganglion-cell receptive fields. A report of this work is scheduled for presentation at the 1998 ARVO meetings and has also been submitted for presentation at the annual European Conference on Visual Perception meeting. Haruyuki Kojima's website. Hanane Koteiche, PhD (2000 - 2006) [Mchaourab]: Koteiche is Research Assistant Professor, Molecular Physiology & Biophysics, Vanderbilt University. Hanane has been instrumental in the development and operation of my laboratory since 1998. She has participated at all levels of my research program dealing with structure and function of small heat shock proteins and has provided an important intellectual dimension to the vast majority of work which has come out of the laboratory. I have two grants on this topic and she has been the main driving force for their continual support for 10 years. Few papers supported by the two grants do not have her name on them. Hanane was recently promoted to the rank oassistant professor and is planning to submit her own proposal. Melanie Wyder Leslie, PhD (2005 - 2008) [Schall]: Melanie arrived with extensive experience that permitted her to contribute productively quickly. She competed successfully for an individual NRSA and contributed to several publications. However, she arrived at the realization that an independent research career was not desirable. She is current a Research Program Coordinator in the Center for Evaluation & Program Improvement, Peabody College of Education at Vanderbilt. Haidong Lu, PhD (2002 - 2008) [Roe]: Haidong is currently an Assistant Professor in the Institute of Neuroscience, Shanghai, China. At Vanderbilt he investigated how the brain encodes visual information in multiple visual areas using optical imaging and single-unit recording methods. He studied how brightness, color, motion, and contour are represented in visual areas V1 and V2 in awake and anesthetized monkeys. His research with Roe has resulted in 7 peer-reviewed publications with 2 more under review, a review and multiple conference presentations. Haidong Lu Website. Anne Morel, Ph.D. (1988-1991) [Kaas]: As a postdoctoral fellow, Ann's major research was on the organization and connections of auditory cortex in primates. She also published several important studies on the connections of the visual cortex in primates. Anne's efforts were vital to a study of the topography of connectivity between extrastriate visual cortex and the frontal eye field and surrounding prefrontal cortex. Her research now is directed toward describing the architecture of the human thalamus. Ann is in the Functional Neurosurgery group at University Hospital in Zurich, Switzerland. Aditya Murthy, PhD (1998 - 2001) [Schall]: Adi is an Assistant Professor in the National Brain Research Center of India. He has set up two laboratories in this new facility, one to investigate the control of visual orienting in humans including specific patient populations and another to investigate the neural basis of visual orienting through neural recordings in behaving macaque monkeys. He continues to collaborate with the Schall laboratory and is supported by two extramural grants: a grant from the Third World Academy of Sciences, Italy and a grant from the Department of Science & Technology of the Government of India. The NBRC receives intramural support from the Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India. Aditya Murthy Website. Steve Oross, Ph.D. (1988-1990) [Fox]: Steve Oross came to Vanderbilt as a graduate student in the program on child development and completed a dissertation under the direction of Richard Odom in that area. His interest in vision, which became manifest during the last part of his predoctoral training, led him to pursue postdoctoral research with Robert Fox and other members of the vision group. Most of his efforts have focused on the relationships between mental retardation and the processing of 2nd order visual stimuli. He continues that inquiry aided by support from NICHD at the E. Kennedy Shriver Institute, which is one of the Kennedy Centers dedicated to research on mental retardation. Joel Pearson, PhD (2007 - 2008) [Blake & Tong]: Joel is currently a Lecturer and CJ Martin Fellow in the Department of Psychology at the University of New South Wales. His laboratory investigates the neural bases of visual perception, memory, mental imagery, attention and awareness by using behavioural, human brain imaging and transcranial magnetic stimulation techniques. Specific research topics include binocular rivalry and ambiguous vision, mental imagery, dynamics and neural basis of visual memory, characteristics of visual feature binding, feature representations in visual cortex, object recognition, visual attention and consciousness. At Vanderbilt Joel worked jointly with Blake and Tong. His research at Vanderbilt resulted in 2 peer-reviewed publications and two reviews. Joel Pearson Website. Todd Preuss, Ph.D. (1990-1996) [Kaas]: As a postdoctoral fellow, Todd concentrated on electrophysiological and anatomical studies of motor and premotor cortex in primates. He also published important theoretical papers on the evolution of the human brain, and on frontal lobe organization. He is now working on the histochemistry and architecture of the chimpanzee brain, including visual cortex, and he is continuing to collaborate with the Kaas laboratory. Todd has an appointment at the New Iberia Primate Research Facility as an Assistant Professor of Biomed Biology. Todd Preuss's website. Pierre Pouget, PhD (2004 - 2008) [Schall]: Pierre joined the laboratory with experience in human psychophysics and a desire to master the techniques and procedures of awake monkey neurophysiology. He has been incredibly prolific with 6 papers published and another 3 in the review process. He has measured the visual latencies of neurons in frontal eye field, supplementary eye field and anterior cingulate cortex. He has contributed importantly to analyses of interneuronal interactions in frontal eye field, of the effects of trial history on saccade countermanding performance and of an error-related field potential in anterior cingulate cortex. He has also spearheaded an anatomical investigation of the connectivity of frontal eye field with extrastriate visual cortex and the superior colliculus along with the distribution of inhibitory interneurons in frontal eye field. Finally, he has performed an analysis of the manner by which movement-related neurons in frontal eye field modify their activity to accomplish adaptive adjustments of response time; a manuscript reporting this finding will be submitted to Nature. Pierre is now a researcher at INSERM - Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Neurologie et Thérapeutique Expérimentale, Hôpital de la Salpêtrière in Paris. Pierre Pouget Website. Marcie Pospichal, Ph.D. (1995) [Kaas]: Marcie's research involved understanding the connections and organization of visual cortex in primates and cats, and how the visual system is altered in albino cats. Marcie presented some of this work at the 1996 meeting of the Society for Neuroscience and two papers were published in 1996. Since leaving the training program, she has been the Assistant Director of the Center for Molecular Neuroscience at the School of Medicine at Vanderbilt where she has the important role of promoting vision and other neuroscience programs at Vanderbilt. Benjamin Ramsden, PhD (1997 - 2002) [Roe]: Ben is currently an Assistant Professor of Anatomy at West Virginia University. His laboratory consisting of a graduate student and research assistant is studying the organization of visual cortex function at submillimeter scale by combining high resolution intrinsic optical imaging, single unit extracellular electrophysiology, and correlative neuroanatomy. This work is enhanced by engineering and computational approaches to improve visualization of the cortex. His work with Roe resulted in 5 publications. Veera Rajaratnam, PhD (1997 - 2002) [Penn]: Veera is interested in the mechanisms responsible for retinopathy of prematurity. For example, she tested the capacity of an angiostatic steroid, anecortave acetate, to inhibit retinal neovascularization using a rat model of retinopathy of prematurity and to investigate the mechanism of the effect. She found a significant reduction in the severity of abnormal retinal neovascularization in the steroid-treated eyes compared with vehicle-injected eyes, but the extent of normal total retinal vascular area was not significantly different. This study represents the first therapeutic effect of an angiostatic steroid in an animal model of neovascular retinopathy. She has contributed to papers in Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science and in Growth Factors. Veera is currently a Scientific Editor/Grant Writer at Meharry Medical College. Octavio Ruiz, PhD (2004 - 2006) [Casagrande with Schall]: Octavio carried out recordings from the LGNd of macaque monkeys performing visually guided saccade tasks. His work resulted in a first-author paper in Journal of Neurophysiology concerning the coding characteristics of LGNd neurons along with another multi-author publication in Cerebral Cortex and a review. He is now a research associate with Michael Paradiso at Brown University. Patricia Russ, PhD (1995 - 2000, 2002 - 2005) [Haselton]: Patricia was a graduate student and then after the birth of two of her children, a post-doc in Haselton's laboratory. She is currently a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Vanderbilt. She has helped to develop methods to image retinal leak in diabetes and continues to work in vision research with a current focus on the trabecular meshwork and its contribution to increased pressure in the eye. Rebecca Sappington (2001 - 2004, 2004 - 2009) [Calkins]: Rebecca continued her research training with Calkins when he moved to Vanderbilt. She is investigating the mechanisms of ganglion cell death in glaucoma. Her efforts have produced a total of 6 publications. Understanding cellular responses to elevated intraocular pressure, the major modifiable risk factor for glaucoma, is key for the development of targeted therapeutics. Rebecca's research projects focus on early events in signal transduction that underlie neuronal and glial response to elevated pressure in the retina. She is particularly interested in the impact of interactions between retinal ganglion cells and microglia on their individual responses to pressure. As a research fellow at the Vanderbilt Eye Institute, Rebecca identified the inflammatory cytokine interleukin-6 (IL-6), as a potential neuroprotectant for retinal ganglion cells exposed to elevated pressure. Pressure-induced production and release of IL-6 by retinal microglia occurs via activation of the ubiquitin proteasome pathway and the transcription factor nuclear factor kappa. Most recently, Rebecca identified calcium influx through the cation channel transient receptor potential channel 1 (TRPV1) as an early response to pressure in both retinal ganglion cells and retinal microglia. During the final stages of her post-doctoral fellowship, Rebecca translated her in vitro work into two animal models of glaucoma, the DBA2J mouse and the Microbead Occlusion Model, which she has developed in the lab of Calkins. Rebecca was recently appointed an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences at Vanderbilt. Rebecca Sappington Website. Gyula Sáry, M.D., PhD (2000 - 2005) [Casagrande with Schall]: Gyula launched the research program on physiological properties of LGNd neurons in awake, behaving monkeys in Schall=s laboratory that other trainees have followed (Royal, Ruiz). His work at Vanderbilt has resulted in 5 publications in top journals. Gyula is now an Associate Professor of Physiology at Albert Szent-Gyorgyi Medical University in Szeged, Hungary, where he continues research on visual system organization and function. He has published two papers in his independent research since leaving Vanderbilt. Stephanie Shorter-Jacobi, PhD (2001 - 2006) [Schall]: After a promising start including receiving an individual NRSA from NEI, Stephanie was unable to fulfill the requirements of the training program. She is currently a Research Associate in the Institute for Extraordinary Living at the Kripalu Center in Belmont, Massachusetts. Ross Snider, Ph.D. (1992-1997) [Bonds]: This work involved the development of a system for reliable recording from several cells at once through a common electrode. Waveform separation was enabled via projection into 120-dimensional space and dynamic clustering methods. This technology was used to explore the significance of bursting as a means of coding cortical information. Briefly, synaptic efficacy was enhanced by bursting, suggesting that a burst of spikes provides a means of instantaneously tagging specific information as salient. Ross is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University. Ross Snider website. Ken Sobel, PhD (2000 - 2003) [Blake]: Ken is currently an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Arkansas, Conway. During his time as a postdoctoral fellow, Ken completed several projects on binocular rivalry, the general theme being the role of context and 'top-down' influences on rivalry alternations and predominance. His work showed that these factors influence dominance durations but not suppression durations, indicating that a complete theory of rivalry must treat these two states as distinct and, possibly, grounded in different neural sites. One of his projects was published in Perception, one in Vision Research, one in Neuron, one in Psychological Science and one in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Of note, Ken was supported by an individual NRSA funded by NEI. Ken Sobel Website. Tony Song, PhD (2004 - 2005) [Penn]: Tony was a postdoctoral fellow who was supported by this grant before he was awarded a highly competitive grant from the Knights Templar Eye Foundation to support his study the role of PPAR-beta in retinal angiogenesis. He is currently a medical resident at Meharry Medical School. Iwona Stepniewska, PhD (1991 - 2000) [Kaas]: Iwona is a Research Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt where she continues to work with Kaas. In recent work she has described the organization and connectivity of the visual pulvinar as well as other thalamic nuclei. Her efforts have contributed to numerous papers from the Kaas laboratory. Iwona has also begun collaborating with Adam Anderson in the Department of Biomedical Engineering on an investigation of the biological basis of diffusion MRI of the brain. Iwona Stepniewska Website. Veit Stuphorn, PhD (1998 - 2004) [Schall]: Veit has investigated the role of different areas of the frontal lobe in the generation and monitoring of visually guided saccades. His effort has been supported by a DFG Forschungsstipendium. His first study was an analysis of the signals in the supplementary eye field of macaque monkeys performing a countermanding saccade task. In collaboration with Tracy Taylor (see below), Veit discovered that this cortical area did not control gaze but instead signaled when errors were made, when reinforcement was expected and when processing conflict was present. This was published in Nature. In subsequent studies Veit has determined that intracortical microstimulation of many sites in SEF improves performance in this task. In other work Veit has described error-related and diverse reinforcement-related neural signals in the anterior cingulate cortex of monkeys. A manuscript describing this finding has been revised for Science. Finally, Veit in collaboration with Josh Brown is performing a quantitative analysis of the relation of neural activity in FEF and SEF to saccade initiation. This resulted in a publication in Experimental Brain Research and a manuscript being revised for the Journal of Neurophysiology. Veit has been invited to participate as a panel member at the Neural Control of Movement meeting and has begun interviewing for faculty positions. Veit is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University. His research is currently supported by an R01 from NEI. Veit Stuphorn Website. Tracy Taylor, PhD (1998 - 1999) [Schall]: Tracy was an NSERC fellow during her tenure at Vanderbilt. She carried out single-unit recordings in the supplementary eye field of macaque monkeys performing a countermanding saccade task. This work contributed to a paper that was published in Nature. She also analyzed the sequential dependencies in performance of monkeys and humans in this task, demonstrating the influence of central executive system. This work has been submitted. Tracy is now an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Dalhousie University where her work is supported by grants from NSERC. She continues her investigations of the control of attention and action. Her laboratory has played a significant role in training the next generation of researchers. In fact, the training process has come full circle through Tracy! Jason Ivanoff who is earning his PhD with Ray Klein and also published with Tracy will be coming to Vanderbilt to carry out postdoctoral work with René Marois, a mentor on this grant. Tracy Taylor Website. Kirk Thompson, PhD (1992 - 2000) [Schall]: Kirk is now Chief of the Perception & Action Section in the Laboratory for Sensorimotor Research at NEI. He has launched an investigation of the nature of the visual selection process in the frontal eye fields performing visual search but not producing saccades. He has also begun an experiment to describe how the sensitivity of neurons changes when monkeys= response criterion is manipulated. Kirk is now training two postdoctoral fellows. Sergey Vishnivetskiy, PhD (1997 - 2004) [Gurevich]: Sergey is performing structure-function studies of arrestin proteins. One of his goals is to elucidate how arrestin knows when to bind the receptor and when to go away. These mechanistic studies involve site-directed mutagenesis, chimera construction, in vitro binding assays, protein expression and purification, X-ray crystallography, site-directed spin labeling/EPR, and other biochemical methods. Sergey has constructed several structurally distinct variants of constitutively active arrestins that do not require receptor phosphorylation for high-affinity binding (i.e., they bind to any activated forms of the receptor, phosphorylated or not). Since excessive signaling by a variety of G protein-coupled receptors causes various congenital disorders ranging from night blindness and retinal degeneration to several forms of cancer, these Asuper-arrestins may prove useful for gene therapy of these disorders. To this end, as a proof-of-principle experiment Sergey made transgenic mice expressing phosphorylation-independent visual arrestin in photoreceptor cells. He is breeding these animals with mice that cannot normally shut off rhodopsin signaling due to lack of rhodopsin kinase or because they have mutant rhodopsin which does not have phosphorylation sites. We found that phosphorylation-independent arrestins prevent light-dependent retinal degeneration in these mice. Sergey=s work at Vanderbilt has resulted in 18 papers, has one more in press, with another submitted, and three in preparation. Kirk Thompson Website. Ning Wang, PhD (2003 - 2007) [Shieh]: Ning helped make great progress in uncovering the function the INAD macromolecular complex in orchestrating the fast kinetics of the visual response. In Drosophila photoreceptors, INAD is a scaffolding protein that tethers the TRP calcium channel, phospholipase C and an eye-specific protein kinase C (eye-PKC) thereby forming a signaling complex. We are investigating the role of eye-PKC in fine-tuning of the visual response. Specifically, we have shown that the level of eye-PKC in photoreceptors is critical as deleting one copy of wild-type eye-PKC gene (inaC) in inaC heterozygotes leads to slow deactivation phenotype. Significantly, this deactivation defect can be rescued when PP2A is concomitantly reduced, suggesting that PP2A regulates dephosphorylation of INAD and TRP. Indeed, we have demonstrated that purified PP2A is able to dephosphorylate INAD in vitro. Importantly, we show that PP2A is co-localized with the INAD complex, possibly for a timely dephosphorylation of INAD. Her effort has resulted in two peer-reviewed publications. Geoff Woodman, PhD (2002-2007) [Schall]: After a very productive graduate career with Steve Luck, working with Marvin Chun and Schall, Geoff is one of our most accomplished postdoctoral fellows. He earned an individual NRSA from NEI to support his research that has combined both human and monkey studies. His human studies have probed the relationship of visual attention and working memory. His monkey studies have investigated the neural basis of target selection and saccade production during visual search. With Schall he has also launched an entirely new line of research combining cranial recordings of event-related potentials in monkeys with intracranial recordings of spikes and local field potentials to provide data to constrain the vexing source localization problem. Once this is accomplished, then one can begin to investigate the mechanisms of generation and propagation of electrical signals in the brain that can be resolved on the scalp. Geoff with Andrew Rossi obtained an intramural Discovery Grant from Vanderbilt, and Geoff has a pending NIH R01 application to support this work. His efforts at Vanderbilt have resulted in numerous publications in such journals as Nature Neuroscience, Psychological Science (x2), Visual Cognition (x2), Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance (x3). His publications have had notable impact as well; his h-index is 14 when most individuals starting their first faculty positions are lucky to have 14 publications at all. In recognition of this level of accomplishment, while still a postdoctoral fellow, he was appointed to the editorial board of Psychological Science, a premier journal in the field. Geoff is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Vanderbilt University. Geoff Woodman Website. |
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