Dr. Mangun receives a 2006-07 James McKeen Cattell Fund Fellowship
Dr. Ron Mangun was a recipient of a 2006-07 James McKeen Cattell Fund Fellowship. The fellowship awarded in conjunction with the Association for Psychological Science (APS) supports sabbatical research. Dr. Mangun will conduct research in The Netherlands and Germany.
George R. Mangun is Director of the Center for Mind and Brain and a professor of neurology and psychology at the University of California, Davis. Mangun received his PhD in Neuroscience from the University of California at San Diego in 1987. No stranger to new initiatives, he launched the Center for Neuroscience (with APS Past President Michael Gazzaniga) at UC Davis in the early 1990s, founded and directed the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke University from 1998-2002, and most recently founded the Center for Mind and Brain at UC Davis.
The Center’s unique mission is to “look at the mind from different perspectives because each of these varied views provides significant theoretical insight that no one discipline can claim.” Mangun asserts that neuroscientists and social psychologists should work together to answer complex questions like “how the prefrontal cortex supports our perceptions and emotions of our interactions with others.”
Mangun’s research investigates the intricate activities in the brain that enable us to interact with our environment, focusing on areas that may be involved in attentional control such as the superior frontal, inferior parietal, and superior temporal cortex. He uses an array of behavioral and psychophysical methods, human electrophysiological measures, and functional neuroimaging. Understanding these systems could eventually provide insight into the deficits in attention and awareness in certain psychiatric and neurological diseases including ADHD, autism, and schizophrenia.
Mangun’s sabbatical from his duties at UC Davis will not leave him with any extra time on his hands. First, he will be finishing up the third edition of his textbook, Cognitive Neuroscience: The Biology of the Mind (W.W. Norton), with coauthors Gazzaniga and Ivry. Then he will begin a new book, Neuroscience of Attention (Oxford University Press).
Mangun also will begin to investigate the neural mechanisms of visual attention that influence interpersonal communication — the neurophysiology of the daily face to face interactions between people. When a conversation occurs, both parties use various cues to focus attention both within the linguistic message and outside, making reference to objects and events in the world around them. Mangun would like “to explore the similarities and difference in how attention operates in this shared, communicative situation.”
Mangun plans to take full advantage of his sabbatical and travel to the Netherlands where he will initiate a new project with his colleagues at the F.C. Donders Center for Cognitive Neuroimaging in the Nijmegen (headed by Peter Hagoort). He also will spend several months at University of Magdeburg, Germany, where a new 7T MRI scanner is operational. This scanner will allow Mangun and his colleagues to “attempt to study the fine structure of the organization of visual spatial attention.”
When asked about his achievements Mangun quotes an old saying “you build too many centers and you become an administrator.” While he enjoys his involvement in the various centers that have thrived in the wake of his direction, he also looks forward to focusing on his research. “I will get a chance to take new risks in my research and to think and experiment outside my usual ‘box.’ I am looking forward to it.” [From the APS Observer]
Dr. Ron Mangun to serve as Interim Dean