Tirin Moore
Stanford University, CA·Neuroscience
Attention and decision-making happen inside the head. They change from moment to moment and are controlled by the subject, so scientists usually have to infer them from behavior.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Psychology
Biomedical Engineering
- Topics
prefrontal cortex
attention
decision-making
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Identify which lateral prefrontal neuron subpopulations control attention by recording with Neuropixels probes in the frontal eye field and area 46 of monkeys and using real-time decoders to trigger stimulus perturbations.
- Determine how orbitofrontal cortex layers, cell types and subregions contribute to value-based decisions, and test whether decoder-triggered electrical microstimulation biases choices.
- Test whether value leads or lags attention by cross-correlating real-time outputs of an OFC value decoder and an LPFC spatial attention decoder.
- Provide custom device design and fabrication for vision research through a machine shop, CAD and 3D printing, and share designs across labs.
More about the research
The prefrontal cortex (PFC), the front part of the brain, is critical for both. New tools that record from many neurons at once raise a possibility: reading out these mental processes directly from brain activity. The lab's research project takes this approach in monkeys. Moore also directs a shared core that designs and builds custom equipment for vision research.
Why it matters
Prefrontal cortex dysfunction is implicated in obsessive-compulsive disorder, mood disorders, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and addiction. Understanding how attention and value are represented in prefrontal circuits could support more targeted brain stimulation, in which decoded mental states determine when stimulation is applied. Shared device designs could also speed vision research across labs.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Joni D Wallis
University of California-Berkeley, CA·Neuroscience
Test whether the orbitofrontal cortex suppresses habitual responses in the caudate nucleus when deliberate choice is needed, using a task with conflicting reward rules that changes decision time and eye movements.
Scott Wilke
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Neuroscience
Record how anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) neurons and ACC-to-nucleus accumbens projection neurons represent effort-related costs and benefits during choices, using miniature head-mounted microscopes in freely behaving animals.
Theresa Desrochers
Brown University, RI·Neuroscience·Early-career
Use fMRI in behaving macaque monkeys to identify which frontal brain areas track nonmotor, nonspatial sequences, testing whether the medial prefrontal cortex mainly encodes each item's position in the sequence.
The school
Stanford University: 87 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 739 research doctorates a year.
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