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Research

The lab's focus is on how background, or ongoing brain activity impacts subjects' behavior. Our research addresses three interrelated questions:

Pre-stimulus activity and ignoring: How does oscillatory EEG activity before a stimulus correlate with the ability of the subject to ignore the stimulus?

Ongoing activity in sensory regions: How does ongoing activity in sensory regions correlate with attention? Do the same processes occur for visual and auditory stimuli?

Comparisons across groups: How does ongoing brain activity shift as people age? Does this correlate with age-related declines in performance?

We use methods of EEG, fMRI, and behavior.

PUBLICATIONS

Visscher, K.M., Kahana, M.J., Sekuler, R. (2009). Trial-to-trial carry-over in auditory short-term memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition 35(1):46-56. pdf

Visscher, K.M., Kaplan, E., Kahana, M.J., Sekuler, R. (2007). Auditory short-term memory behaves like visual short-term memory. PLoS Biology 5(3). pdf, news article.

Dosenbach, N.U.F., Visscher, K.M., Palmer, E.D., Miezin, F.M., Wenger, K.K., Kang, H.C., Burgund, E.D., Grimes, A.L., Schlaggar, B.L., Petersen, S.E. (2006). A core system for the implementation of task sets. Neuron, 50(5):799-812. pdf

Weissman, D.H., Roberts, K.C., Visscher, K.M., Woldorff, M.G. (2006). Zoning out: The neural bases of momentary lapses in attention. Nature Neuroscience, 9(7): 971-8. pdf

Wenger, K.K, Visscher, K.M., Miezin, F.M., Petersen, S.E., Schlaggar, B.L. (2004). Comparison of sustained and transient activity in children and adults using a mixed blocked/event-related fMRI design. NeuroImage, 22(2): 975-85. pdf

Visscher, K.M., Miezin, F. M., Kelly, J., Buckner, R.L., Donaldson, D.I., McAvoy, M., Bhalodia, V., Petersen, S. E. (2003). Mixed blocked/event-related designs can correctly separate transient and sustained activity in fMRI. NeuroImage, 19: 1694-708. pdf

Visscher, K.M., Viets, E., Snyder, L. (2003). Effects of training on memory-guided saccade performance. Vision Research, 43: 2061-71. pdf

Schlaggar, B. L., Brown, T.T., Lugar, H.M., Visscher, K.M., Miezin, F.M., Petersen, S.E. (2002). Functional neuroanatomical differences between adults and children in the processing of single words. Science 296, 1476-1479. pdf

SELECTED POSTERS

Visscher, K.M., Sekuler, R. (2008). Pre-stimulus neural activity predicts success in ignoring. Computational and Systems Neuroscience Conference Abstracts. pdf

Visscher, K.M., Sekuler, R. (2007). EEG correlates of intentional ignoring. Society for Neuroscience Abstracts. pdf

Visscher, K.M., Kahana, M.J., Sekuler, R. (2006). Short-term memory for spectrally and temporally complex sounds: Comparing apples to apples. Cognitive Neuroscience Society Abstracts. pdf