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| Robert H. Wurtz, Ph.D., Senior Investigator |
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Dr. Wurtz received his A.B. from Oberlin College and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan where he worked in the laboratory of James Olds on intra-cranial self-stimulation. He did postdoctoral research at the Department of Physiology, Washington University, on slow potential changes in cerebral cortex and in NINDS � NIMH on synaptic plasticity in Aplysia. In 1966 he joined the Laboratory of Neurobiology, NIMH and began studies on the visual system of awake, behaving monkeys. During this time he spent a year as a Visiting Scientist at the Physiological Laboratory at Cambridge University in England. He became the founding Chief of the Laboratory of Sensorimotor Research, NEI in 1978. Dr. Wurtz was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1988, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 1997, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1990, and President of the Society for Neuroscience in 1990. The focus of his research is the neurobiology of vision and eye movements.
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Staff:
Research Interests:
I have concentrated my research on one of the primary functions of the brain: how it processes sensory information for perception and the initiation of movement. Experiments in my laboratory centers on the visual and oculomotor systems of the brain of awake behaving monkeys as a model for similar systems in the human brain.
One oculomotor system, the saccadic system, moves the eye rapidly from one region of the visual field to another and my laboratory has investigated the nature of the visual-motor transformations that must occur between the visual input and the eye-movement-related output. Experiments use behavioral, electrophysiological, anatomical, and theoretical approaches on the system within the brain including the superior colliculus, the cerebral cortex, and the basal ganglia. Preparation to make these eye movements has also been used to determine the regions of the brain related to visual attention and the neuronal processes that occur with shifts of attention.
Visual motion information is used to generate a second type of eye movement, smooth pursuit, and we have identified regions of visual cortex that are related to these movements. Recent work has also suggested that the visual motion resulting from our own movements is processed in a separate but adjacent region of the cerebral cortex.
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Selected Recent Publications:
Pare, M. and Wurtz, R. H. (2001) Progression in neuronal processing for saccadic eye movements from parietal cortex area LIP to superior colliculus., J. Neurophysiol. 85, 2545-2562.
Sommer, M. A. and Wurtz, R. H. (2001) Composition and topographic organization of signals sent from the frontal eye field to the superior colliculus., J. Neurophysiol. 83, 1979-2001.
Hanes, D. P. and Wurtz, R. H. (2001) Interaction of the frontal eye field and superior colliculus for saccade generation., J. Neurophysiol. 85, 804-815.
Sommer, M. A. and Wurtz, R. H. (2001) Frontal eye field sends delay activity related to movement, memory, and vision to the superior colliculus., J. Neurophysiol. 85, 1673-1685.
All Selected Publications
Contact Information:
Dr. Robert H. Wurtz
Laboratory of Sensorimotor Research, NEI
Building 49, Room 2A50
49 Convent Drive MSC 4435
Bethesda, MD 20892-4435
Telephone: (301) 496-7170 (office),
(301) 402-0511 (fax)
Email: bob@lsr.nei.nih.gov
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