Richard Krauzlis, Ph.D.
Richard Krauzlis, Ph.D.
Eye Movements & Visual Selection Section Chief
Biography
Rich Krauzlis earned his undergraduate degree from Princeton University and doctorate in Neuroscience from the University of California, San Francisco, in Steve Lisberger's laboratory. After postdoctoral training with Fred Miles and Bob Wurtz at the National Eye Institute, he was recruited to the Salk Institute in 1997, where he was promoted to Full Professor in the Systems Neurobiology Laboratory. In 2011, Rich returned to the National Eye Institute as a Senior Investigator in the Laboratory of Sensorimotor Research and Chief of the section on Eye Movements and Visual Selection.
Work in Rich's laboratory is aimed at understanding the brain mechanisms that link motor control to sensory and cognitive processing, using a variety of techniques to manipulate and monitor neural activity. One key result from his lab's work is that the superior colliculus (SC), a structure on the roof of the midbrain best known for its role in the motor control of orienting movements, contains a "priority map" that keeps track of behaviorally relevant objects in the visual field. Activity in this map is important for deciding where and when to look, but also plays a crucial role in selecting which signals are taken into account when making perceptual judgments, even in the absence of orienting movements.
Rich's vita includes papers on pursuit and saccadic eye movements, physiological studies of the superior colliculus, cerebellum, and cerebral cortex, psychophysical studies of visual motion perception and visual attention, and computational modeling of eye movements. He has authored several review articles on eye movements, including a chapter in the graduate textbook Fundamental Neuroscience. He also serves on the Editorial Boards for Journal of Neuroscience and Journal of Vision and is a Senior Editor for Vision Research.
Last Reviewed: October 2011
