Earl K. Miller

Earl Keith Miller (born Nov. 30 1962, Columbus OH) is a systems/cognitive neuroscientist, whose research focuses on neural mechanisms of learning, memory, and cognition. Earl Miller is a Picower Professor of Neuroscience with the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also Associate Director of the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory.

Education

Earl Miller received a B.A. with honors in psychology from Kent State University (1985), M.A. in psychology and neuroscience from Princeton University (1987), and a Ph.D. in psychology and neuroscience from Princeton University (1990). From 1990-1995 he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Laboratory of Neuropsychology at the National Institute of Mental Health.

Distinctions

Earl Miller has won a large number of awards throughout his career, including the McKnight Scholar Award (1996), Pew Scholar Award (1996), John Merck Scholar Award (1998), and the Society for Neuroscience Young Investigator Award (2000). In 2005 he was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and in 2007 he won the Mathilde Solowey Award in Neurosciences. His 2001 article "An Integrative Theory of Prefrontal Cortex Function" (co-written by J.D. Cohen) was designated a "Current Classic" by Thomson Scientific as one of the most cited articles in Neuroscience and Behavior.

Professional

In 1995 Earl Miller joined the faculty of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT as Assistant Professor of Neuroscience, and quickly advanced the academic ranks to become Professor in 2002. He is also director of graduate studies in Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, and editor in several scientific journals, including the Journal of Neuroscience, the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience. In the period 1992-2008 he was invited to give more than 200 seminars and talks on his research throughout the world.

Research

Earl Miller's research aims to understand how the prefrontal cortex, a neural system located in the frontal lobe of the brain, subserves cognitive control. Cognitive or executive control involves all those cognitive processes that come into play when our behavior is guided by plans, inner thoughts, and goals. This sort of behavior contrasts with the behavior that is primarily driven by external stimuli (reflexive) or by emotion (affective), and with the behaviors that are performed automatically, with minimal active processing (habitual). Although the prefrontal cortex (PFC) has long been believed to mediate executive functions in the human brain, the mechanisms through which PFC regulates this goal-oriented, purposeful behavior were not clearly understood.

Research conducted in Earl Miller's laboratory has shown that such cognitive control is manifested in the activity of individual neurons in the primate PFC. The activation of single neurons in PFC can reflect the abstract cognitive process that is guiding behavior at any given moment. PFC neurons, thus, have been documented to represent abstract rules such as "same vs. different", to process the categorical membership or the number of visual stimuli, to retrieve long-term memories, and to guide the allocation of attentional resources. These results have arisen through a combination of electrophysiological, psychophysical, and computational techniques.

External links

* [http://web.mit.edu/bcs/people/miller.shtml Miller's page at the BCS Dept, MIT]
* [http://web.mit.edu/picower/faculty/miller.html Miller's page at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory]
* [http://www.millerlab.org/ Miller Laboratory]