User:Dona Kim Murphey

Contact Info

Dona Kim Murphey
MD/PhD Candidate
Michael S. Beauchamp Lab
Department of Neuroscience
Baylor College of Medicine
One Baylor Plaza, S603
Houston, Texas 77030
dmurphey@cns.bcm.edu

Education

• 2010 (anticipated), MD/PhD, Baylor College of Medicine
• 2001, A.B. History and Science, Harvard College

Research Interests

I am interested in using electrical recording and stimulation techniques in behaving primates to study the relative contributions of different visual areas to supporting visual perception. This work began with the observation that electrical stimulation of early and late visual areas in macaque visual cortex had similar ability to produce a detectable percept (Murphey and Maunsell 2007). More recently, I have been working with patients with medically intractable epilepsy who are implanted with semi-chronic subdural surface electrodes for clinical purposes to explore the detectability of activation in a functionally identified visual area and the quality of the percept generated with electrical stimulation there.

As a natural extension of the results of this work, I would in the future like to explore (among other things and in no particular order) the effect of training on perception of electrical stimulation in human visual cortex, the relationship between cortical adaptation to sensory stimuli and adaptation to electrical stimulation, the use of electrical stimulation to bias perceptual judgments in primary and extrastriate (especially object selective) cortex, the qualitative mutability of a percept with electrical stimulation using different stimulation parameters, the role of the human frontal eye fields in visual perception, and the effect of behavioral task on the relationship between neuronal activity and choice probability.

Clinical Interests

neurology, neurophysiology

Publications

1. Murphey, DK, Maunsell JH. Behavioral detection of electrical microstimulation in different cortical visual areas. Curr Biol. 2007 May 15;17(10):862-7. Epub 2007 Apr 26.