Biography:

1999 – PhD in Neuroscience, University of California, San Francisco (advisor: Michael Stryker)

2000-2002 – Postdoctoral fellow, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tubingen, Germany, laboratory of Nikos Logothetis

2002-2005 – Postdoctoral fellow, Department of Psychology, Stanford University (laboratory of David Heeger) and Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley (laboratory of Mark D’Esposito)

2005-present – Assistant Professor of Optometry and Vision Science and Neuroscience, School of Optometry and Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley

Short summary of research interests:

The goal of my laboratory’s research is to understand how the brain constructs a representation of the sensory environment. Our sensory organs are continuously bombarded by incoming information, and our brains must reduce this information to manageable levels to achieve our behavioral goals. Attention is one example of a mechanism for selecting relevant information from the environment. My laboratory employs a variety of tools to understand the neural substrates of attention and related phenomena, including behavioral measures of perception, brain imaging (functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), and manipulation of neurotransmitter levels by pharmacological agents.

The Silver Lab