Hoi-Chung Leung, Ph.D., Stony Brook University

The ability to focus on relevant information and to ignore irrelevant information is critical to adaptive behavior. Without this ability, an individual or patient can become more easily distracted or confused by irrelevant aspects of a task. I will present a set of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and behavioral experiments that are designed to characterize the neural substrates involved in the temporary maintenance and manipulation of visual information. Our results, along with existing evidence, suggest that there are different prefrontal circuits for handling various types of visual information and the prefrontal cortex may interact with other brain regions to enhance task-relevant information.