James Herman, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology with a secondary appointment in the Department of Bioengineering. Dr. Herman's research aims to understand how visual functions of the brain depend on subcortical-cortical interactions with a particular emphasis on the role of learning. He obtained his PhD in Biology/Neuroscience at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and did his postdoctoral training at the Laboratory of Sensorimotor Research at the National Eye Institute.
- National Eye Institute, National Institutes of Health, Laboratory of Sensorimotor Research, Postdoctoral Fellow
- The Graduate Center of The City University of New York, Department of Biology, Subprogram in Neuroscience, PhD
- University of California, Berkeley, BA in Mathematics and Physics
Education & Training
Katz LN, Yu G, Herman JP, Krauzlis RJ. Correlated variability in primate superior colliculus depends on functional class. Commun Biol. 2023 May 18;6(1):540. doi: 10.1038/s42003-023-04912-0. PubMed PMID: 37202508; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC10195790.
Yu G, Herman JP, Katz LN, Krauzlis RJ. Microsaccades as a marker not a cause for attention-related modulation. Elife. 2022 Mar 8;11. doi: 10.7554/eLife.74168. PubMed PMID: 35289268; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC8923660.
Wang L, Herman JP, Krauzlis RJ. Neuronal modulation in the mouse superior colliculus during covert visual selective attention. Sci Rep. 2022 Feb 15;12(1):2482. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-06410-5. PubMed PMID: 35169189; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC8847498.
Herman JP, Arcizet F, Krauzlis RJ. Attention-related modulation of caudate neurons depends on superior colliculus activity. Elife. 2020 Sep 17;9. doi: 10.7554/eLife.53998. PubMed PMID: 32940607; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC7544506.
Herman JP, Katz LN, Krauzlis RJ. Midbrain activity can explain perceptual decisions during an attention task. Nat Neurosci. 2018 Dec;21(12):1651-1655. doi: 10.1038/s41593-018-0271-5. Epub 2018 Nov 26. PubMed PMID: 30482945; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC6324183.
Human visual perception and visual cognitive functions such as attention and perceptual decision-making require the highly specialized processing capabilities of the cerebral cortex. However, it has become increasingly clear that the visual capabilities of humans and other primates also depend vitally on coordinated interactions between cortical and evolutionarily ancient “subcortical” brain regions as well.
Work in the Herman lab aims to understand how visual functions of the brain depend on subcortical-cortical interactions with a particular emphasis on the role of learning. The lab employs carefully controlled psychophysical tasks, large-scale extracellular electrophysiology, neuronal perturbation, and computational modeling techniques to explain the relationship between both intact and perturbed neuronal activity to ongoing behavior. The lab is particularly interested in leveraging learning-driven structured variation in behavior to understand how groups of neurons guide specific cognitive functions.