HBM2010 - Organization for Human Brain Mapping

SCIENTIFIC PROGRAM
16:00 – 17:15
Auditorium (Level 0)
SYMPOSIUM
Top-Down Modulation in Visual Processing
Chair: Adam Gazzaley, University of California-
San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
The brain does not passively represent the external
environment in a purely stimulus-driven manner. Top-down
modulation mechanisms, which involve both enhancing and
suppressing influences from “higher” cortical areas on
neural activity in “lower” cortical and subcortical regions,
can dramatically influence how information is represented
and stored. This symposium will present theoretical models
and supporting empirical data on the role of top-down
modulation in visual processing. Evidence is emerging that
alterations in top-down modulation underlie a wide range of
cognitive deficits associated with normal aging and
neurological disease, such as Alzheimer’s disease, PTSD,
ADHD and autism. It is anticipated that therapeutic
interventions (both pharmacological and cognitive training)
that address these underlying mechanisms will have a broad
impact on such conditions. Top-down modulation has
critical implications for our understanding of the flow of
information in the brain, and elucidating the underlying
mechanisms establishes a foundation for characterizing all
higher cognitive operations.
Learning Objectives
Having completed this symposium, participants will be
able to:
1. Describe recent theoretical models and empirical
evidence of top-down modulation;
2. Describe the presence of converging mechanisms
operating at multiple levels of the visual system and
its impact on diverse cognitive domains; and
3. Develop future research projects that will empirically
address predictions emerging from these concepts
and theories
Attentional Selection from Natural Scenes
Sabine Kastner, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA
Neural Synchrony and Selective Attention
Robert Desimone, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Cambridge, MA, USA
Top-Down Predictions in Visual Cognition
Moshe Bar, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA, USA
Top-Down Enhancement and Suppression in Visual
Association Cortex
Adam Gazzaley, University of California-San Francisco,
San Francisco, CA, USA
17:15 – 17:45
Auditorium (Level 0)
TOWN HALL MEETING
All OHBM meeting attendees are encouraged to participate
in this open forum; where you will have an opportunity to
ask questions and give the OHBM leadership feedback.
Updates on future meeting sites and council elections will
be presented.
40 | HBM 2010 Program