Ph.D., University of Rochester
Professor
Department of Neuroscience
454 Sidney Frank Hall of Life Sciences
Tel: (401) 863-2523
Email: Jerome_Sanes@Brown.edu
Go to lab web page

Seemingly, the brain effortlessly computes signals needed while humans prepare, perform, and learn complex actions. My research investigates the brain processes underlying mechanisms of volition. A focus of our work is understanding the tactical and strategic role of cerebral cortical and sub-cortical areas in motor learning and adaptation and the interactions between arm and eye movements and visual attention. Cerebral cortical areas appear to have multiple, interconnecting processing pathways that mediate different aspects of voluntary behavior related to performing and learning actions and in integrating eye and hand movements with visual signals. Recently, we have used psychophysical and functional MRI methods to examine these questions.

Kim J. A., J. C. Eliassen, and J. N. Sanes (2005) Movement quantity and frequency coding in human motor areas. Journal of Neurophysiology 94:2504-2511.

Eliassen, J. C., T. Souza and J. N. Sanes (2003) Experience-dependent activation patterns in human brain during visual-motor associative learning. Journal of Neuroscience, 23:10540-10547.

Sanes, J. N. (2003) Neocortical mechanisms in motor learning. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 13:225-231.

Acuna, B. D., J. C. Eliassen, J. N. Sanes, and J. P. Donoghue (2002) Frontal and parietal lobe activation during transitive inference in humans. Cerebral Cortex 12:1312-1321.

Acuna, B. D., J. N. Sanes, and J. P. Donoghue (2002) Cognitive mechanisms of transitive inference. Experimental Brain Research, 146:1-10.

Hagberg, G. E., I. Indovina, J. N. Sanes, and S. Posse (2002) Real time quantification of T2* changes using multi-echo planar imaging and numerical methods. Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, 48:877-882.

Eliassen, J. C., T. Souza and J. N. Sanes (2001) Human brain activation accompanying explicitly directed movement sequence learning. Experimental Brain Research, 141: 269-280.

Indovina I. and J. N. Sanes (2001) Combined visual attention and finger movement effects on human brain representations. Experimental Brain Research, 140: 265

Sanes J. N. and M. H. Schieber (2001) Orderly somatotopy in primary motor cortex: Does it exist? NeuroImage, 13:968-974.

Indovina I. and Sanes, J.N. (2001) On somatotopic representation centers for finger movements in human primary motor cortex and supplementary motor area. Neuro-Image, 13:1027-1034.

Galati, G., G. Committeri, J. N. Sanes and L. Pizzamiglio (2001) Spatial coding of visual and somatic sensory information in body-centered coordinates. European Journal of Neuroscience, 14:737-746.

Hagberg, G. E., G. Zito, F. Patria and J. N. Sanes JN (2001) Improved detection of event-related functional MRI signals using probability functions. NeuroImage, 14:1193-1205.