| Principal Investigators
Alex Martin, Ph.D. |
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Dr.
Martin is Chief of the Cognitive
Neuropsychology Section, Laboratory of Brain and Cognition.
He received his B.A. from the City College of New York
and his Ph.D. from the City University of New York. He
did his post-doctoral work at the National Institute of
Neurological Disorders and Stroke on the breakdown of
language and memory processes in Alzheimers disease.
In 1985 he joined the faculty of the Uniform Services
University of the Health Sciences where he studied cognitive
dysfunction associated with HIV infection. In 1990 he
moved to the NIMH where he continued his work on cognitive
abnormalities in neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders.
More recently, his program has used functional magnetic
resonance imaging (fMRI) to study the neural systems mediating
different aspects of memory, language, and perception.
Dr. Martin is an elected Fellow of the American Psychological
Society and of the American Psychological Association.
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Research Interests |
Dr. Martin's Section studies the functional neuroanatomy of memory systems. A major area of concentration is on semantic memory, the part of long-term memory composed of general information, such as facts, ideas, and the meaning of objects and words. His group investigates the neural substrate of object category knowledge and the role this information plays in object recognition. How abstract forms of knowledge, such as knowledge of social interactions, are represented is also a major focus. Additional studies concentrate on characterizing changes in neural activity associated with perceptual skill learning to provide a model system for studying cortical plasticity, and on identifying the brain structures supporting implicit and explicit modes of information acquisition and retrieval.
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Representative Selected Recent Publications: |
- Grill-Spector K, Henson R, & Martin A.:
Repetition and the brain: Neural models of stimulus-specific effects.
Trends in Cognitive Science, 10, 14-23, 2006.
- Martin A & Gotts SJ.:
Making the causal link: frontal cortex activity and repetition priming.�
Nature Neuroscience, 8, 1134-1135, 2005.
- Wheatley T, Weisberg J, Beauchamp MS, & Martin A.:
Automatic Priming of Semantically Related Words Reduces Activity in the Fusiform Gyrus.
Journal of Cogntive Neuroscience, 17, 1871-1885, 2005.
- Gil-da-Costa R, Braun A, Lopes M, Hauser MD, Carson RE, Herscovitch P, & Martin A.:
Conceptual representations in a nonhuman primate: Species-specific vocalizations activate visual and affective processing systems in the macaque
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 101,17516-17521, 2004.
- Beauchamp MS, Argall BD, Burdurka J, Duyn JH, & Martin A.:
Unraveling multisensory integration: Patchy organization within human STS multisensory cortex.
Nature Neuroscience, 7, 1190-1192, 2004.
- Beauchamp MS, Lee KE, Argall BD, & Martin A:
Integration of auditory and visual information about objects in superior temporal sulcus.
Neuron, 41, 809-823, 2004.
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Address:
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Dr.
Alex Martin
Section on Cognitive Neuropsychology
Laboratory of Brain and Cognition, NIMH
Bldg. 10, Rm. 4C-104
10 Center Drive, MSC 1366
Bethesda, MD 20892-1366 |
Phone: |
301-435-4926 |
Email Dr. Martin |
Fax: |
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Lab Web Site: |
http://lbc.nimh.nih.gov/ |
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