Human visual perception and visual cognitive functions such as attention and perceptual decision-making require the highly specialized processing capabilities of the cerebral cortex. However, it has become increasingly clear that the visual capabilities of humans and other primates also depend vitally on coordinated interactions between cortical and evolutionarily ancient “subcortical” brain regions as well.
Work in the Herman lab aims to understand how visual functions of the brain depend on subcortical-cortical interactions with a particular emphasis on the role of learning. The lab employs carefully controlled psychophysical tasks, large-scale extracellular electrophysiology, neuronal perturbation, and computational modeling techniques to explain the relationship between both intact and perturbed neuronal activity to ongoing behavior. The lab is particularly interested in leveraging learning-driven structured variation in behavior to understand how groups of neurons guide specific cognitive functions.