Robert Wurtz

Last updated
Robert Wurtz
Born (1936-03-28) 28 March 1936 (age 88)
Saint Louis, Missouri, United States
Alma mater Oberlin College
University of Michigan, PhD
AwardsSee text
Scientific career
Fields Neuroscience
Physiology
Institutions National Institute of Mental Health and National Eye Institute of National Institute of Health
Thesis Self-Stimulation and Escape in Response to Stimulation of the Rat Amygdala  (1962)
Doctoral advisor James Olds
Website http://www.nei.nih.gov/intramural/lsr/wurtz/wurtz.asp

Robert H. Wurtz is an American neuroscientist working as a NIH Distinguished Scientist and Chief of the Section on Visuomotor Integration at the National Eye Institute. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is recognised for developing methods for studying the visual system in 'awake-behaving' primates (as opposed to those under anesthesia), a technique now widely used for the study of higher brain functions. He pioneered the study of the neuronal basis of vision and its relation with cognitive functions. [1]

Contents

Early life and education

Robert Wurtz was born in Saint Louis, Missouri as an only child of Robert Wurtz. His father was a factory worker, a superintendent at the Mavrakos Candy Company. His mother, Alice, was a bookkeeper at the same company. When it was time for college, he wanted to go to a liberal arts college. His father persuaded him to apply to Oberlin College and he graduated from Oberlin in 1958 with a major in chemistry. Then he found an interest in experimental psychology and physiology of nervous system. He went to the University of Michigan to study psychology under James Olds. [2] He submitted his PhD thesis in 1962, even though Olds was hesitant about the title Self-Stimulation and Escape in Response to Stimulation of the Rat Amygdala. He went on for a post-doctoral research in the Physiology Department of Washington University in St. Louis. [3]

Professional career

In 1966, Wurtz joined the Laboratory of Neurobiology, National Institute of Mental Health, in Bethesda, Maryland. He began studies on the visual system of awake in monkeys and made groundbreaking works on neurobiology of vision and eye movements. During this time he spent a year (1975-1976) as a visiting scientist at the Physiological Laboratory at Cambridge University in England. He became the founding Chief of the Laboratory of Sensorimotor Research, National Eye Institute in 1978. In 2002, he stepped down as chief of the laboratory, but has remained as a senior investigator. [2]

His 1969 publications became classic papers on this technique of studying the physiology of the visual system, [4] [5] [6] and now used by cognitive neuroscientists around the world.

Personal life

Robert Wurtz married Sally Smith, a fellow student at Oberlin, c. 1955. They have a son William and a daughter Erica.

Award and recognition

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Visual cortex</span> Region of the brain that processes visual information

The visual cortex of the brain is the area of the cerebral cortex that processes visual information. It is located in the occipital lobe. Sensory input originating from the eyes travels through the lateral geniculate nucleus in the thalamus and then reaches the visual cortex. The area of the visual cortex that receives the sensory input from the lateral geniculate nucleus is the primary visual cortex, also known as visual area 1 (V1), Brodmann area 17, or the striate cortex. The extrastriate areas consist of visual areas 2, 3, 4, and 5.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David H. Hubel</span> Canadian neurophysiologist

David Hunter Hubel was an American Canadian neurophysiologist noted for his studies of the structure and function of the visual cortex. He was co-recipient with Torsten Wiesel of the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for their discoveries concerning information processing in the visual system. For much of his career, Hubel worked as the Professor of Neurobiology at Johns Hopkins University and Harvard Medical School. In 1978, Hubel and Wiesel were awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University. In 1983, Hubel received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Superior colliculus</span> Structure in the midbrain

In neuroanatomy, the superior colliculus is a structure lying on the roof of the mammalian midbrain. In non-mammalian vertebrates, the homologous structure is known as the optic tectum or optic lobe. The adjective form tectal is commonly used for both structures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Motor cortex</span> Region of the cerebral cortex

The motor cortex is the region of the cerebral cortex involved in the planning, control, and execution of voluntary movements. The motor cortex is an area of the frontal lobe located in the posterior precentral gyrus immediately anterior to the central sulcus.

Vernon Benjamin Mountcastle was an American neurophysiologist and Professor Emeritus of Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University. He discovered and characterized the columnar organization of the cerebral cortex in the 1950s. This discovery was a turning point in investigations of the cerebral cortex, as nearly all cortical studies of sensory function after Mountcastle's 1957 paper, on the somatosensory cortex, used columnar organization as their basis.

The pars reticulata (SNpr) is a portion of the substantia nigra and is located lateral to the pars compacta. Most of the neurons that project out of the pars reticulata are inhibitory GABAergic neurons.

David J. Heeger is an American neuroscientist, psychologist, computer scientist, data scientist, and entrepreneur. He is a professor at New York University, Chief Scientific Officer of Statespace Labs, and Chief Scientific Officer and co-founder of Epistemic AI.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Supplementary eye field</span> Region of the frontal cortex of the brain

Supplementary eye field (SEF) is the name for the anatomical area of the dorsal medial frontal lobe of the primate cerebral cortex that is indirectly involved in the control of saccadic eye movements. Evidence for a supplementary eye field was first shown by Schlag, and Schlag-Rey. Current research strives to explore the SEF's contribution to visual search and its role in visual salience. The SEF constitutes together with the frontal eye fields (FEF), the intraparietal sulcus (IPS), and the superior colliculus (SC) one of the most important brain areas involved in the generation and control of eye movements, particularly in the direction contralateral to their location. Its precise function is not yet fully known. Neural recordings in the SEF show signals related to both vision and saccades somewhat like the frontal eye fields and superior colliculus, but currently most investigators think that the SEF has a special role in high level aspects of saccade control, like complex spatial transformations, learned transformations, and executive cognitive functions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Premotor cortex</span> Part of the human brain

The premotor cortex is an area of the motor cortex lying within the frontal lobe of the brain just anterior to the primary motor cortex. It occupies part of Brodmann's area 6. It has been studied mainly in primates, including monkeys and humans. The functions of the premotor cortex are diverse and not fully understood. It projects directly to the spinal cord and therefore may play a role in the direct control of behavior, with a relative emphasis on the trunk muscles of the body. It may also play a role in planning movement, in the spatial guidance of movement, in the sensory guidance of movement, in understanding the actions of others, and in using abstract rules to perform specific tasks. Different subregions of the premotor cortex have different properties and presumably emphasize different functions. Nerve signals generated in the premotor cortex cause much more complex patterns of movement than the discrete patterns generated in the primary motor cortex.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Supplementary motor area</span> Midline region in front of the motor cortex of the brain

The supplementary motor area (SMA) is a part of the motor cortex of primates that contributes to the control of movement. It is located on the midline surface of the hemisphere just in front of the primary motor cortex leg representation. In monkeys, the SMA contains a rough map of the body. In humans, the body map is not apparent. Neurons in the SMA project directly to the spinal cord and may play a role in the direct control of movement. Possible functions attributed to the SMA include the postural stabilization of the body, the coordination of both sides of the body such as during bimanual action, the control of movements that are internally generated rather than triggered by sensory events, and the control of sequences of movements. All of these proposed functions remain hypotheses. The precise role or roles of the SMA is not yet known.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ann Graybiel</span> American neuroscientist

Ann Martin Graybiel is an Institute Professor and a faculty member in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is also an investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. She is an expert on the basal ganglia and the neurophysiology of habit formation, implicit learning, and her work is relevant to Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, obsessive–compulsive disorder, substance abuse and other disorders that affect the basal ganglia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Primary motor cortex</span> Brain region

The primary motor cortex is a brain region that in humans is located in the dorsal portion of the frontal lobe. It is the primary region of the motor system and works in association with other motor areas including premotor cortex, the supplementary motor area, posterior parietal cortex, and several subcortical brain regions, to plan and execute voluntary movements. Primary motor cortex is defined anatomically as the region of cortex that contains large neurons known as Betz cells, which, along with other cortical neurons, send long axons down the spinal cord to synapse onto the interneuron circuitry of the spinal cord and also directly onto the alpha motor neurons in the spinal cord which connect to the muscles.

Monocular deprivation is an experimental technique used by neuroscientists to study central nervous system plasticity. Generally, one of an animal's eyes is sutured shut during a period of high cortical plasticity. This manipulation serves as an animal model for amblyopia, a permanent deficit in visual sensation not due to abnormalities in the eye.

Binocular neurons are neurons in the visual system that assist in the creation of stereopsis from binocular disparity. They have been found in the primary visual cortex where the initial stage of binocular convergence begins. Binocular neurons receive inputs from both the right and left eyes and integrate the signals together to create a perception of depth.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Schiller (neuroscientist)</span> German-born neuroscientist (born 1931)

Peter H. Schiller was a German-born neuroscientist. At the time of his death, he was a professor emeritus of Neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Schiller is well known for his work on the behavioral, neurophysiological and pharmacological studies of the primate visual and oculomotor systems.

Michael E. Goldberg, also known as Mickey Goldberg, is an American neuroscientist and David Mahoney Professor at Columbia University. He is known for his work on the mechanisms of the mammalian eye in relation to brain activity. He served as president of the Society for Neuroscience from 2009 to 2010.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Stryker</span> American neuroscientist

Michael Paul Stryker is an American neuroscientist specializing in studies of how spontaneous neural activity organizes connections in the developing mammalian brain, and for research on the organization, development, and plasticity of the visual system in the ferret and the mouse.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eberhard Fetz</span> American neuroscientist, academic and researcher

Eberhard Erich Fetz is an American neuroscientist, academic and researcher. He is a Professor of Physiology and Biophysics and DXARTS at the University of Washington.

Tirin Moore is an American neuroscientist who is a Professor of Neurobiology at Stanford University and Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is known for his work on the neural mechanisms of visual perception, visually guided behavior and cognition. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and to the National Academy of Sciences in 2021.

Wolfram Schultz is a Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge known for his discovery of the neurophysiological dopamine reward signal.

References

  1. "Robert Wurtz". www.crsltd.com. Cambridge Research Systems Ltd. 2012. Retrieved 3 September 2013.
  2. 1 2 "2010 Neuroscience Prize: Robert H. Wurtz". gruber.yale.edu. The Gruber Foundation. 2010. Retrieved 3 September 2013.
  3. Robert H. Wurtz. "Robert H. Wurtz (autobiography)". www.sfn.org. Society for Neuroscience. Retrieved 3 September 2013.
  4. Wurtz RH (1969). "Visual receptive fields of striate cortex neurons in awake monkeys". J Neurophysiol. 32 (5): 727–742. doi:10.1152/jn.1969.32.5.727. PMID   4980023.
  5. Wurtz RH (1969). "Response of striate cortex neurons to stimuli during rapid eye movements in the monkey". J Neurophysiol. 32 (6): 975–986. doi:10.1152/jn.1969.32.6.975. PMID   4981518.
  6. Wurtz RH (1969). "Comparison of effects of eye movements and stimulus movements on striate cortex neurons of the monkey". J Neurophysiol. 32 (6): 987–994. doi:10.1152/jn.1969.32.6.987. PMID   4981519.
  7. "1991: Wurtz". www.minervaberkeley.org. 29 November 1991. Retrieved 3 September 2013.