Marvin Chun



Professor (Ph.D., 1994, Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Lab Page

I am a cognitive neuroscientist with research interests in visual attention, memory. and perception. My lab employs neuroimaging (fMRI) and behavioral techniques to study how people perceive and remember visual information. Our work in visual attention explores why people can consciously perceive only a small portion of all of the sensory information coming through the eyes. What are the brain mechanisms that constrain conscious vision? The lab’s research on memory investigates the neuronal correlates of memory encoding and retrieval. What are the fMRI signatures of memory traces in the brain? What are the factors that influence the fidelity of encoding and maintenance of visual information in both working memory and long-term memory? We are also keenly interested in how attentional mechanisms and memory processes interact; how does attention improve memory and how does memory benefit attention? Much of our work on the interactions between memory and attention has centered on the role of context and associative learning. Finally, our work in perception examines the fundamental question of how the brain discriminates objects to make quick, efficient perceptual decisions.