Staff Directory

How do brains create abstract representations?
How can the motor system access these representations to generate endlessly flexible behavior?
How are such computations affected in neurological and psychiatric disorders?

I'm a neuroscientist in the Shadlen Lab at Columbia University, New York and these are some of the questions that interest me. 

I trained as a physician at Bangalore Medical College and did my PhD in the Angelucci Lab at the University of Utah, where I studied how context influences encoding of visual information in early visual cortex.

I study decision-making to understand how the brain flexibly combines information to generate thoughts and behaviors. I do so by deconstructing the decision process into its parts. My current projects address (i) how the decision process can pause and continue after interruptions and (ii) how the decision terminates when the decision needs to be remembered and reported later. By piecing these parts together, I hope to understand seemingly simple yet complex decisions, like, what to have for dinner. 

I study how relevant information is routed for decision making. My primary project looks at neural activity in LIP in a task where the location of relevant information changes from trial to trial, requiring flexible routing. I was involved in setting up the mouse side of the lab, and in piloting our monkey optogenetics work.  

https://www.hhmi.org/scientists/michael-n-shadlen

I am an MD/ PhD student interested in uncovering the neural mechanisms that give rise to our mental life. Perception, emotion, thought, and behavior are complex and interrelated phenomena, and characterizing their physiologic basis is an important goal both for basic science and for medicine. In the lab, I am investigating how neurons in the parietal cortex and midbrain interact to terminate a perceptual decision.

How do we solve logic problems and how the strategy or solution will be modified by different contexts? I’m interested in understanding how the dynamic circuit configuration in the brain processes sensory evidence to support context-dependent decision-making. Using a range of in vivo imaging and genetic techniques in mouse models, my research aims to dissect the mechanisms by which flexible routing in the cortex produces nuanced behavioral responses under distinct contexts.

I developed a delayed match to sample task to study flexible decision making in mice using electrophysiological, imaging, optogenetic, and computational methods. I found that a motor area, previously thought to primarily guide movement, computes the decision locally and represents the perceptual information in a novel population of Layer 2 cells.

My research is focused on understanding how interconnected brain areas cooperate to form and terminate a decision. I record the activity of populations of neurons in the parietal cortex and the midbrain as an animal makes difficult perceptual decisions. My goal is to understand how this activity relates to different components of the decision process and its transformation from one brain area to another.

Specialties: Systems Neuroscience, Machine Learning, Electrophysiology, Electrical Engineering, Data Analysis

Programming languages: MATLAB, C, C++, Python

I am a postdoctoral fellow in the Shadlen Lab at Columbia University in New York. We collaborate with the Tsao lab at Caltech. My research is supported by the Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain. I study the neural basis of decision making. I combine behavioral studies in non-human primates with single-unit recordings, high-channel electrophysiology, optogenetics, chemogenetics, and pharmacology. Before I moved to Columbia, I was a PhD-student in the Roelfsema lab at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience in Amsterdam and studied object perception.

I am a senior research specialist with advanced skills working with animals facilitating the highest quality of research. My unique combination of skills and credentials has led to successful advancements in cancer, stroke, and neuroscience. I hope to continue my flourishing career working for the best institutions in the world. Better science, better outcomes, better world.

Anne received a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience from University College London in 2018. She joined the Wolpert and Shadlen labs in January 2019 as a postdoc. Her research focuses on the highly dynamic neurocognitive processes that shape decisions and their implementation into motor actions.  Skilled in data analysis, statistical inference, coding (R, MATLAB, Python), experimental design, scientific writing, and teaching.