Encyclopedia of the Human Brain

Editorial Advisory Board

Antonio R. Damasio

University of Iowa College of Medicine

Antonio R. Damasio, the Van Allen Professor and Head of Neurology at the University of Iowa, and Adjunct Professor at the Salk Institute, has had a major influence on our understanding of the neural basis of decision-making, emotion, language and memory, and consciousness. He elucidates critical problems in the fundamental neuroscience of mind and behavior at the level of large-scale systems in humans, although his investigations have also encompassed parkinsonism and Alzheimer's disease. The laboratories that he and Hanna Damasio (a distinguished neurologist who is independently recognized for her achievements in neuroimaging and neuroanatomy) created at the University of Iowa are a leading center for the investigation of cognition using both the lesion method and functional imaging.

Dr. Damasio is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the Neurosciences Research Program, a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology, a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts and of the Royal Academy of Medicine in Belgium, a member of the American Neurological Association and of the Association of American Physicians, and a board member of leading neuroscience journals. He has received numerous scientific prizes and delivered some of the most prestigious lectures in the United States and in Europe. His book Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain (Putnam, 1994) is taught in universities worldwide. His new book The Feeling of What Happens: Body, Emotion, and the Making of Consciousness, published by Harcourt, has received several awards and has been translated into 18 languages.

Martha J. Farah

University of Pennsylvania

Martha J. Farah is the Bob and Arlene Kogod Professor of Psychology and the Director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania. She is known for her work on the neural bases of human perception and cognition, described in over a hundred research publications as well as in five books. Her current interests are in emotion-cognition interaction and development. Dr. Farah's work has been honored with a number of awards, including the American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution, the National Academy of Sciences Troland Research Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Michael F. Huerta

National Institute of Mental Health

Michael F. Huerta received both his B.A. in zoology and his Ph.D. in anatomy from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Vanderbilt University, served on the faculty of the University of Connecticut Health Center, and was a guest researcher in the intramural program of the National Institute of Mental Health at the National Institutes of Health. Most of Dr. Huerta's research publications concern sensorimotor integration at the systems level of analysis. He is currently Associate Director of the Division of Neuroscience and Basic Behavioral Research and Director of the Office of Translational Research and Scientific Technology at the National Institute of Mental Health.

Dr. Huerta's research efforts are focused on integrating the many disciplines, perspectives, and approaches that comprise neuroscience. He also has significant interest in advancing the research and development of technologies useful to brain researchers, particularly informatics tools. Dr. Huerta has received numerous awards for his leadership in areas including neuroscience, imaging, informatics, and bioengineering. He continues to review manuscripts for journals, edits scientific books, and serves as an editor on the new journal Neuroinformatics.

Sue Iversen

University of Oxford

Sue Iversen is professor of experimental psychology and Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Planning and Resource Allocation at the University of Oxford. She studied for her undergraduate degree and Ph.D. at Cambridge, then spent her postdoctoral years in the United States at the National Institutes of Health and at Harvard Medical School. She was formerly Research Director at the U.S. pharmaceutical company Merck & Co., where she was involved in establishing the largest commercial Neuroscience Research Centre in the United Kingdom, based at Harlow in Essex, and has previously held research posts at Cambridge University.

Dr. Iversen's research and publications focus on disorders of brain function, particularly schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease with particular reference to the biological bases of these disorders, their clinical presentation, and treatment. She has published 307 papers, edited 24 volumes, and is co-author with L. L. Iversen of Behavioural Pharmacology. Until recently she was Editor-in-Chief of Neuropsychologia and has held senior office in a number of professional psychological and neuroscience societies.

Edward G. Jones

University of California, Davis

Edward G. Jones received his Medical Degree from the University of Otago, New Zealand, and his Ph.D. from Oxford University. He is an authority on brain anatomy and is recognized as a leading researcher of the central nervous system. He was a leading figure in introducing molecular biology methodology to systems neuroscience, and has done groundbreaking work on schizophrenia, focusing on how changes at the molecular and cellular level are associated with the disorder. Dr. Jones also belongs to a group of scientists who are working on the U.S. Human Brain Project, which supports the development of databases on the brain and development of technologies to manage and share neuroscience information. He was a founding member of the Frontier Research Program in Brain Mechanisms of Mind and Behavior at Riken, Japan.

Dr. Jones' many awards include the Cajal medal for excellence in research and Krieg Cortical Discoverer (1989), the Henry Gray Award, American Association of Anatomists (2001), and the Karl Spencer Lashley Award, American Philosophical Society (2001). He has served as the President of the Society for Neuroscience, is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and is an original member of the Thomson Scientific ISI Highly-Cited Researchers. He is currently the Director of the Center for Neuroscience at the University of California, Davis.

Jon H. Kaas

Vanderbilt University

Jon H. Kaas is a Distinguished, Centennial Professor of Psychology at Vanderbilt University, where he is also professor of cell biology. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Society of Experimental Psychologists. He has received the Sutherland Prize for Achievement in Research, the Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award, the Krieg Cortical Discoverer Award, and the American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award.

One of Dr. Kaas' major research interests is how sensory-perceptual and motor systems are organized in mammalian brains, especially those of primates. This interest has led to comparative studies of primate brains and efforts to infer the course of human brain evolution. Related research efforts have revealed aspects of brain specializations in mammals with unusual adaptations such as moles and bats. Another research focus has been the plasticity of developing and mature sensory and motor systems with efforts to determine mechanisms of brain reorganization and recovery after sensory loss.

Raja Parasuraman

The Catholic University of America

Raja Parasuraman is Director of the Cognitive Science Laboratory, and professor of psychology at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He received a B.Sc. (1st Class Honors) in electrical engineering from Imperial College, University of London, UK (1972) and an M.Sc. in applied psychology (1973) and a Ph.D. in psychology (1976) from the University of Aston, Birmingham, UK. Dr. Parasuraman has carried out research on attention, automation, aging and Alzheimer's disease, event-related brain potentials, functional brain imaging, signal detection, vigilance, and workload. His books include The Psychology of Vigilance (Academic Press, 1982), Varieties of Attention (Academic Press, 1984), Event-Related Brain Potentials (Oxford University Press, 1990), Automation and Human Performance (Erlbaum, 1996), and The Attentive Brain (MIT Press, 1998).

Dr. Parasuraman served as a member of the Human Development and Aging Study Section of the National Institutes of Health from 1992 to 1995, and was a member of the National Research Council's Panel on Human Factors in Air-Traffic Control Automation from 1994 to 1998. He is currently Chair of the National Research Council Panel on Human Factors. He is also on the editorial board of several journals, including Neuropsychology and Human Factors. Dr. Parasuraman was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1994), the American Psychological Association (1991), the American Psychological Society (1991), and the Human Factors and...