Anne B. Sereno,
Ph.D.
Associate
Professor
Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy
Higher
Cognitive Functions of Attention, Short-Term
Memory, And The Programming Of Eye Movements
We take our everyday abilities very much for
granted. Yet these mundane abilities, technically
referred to as "higher cognitive functions",
constitute an incredibly complex system that
researchers are only beginning to understand. One
simple way to begin to appreciate these abilities
is to consider what happens to those unfortunate
people who suffer various types of brain damage
(either through accident or disease). In many
cases, despite intact general intellectual
capabilities, some particular mental ability is
severely impaired. They are unable to speak, to
remember something from one day to the next, to
recognize faces, or to find their way.
My research focuses on the higher cognitive
functions of attention, short-term memory, and the
programming of eye movements. I attempt to define
the characteristics of these behaviors and search
for the underlying physiological mechanism. This
quest involves examining these behaviors under a
variety of conditions: as they normally occur in
normal human subjects, as they are disrupted in
various clinical populations, as well as while
recording from single units in cortex of behaving
rhesus monkeys. I strongly feel that the most
effective way to attack a problem is to approach it
from several different angles. A better
understanding of the characteristics and underlying
physiological mechanisms of these higher cognitive
functions will surely help in the diagnosis,
treatment, and etiology of various diseases and
disorders involving the disruption of these
functions.
