Aaron Rutman
Medical Student, UCSD

email: arutman@ucsd.edu

 
Biography:  Aaron is originally from the South Bay Area, and grew up mostly in Gilroy, CA.  He began his undergraduate work at UC Berkeley in 1999 and finally finished in 2005, having interrupted his studies with several years of volunteer work in Europe and Southern Africa. He began working with Dr. Gazzaley as an undergraduate in the D’Esposito Laboratory, and later joined him at UCSF as a research associate.  After three and a half years working with Dr. Gazzaley, Aaron moved with his wife and son to San Diego to begin medical school at UCSD.

Research Description:  Aaron spent a great deal of time working with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in order to better elucidate the neural networks that underlie attention and top-down modulation.  His primary interest was in correlating functional connectivity of disparate brain regions with subject behavior, in order to understand how frontal-occipital networks influence neural representation. More recently, his research utilized electroencephalography (EEG) in order to examine the temporal dynamics of top-down modulation.  There are many types of attention—we can attend to regions of space when we are expecting something to pop out at us, or to features like the color of a car or the pitch of a musical note, or we can attend to objects as a whole, like a new acquaintance’s face or a picturesque vista.  Aaron’s latest project was aimed at understanding the difference’s and similarities between these various types of attention, and how this attention can be modulated based on distraction and task goals.  Current projects are aimed at better understanding how the ability to modulate using these different types of attention is affected by normal aging of the human brain. The results of these studies could begin to establish how the aging brain might differentially affect different types of attention, and provide physiological markers that can lead to better, earlier diagnosis of age-related attention and memory deficits.

Publications:
Gazzaley A, Rissman J, Cooney J, Rutman A, Siebert T, Clapp WC, D’Esposito M. (2007) Functional interactions between prefrontal and visual association cortex contribute to top-down modulation of visual processing. Cerebral Cortex. In press

Posters:
A.M. Rutman, W.C. Clapp, J.Z. Chadick, A. Gazzaley. Early object-based top-down modulation in an attention and working memory task using overlapped faces and scenes. Program No. 302.11. 2007 Neuroscience Meeting Planner. San Diego, CA: Society for Neuroscience, 2007. Online.

T.M. Seibert, A. Gazzaley, A.M. Rutman, J. Rissman, M. D'Esposito. Top-down enhancement of hippocampal functional connectivity underlies incidental long-term memory. Program No. 315.10. 2005 Abstract Viewer/Itinerary Planner. Washington, DC: Society for Neuroscience, 2005. Online.