1995 - 1999       Wuhan University, B.E. in Electrical Engineering

2001  -2007       University of Maryland College Park, Ph.D. in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science

2007.01 - 06      University of Maryland College Park, Research Associate

2007.08 - 2011  Institute of Biophysics, CAS, Associate Investigator

2012 - 2014       Institute of Biophysics, CAS, Investigator

(Supported by "Young Investigator Grant" of Institute of Biophysics, CAS)

I employ cognitive behavioral approach combined with brain mapping techniques (e.g., fMRI, MEG, etc.) to investigate:

1. Temporal organization (temporal segmentation, integration, coordination, etc.) in various cognitive processes, including but not limited to sensory processing, perception, attention, learning, memory and consciousness.

2. Neuronal oscillation phase modulation mechanism that may critically mediate the temporal organization process.

Research Progress

We are living in a dynamic world in which information from both external world and internal context seamlessly unfolds in time and enters our brain to be perceived, attended, learned and memorized. Therefore, it constitutes a fundamental and important question that how brain accomplishes the temporal organization process (e.g., segmentation, integration and coordination in time) in cognitive processes (e.g, sensory processing, perception, attention, memory, learning, consciousness, etc.).

Our previous work employed MEG, a brain imaging technique with high temporal resolution, to record human brain activities in response to natural audiovisual stream (e.g., natural spoken sentences, movie clips). Interestingly, we demonstrate that instead of in a continuous way, the brain processes the sensory stream in a discrete manner, by segmenting and parsing the input into small temporal chunks. We further reveal that the ongoing phase of intrinsic brain oscillations actually marks temporal parsing process, based on which we speculate that the phase-mediated neuronal oscillation might be the neural mechanism underlying temporal organization (e.g., Journal of Neurophysiology, 2006, 2007). This phase-mediated temporal organization process has been further demonstrated to have also behavioral consequence in speech recognition (Neuron, 2007), cross-modality audiovisual integration (PLoS Biology, 2010) and memory formation for new auditory object (Current Biology, 2013), thus suggesting its general and fundamental function.

Our recent studies focus on the temporal organization in other cognitive processes, such as attention, memory, consciousness, etc. We have recently demonstrated:

1. Human subject could rapidly form memory for a randomly generated meaningless white noise through certain behavioral paradigms, and the formed memory could tolerate temporal structures distortions up to some extent. The results suggest that the established memory for a white noise is not a precise representation of all details of the sound. Rather, the noise is stored in a temporally structured and organized way (Song et al., Journal of Neuroscience, in press).

2. Interaction between temporal organization and spatial organization. Most vision studies focus on spatial dimension (e.g., attend here instead of there). We recently show that attention among multiple spatial locations is actually mediated by a dynamic coordination between temporal organization and spatial organization (Song et al., in prep.).

1. Song, K., Meng, M., Chen, L., Zhou, K.*, Luo, H.* (in press) Behavioral oscillations in attention: rhythmic alpha pulses mediated through theta band. Journal of Neuroscience.

2. Luo, H.*, Tian, X., Zhou, K., Song, K., Poeppel, D. (2013) Neural response phase tracks how listeners learn new acoustic representations. Current Biology 23(11): 968-974.

3. Luo, H.*, Poeppel, D.* (2012) Cortical oscillations in auditory perception and speech: evidence for two temporal windows in human auditory cortex. Frontiers in Psychology (3).

4. Zuo, Z., Luo, H.*, Zhou K.* (2012) The role of topological invariants in motion-induced blindness. Progress in Biochemistry and Biophysics.

5. Luo, H.*, Liu, Z., Poeppel, D.* (2010) Auditory cortex tracks both auditory and visual stimulus dynamics using low-frequency neuronal phase modulation. PLoS Biology 8(8).

6. Zhou, K.*, Luo, H., Zhou T., Zhuo Y., Chen L. Topological change disturbs objects continuity in attentive tracking. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 107(50):21920-21924.

7. Luo, H.*, Wang, Y., Poeppel, D., Simon, J.Z. (2007) Concurrent encoding of frequency and amplitude modulation in human auditory cortex: an encoding transition. Journal of Neurophysiology 98: 2473-3485.

8. Luo, H., Poeppel, D.* (2007) Phase patterns of neuronal responses reliably discriminate speech in human auditory cortex. Neuron 54(6): 1001-1010.

9. Luo, H.*, Boemio, A., Gordon, M., Poeppel, D. (2007) Perception of FM sweeps by Chinese and English listeners. Hearing Research 224: 75-83.

10. Luo, H.*, Wang, Y., Poeppel, D., Simon, J.Z. (2006) Concurrent encoding of frequency and amplitude modulation in human auditory cortex: MEG evidence. Journal of Neurophysiology 96(5): 712-723.

11. Luo, H.*, Husain, F., Horwitz, B., Poeppel, D. (2005) Discrimination and categorization of speech and non-speech sounds in an MEG delayed -match-to-sample study. NeuroImage 28(1): 59-71.

(From Huan Luo, June 10, 2014)