Michael Shadlen

When Michael Shadlen was a neurology resident, he met patients high on PCP. Their eyes darted uncontrollably, their visual systems unable to tally up previous eye movements to calculate their current position. Patients also exhibited confusion, leading Shadlen to hypothesize that confusion results from an inability of the brain to integrate individual bits of information and piece them together into a complete picture. For these patients, the past has no bearing on the present and everything is new and threatening. This idea has guided his research as a principal investigator at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute, leading to new insights about how nerve cells in the brain use experience to make decisions. In his lab, Dr. Shadlen studies how we turn visual signals into behavior. He focuses on the brain’s parietal cortex, a region that acts as a go-between—linking areas that take in sensory input to those that prepare the body to act. People with damage to the parietal cortex exhibit trouble with various skills, from understanding numbers to knowing what objects are for. Dr. Shadlen is also an accomplished jazz guitarist.