Primary research topic:
The Neural Basis of Cognitive Control of Movement Inhibition.
I use behavioral, electrophysiological, and neuroimaging methods, in conjunction with eye tracking,
to address questions relating to the neural basis of voluntary control of movement inhibition, in humans and nonhuman primates.
Why is it easier to "stop" in certain situations than the other, and why are some individuals better at stopping than others?
Does the prefrontal cortex show different activities when we inhibit an action compared to when we execute an action?
If so, which parts of the prefrontal regions show the differentiation neural activites, and in which way(s) are these regions different?
To answer these questions, I developed a novel behavioral paradigm, a context-dependent stop signal task (SST),
which requires participants to selectively inhibit or initiate an eye movement in relation to its proper context.
I am pursuing this line of research through three main projects:
1) Primates electrophysiology:
Using electrodes to record single neurons' action potentials in primates' right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (BA45)
while the animals perform a context-dependent SST (poster).
2) Human functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI):
Using fMRI to acquire whole brain images of human participants while they perform a context-dependent SST (poster).
3) Human and primate psychophysics:
Systematically examining the behavioral characteristics (i.e. reaction times, performance accuracies, etc)
of sequential and selective stopping, and comparing the results across humans and nonhuman primates (poster).
The Neural Basis of Cognitive Control of Movement Inhibition.
I use behavioral, electrophysiological, and neuroimaging methods, in conjunction with eye tracking,
to address questions relating to the neural basis of voluntary control of movement inhibition, in humans and nonhuman primates.
Why is it easier to "stop" in certain situations than the other, and why are some individuals better at stopping than others?
Does the prefrontal cortex show different activities when we inhibit an action compared to when we execute an action?
If so, which parts of the prefrontal regions show the differentiation neural activites, and in which way(s) are these regions different?
To answer these questions, I developed a novel behavioral paradigm, a context-dependent stop signal task (SST),
which requires participants to selectively inhibit or initiate an eye movement in relation to its proper context.
I am pursuing this line of research through three main projects:
1) Primates electrophysiology:
Using electrodes to record single neurons' action potentials in primates' right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (BA45)
while the animals perform a context-dependent SST (poster).
2) Human functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI):
Using fMRI to acquire whole brain images of human participants while they perform a context-dependent SST (poster).
3) Human and primate psychophysics:
Systematically examining the behavioral characteristics (i.e. reaction times, performance accuracies, etc)
of sequential and selective stopping, and comparing the results across humans and nonhuman primates (poster).