Ariel Rokem
POSTDOCTORAL SCHOLAR
eMailarokem.org
Education:
B.Sc. (2002) Biology and Psychology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
M.A. (2005) Cognitive Psychology, Hebrew University.
Ph.D. (2010) Neuroscience, University of California, Berkeley.
Research interests:
The goal of my research is to elucidate the biological mechanisms underlying the computations performed by the human visual system. I aim to combine physiological and behavioral measurements, together with precise quantitative characterization and analysis to understand basic questions about the organization of the visual system in healthy and diseased states.
The goal of my current research project is to characterize the neural substrate underlying differences between perception of the central and peripheral parts of the visual field. Important visual functions, such as reading, require central vision and clinical conditions, such as macular degeneration selectively affect this part of the visual field, conferring significant disability. I am focusing the investigation on the perception of boundaries between different textures. These boundaries are used in order to parse images into distinct regions and objects and perception of these boundaries differs between central and peripheral vision. These differences are likely to result from the manner in which information is processed in different parts of the visual field and the way in which information is transmitted through the visual system, via the anatomical connections between different regions of the visual system.
Publications:
- A. Rokem, J.H. Yoon, R.E. Ooms, R.J. Maddock, M. Minzenberg and M.A. Silver (in review). Broader visual orientation tuning in patients with schizophrenia.
- A. Rokem, A. Landau, W. Prinzmetal, D. Wallace, M.A. Silver and M. D’Esposito (in press). Modulation of inhibition of return by the dopamine D2 receptor agonist bromocriptine depends on individual DAT1 genotype. Cerebral Cortex. pdf
- A. Rokem and M.A. Silver (2010) Cholinergic enhancement augments magnitude and specificity of visual perceptual learning in healthy humans. Current Biology 20: 1723-1728 pdf; supplementary materials
- A. Rokem, A. N. Landau, D. Garg, W. Prinzmetal and M.A. Silver (2010). Effects of cholinergic enhancement on voluntary and involuntary visual spatia attention in healthy humans. Neuropsychopharmacology 35: 2538-44. pdf
- J.H. Yoon, R.J. Maddock, A. Rokem, M.A. Silver, M.J. Minzenberg, J.D. Ragland and C.S. Carter (2010). Gamma-aminobutyric acid concentration is reduced in visual cortex in schizophrenia and correlates with orientation-specific surround suppression. Journal of Neuroscience 30:3777-3781. pdf
- A. Rokem, M. Trumpis and F. Perez (2009). Nitime: time-series analysis for neuroimaging data. In Proceedings of the 8th Python in Science Conference (SciPy 2009) G. Varoquaux, S. van der Walt, J. Millman (Eds.) pdf
- J. Yoon, A. Rokem, M.A. Silver, M.J. Minzenberg and C.S. Carter (2009). Diminished Orientation-Specific Contextual Modulation of Visual Processing in Schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Bulletin 35: 1078-84 pdf
- A. Rokem and M.A. Silver (2009) A model of encoding and decoding in V1 and MT accounts accounts for motion perception anisotropies in the human visual system. Brain Research 1299: 3-16. pdf
- H. Eyherabide, A. Rokem, A.V.M. Herz, I. Samengo (2009) Bursts generate a non-reducible spike-pattern code. Frontiers in Neuroscience 3: 8-14. pdf
- A. Rokem and M. Ahissar (2009) Interactions of cognitive and auditory abilities in congenitally blind individuals. Neuropsychologia 47:843-8. pdf
- H.G. Eyherabide, A. Rokem, A.V.M. Herz and I. Samengo (2008). Burst Firing as a Neural Code in an Insect Auditory System. Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience 2:3. pdf
- A. Rokem, S. Watzl, T. Gollisch, M. Stemmler, A.V.M. Herz and I. Samengo (2006). Spike-Timing Precision Underlies the Coding Efficiency of Auditory Receptor Neurons. The Journal of Neurophysiology 95: 2541-2552. pdf
