Shushruth

Columbia University (U.S.A.)

The neurobiology of decision-making and the roots of conceptualization and abstraction

2020-2021: Fall

I trained as a physician at Bangalore Medical College, India and obtained my PhD from the University of Utah in the laboratory of Alessandra Angelucci. In my graduate work, I studied the neural mechanisms of how surrounding context influences the visual perception of objects and scenes. I am currently a research scientist in the laboratory of Michael Shadlen at Columbia University where I study how brains create abstract representations and use them to generate endlessly flexible behavior. I also study how such computations are affected in neurological and psychiatric disorders. 

An important result of my research is that abstract representations in the brain are constrained by how we intend to act on them. In my tenure at the Academy, I plan to explore how the intentional architecture of our brain can influence and constrain our imagination.

Web page: https://www.shushruth.net/