DIVISION OF BIOSCENCES 4 Year PhD Programme In Neuroscience

All enquiries for the 4 year PhD in Neuroscience: please e-mail D.Attwell@ucl.ac.uk

Cellular interactions between neurons: the axon of an inhibitory interneuron (green) makes synapses onto a cerebellar Purkinje cell (red) in the brain's motor system. Image by Beverley Clark and Michael Häusser.

Information superhighways in the brain: the gold colour shows antibody to myelin, which speeds the conduction of information along neuronal axons in the brain's white matter. Image by Ragnhildur Káradóttir and David Attwell.

Function at the whole brain level: the red colour shows areas where neurons are detected to be active using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) during a particular task, superimposed on a structural image of the brain. Image courtesy of Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, UCL.

4 YEAR PhD IN NEUROSCIENCE

Nilli Lavie

Attention and Cognitive control

My research group focuses on the psychological and neural mechanisms of attention and distraction, cognitive control, visual awareness, working memory and emotion. We have a special focus on investigating information processing capacity and the effects of different types of information load on brain activity, cognitive function and task performance, neural correlates of awareness, executive frontal control of attention emotion and behavior. We also study individual differences in attention abilities. To study these issues we use behavioral experiments and visual psychophysics combined with functional MRI and transcranial magnetic stimulation all in human subjects.

AVAILABLE PROJECTS

PhD projects are developed together with the individual student in any area of our research interests. Examples of current projects in the lab include:
1) The role of attention in conscious and unconscious processing
2) Frontal “executive” control of attention and goal-driven processing in visual cortex.
3) Individual differences in distractibility, working memory capacity, and susceptibility to “inattentional blindness”
4) The interaction of short term memory and perception.
5) Consciousness of emotion
6) The neural correlates of visual awareness
7) Effects of addiction (e.g. alcoholism) on attention and awareness

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Muggleton, N. Lamb, R., Walsh, V. & Lavie, N. (2008)
Perceptual load modulates visual cortex excitability to magnetic stimulation.
Journal of Neurophysiology,100 (1), 516-519

Beck , D. M. Rees, G. Frith, C. D. & Lavie, N. (2001)
Neural correlates of change awareness and change blindness.
Nature Neuroscience 4 (6) 645-650

De Fockert J. W., Rees, G., Frith, C. D. & Lavie, N. (2000)
The role of working memory in visual selective attention.
Science, 291 (5509), 1803-1806

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