Earl K. Miller

Photo of Earl K. Miller 2014

Earl Keith Miller (born November 30, 1962, Columbus OH) is a systems/cognitive neuroscientist, whose research focuses on neural mechanisms of learning, memory, and cognition. Earl Miller is a Picower Professor of Neuroscience with the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was Associate Director of the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory from 2001 to 2009.

Education

Earl Miller received a B.A. with honors in psychology from Kent State University (1985), M.A. in psychology and neuroscience from Princeton University (1987), and a PhD in psychology and neuroscience from Princeton University (1990). From 1990–1995 he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Laboratory of Neuropsychology at the National Institute of Mental Health.

Distinctions

Earl Miller has won a number of awards throughout his career, including the McKnight Scholar Award (1996), Pew Scholar Award (1996), John Merck Scholar Award (1998), the Society for Neuroscience Young Investigator Award (2000), National Academy of Sciences' Troland Research Award (2000), Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2005), the Mathilde Solowey Award in Neurosciences (2007), and a MERIT Award from the National Institute of Mental Health (2010).

Earl Miller's paper with Jonathan Cohen, “An Integrative Theory of Prefrontal Cortex Function",[1] has been designated a Current Classic as among the most cited papers in Neuroscience and Behavior.[2] His paper with Tim Buschman, "Top-down versus Bottom-up Control of Attention in the Prefrontal and Posterior Parietal Cortices"[3] was The Scientist's Hot Paper for October 2009[4]

Professional

In 1995 Earl Miller joined the faculty of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT as Assistant Professor of Neuroscience and quickly advanced the academic ranks. He received tenure in 1999 and became Professor in 2002. He was appointed to the Picower chair at MIT in 2003. He was Associate Director of the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT from 2001 to 2009, and is Director of Graduate Studies in Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. He has delivered numerous lectures worldwide, serves as editor, and on the editorial boards of, major journals in neuroscience, and on international advisory boards. He currently serves on the advisory boards of NeuroFocus, a Berkeley, California based neuromarketing company.[5][6] and Thync. Professor Miller is also the Chief Scientific Officer of SplitSage.

Research

Earl Miller's research aims to understand how the prefrontal cortex, a neural system located in the frontal lobe of the brain, subserves cognitive control. Cognitive or executive control involves the higher-order processing that comes into play when our behavior has to be guided by plans, thoughts, and goals. This sort of behavior contrasts with the one that is primarily driven by external stimuli or by emotion, as well as with behavior that is stereotypical and automatic. Although the prefrontal cortex (PFC) has long been thought to mediate executive functions in the human brain, the mechanisms through which PFC regulates this goal-oriented, purposeful behavior were not clearly understood.

Research conducted in Earl Miller's laboratory has shown that such cognitive control is manifested in the neural activity in the primate PFC. The activation of PFC neurons can reflect the abstract cognitive process that is guiding behavior during a control-demanding task. PFC neurons, thus, have been documented to represent abstract rules such as "same vs. different",[7] to process the category[8] or quantity[9] of visual stimuli, and to guide the allocation of attentional resources.[10] PFC activity has also been shown to reflect the flexible remapping of stimulus-response associations.[11] These results have arisen through a combination of electrophysiological, psychophysical, and computational techniques.

Miller has innovated techniques for recording from many neurons simultaneously in multiple brain areas. This is a departure from the classic single-neuron recording approach. It allows detailed and direct comparison of neuron properties between brain areas that are not confounded by extraneous factors and examination of the temporal dynamics of activity between neurons.[12] Miller's lab has used this approach to make a number of discoveries of how different brain areas collaborate to produce thought and action.[13] This includes recent discoveries that oscillating "brain waves" may control the timing of shifts of attention[14] and that different items simultaneously held in short-term memory line up on different phases of each brain wave.[15] The latter may explain why we can only think about a few things at the same time.[16]

References

  1. ↑ Miller, E.K. and Cohen, J.D. (2001) An integrative theory of prefrontal cortex function. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 24:167–202.
  2. ↑ "April 2008 – Current Classics". ScienceWatch.com. Retrieved October 20, 2011.
  3. ↑ Buschman, T.J. and Miller, E.K. (2007) Top-down versus bottom-up control of attention in the prefrontal and posterior parietal cortices. Science. 315: 1860–1862.
  4. ↑ Akst, Jef. "Cortical crosstalk – The Scientist – Magazine of the Life Sciences". The Scientist. Retrieved October 20, 2011.
  5. ↑ "Nexus of Neuroscience, Engineering, Marketing". NeuroFocus. Retrieved October 20, 2011.
  6. ↑ "The Executive Brain and Decision-Making". YouTube. Retrieved October 20, 2011.
  7. ↑ Wallis, J.D., Anderson, K.C., and Miller, E.K. (2001) Single neurons in the prefrontal cortex encode abstract rules. Nature, 411:953–956.
  8. ↑ Freedman, D.J., Riesenhuber, M., Poggio, T., and Miller, E.K. (2001) Categorical representation of visual stimuli in the primate prefrontal cortex. Science, 291:312–316.
  9. ↑ Nieder, A., Freedman, D.J., and Miller, E.K. (2002) Representation of the quantity of visual items in the primate prefrontal cortex. Science, 297:1708–1711.
  10. ↑ Buschman, T.J. and Miller, E.K. (2007) Top-down versus bottom-up control of attention in the prefrontal and posterior parietal cortices. Science, 315: 1860–1862.
  11. ↑ Pasupathy, A. and Miller, E.K. (2005) Different time courses for learning-related activity in the prefrontal cortex and striatum. Nature, 433:873–876.
  12. ↑ Miller, E.K., and Wilson, M.A. (2008) All my circuits: Using multiple-electrodes to understand functioning neural networks. Neuron 60:483–488
  13. ↑ Buschman, T.J. and Miller, E.K. (2007) Top-down versus bottom-up control of attention in the prefrontal and posterior parietal cortices. Science. 315: 1860–1862, Pasupathy, A. and Miller, E.K. (2005) Different time courses for learning-related activity in the prefrontal cortex and striatum. Nature, 433:873–876., Freedman, D.J., Riesenhuber, M., Poggio, T., and Miller, E.K (2003) A comparison of primate prefrontal and inferior temporal cortices during visual categorization. Journal of Neuroscience, 23(12):5235–5246.
  14. ↑ Buschman, T.J. and Miller, E.K. (2009) Serial, covert, shifts of attention during visual search are reflected by the frontal eye fields and correlated with population oscillations. Neuron, 63: 386–396.Buschman, T.J. and Miller, E.K. (2009) Serial, covert, shifts of attention during visual search are reflected by the frontal eye fields and correlated with population oscillations. Neuron, 63: 386–396.
  15. ↑ Siegel, M., Warden, M.R., and Miller, E.K. (2009) Phase-dependent neuronal coding of objects in short-term memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106: 21341-21346
  16. ↑ Vogel, E.K., Fukada, K. In mind and out of phase, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106:21017-21018

External links

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