Sabine Kastner, Princeton University

Sabine Kastner is a cognitive neuroscientist, known for her pioneering work on the neural basis of visual attention, her comparative studies in the human and monkey brain, and her groundbreaking studies on the role of the thalamus in perception and cognition.

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“Everyone knows what attention is …”
– On its neural basis in the primate brain
Monday, April 8, 4 pm
Staller Center Main Stage 
Livestreamed at stonybrook.edu/live

The selection of information from our cluttered sensory environments, often referred to as ‘attention’, is one of the most fundamental cognitive operations performed by the primate brain. How can we measure attention behaviors?  What are neural mechanisms to support them? And what happens when attention mechanisms fail?

Starting from classical behavioral studies, Dr. Sabine Kastner will provide an overview of the brain network and some of the mechanisms that support attention behaviors. She will conclude with recent studies suggesting that the temporal dynamics of the attention network provide a scaffold for the integration and coordination of memory and sensory processing networks. This framework provides a basis for furthering our understanding of the devastating consequences caused by attention deficit disorders.

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