Contact:
Phone:510-642-3134Email:
Education:
B.Sc. (2002) Biology and Psychology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.M.A. (2005) Cognitive Psychology, Hebrew University.
Ph.D. (Expected 2010) Neuroscience, University of California, Berkeley.
Research interests:
My Ph.D. project focuses on the neural mechanisms of perceptual learning in the human visual system. I am using fMRI in order to measure changes occuring, with learning, in the human brain. In addition, I am conducting pharmacological experiments aimed at understanding the role of the cholinergic system in perceptual learning.
Additional experiments, in collaboration with Bill Prinzmetal, are aimed at understanding the role of acetylcholine in the allocation of voluntary and involuntary attention.
Together with others in the lab, and in collaboration with Jong Yoon at the University of California, Davis, I am also investigating visual processing in schizophrenic patients. We are using fMRI, in conjunction with behavioral psychophysical testing in order to understand basic mechanisms of operation of the brain of these patients.
I am participating in the development of NiPy.
Publications:
A. Rokem, A. Landau, D. Garg, W. Prinzmetal and M.A. Silver (in preparation) Effects of cholinergic enhancement on voluntary and involuntary visual spatial attention in healthy humans.
A. Rokem and M.A. Silver (in review) Cholinergic enhancement in healthy humans augments perceptual learning.
A. Rokem, M. Trumpis and F. Perez (in review). 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.)
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) Burst 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
