Speaker: Dr. DAVID PAUL MELCHER Associate Professor, University of Trento

Time: 13:00 - 14:30, June 25, 2019

Venue: #1206, Wang Kezhen Building

Abstract: A basic challenge for the brain is to parse continuous and dynamic sensory input into discrete and stable percepts, in order to guide cognition and action. This talk presents recent behavioral and neuroimaging results from my lab investigating the role of the brain’s inherent temporal structure, which is present even prior to stimulus presentation. Our results suggest that a hierarchy of temporal cycles play a role in creating capacity limits and in influencing our subjective interpretation of events. Moreover, we find large individual differences in the speed of key neural oscillations, which impacts behavior. Together, these findings demonstrate the importance of the brain's time frames in organizing and aligning perception, attention, cognition and action. I will discuss the potential role of perceptual and cognitive cycles in development across the lifespan, as well as implications for clinical disorders and applications to the design of human-machine interfaces.

Host: Prof. Huan Luo