Earl K. Miller
Earl Keith Miller is a cognitive neuroscientist whose research focuses on neural mechanisms of cognitive, or executive, control. Earl Miller is the Picower Professor of Neuroscience with the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the Chief Scientist and co-founder of SplitSage. and a co-founder of Neuradia Pharmaceuticals.
Education
Earl Miller received a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology from Kent State University in 1985, Master of Arts degree in psychology and neuroscience from Princeton University in 1987, and a PhD in psychology and neuroscience from Princeton University in 1990 for neurophysiological investigations of the inferior temporal cortex in the macaque supervised by.Career
From 1990–1995 he was a postdoctoral research fellow in the laboratory of neuropsychology at the National Institute of Mental Health. In 1995 Earl Miller joined the faculty of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT as Assistant Professor of Neuroscience and quickly advanced the academic ranks. He received tenure in 1999 and became a full Professor in 2002. He was appointed to the Picower chair at MIT in 2003. He was Associate Director of the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT from 2001 to 2009, and was Director of Graduate Studies in Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. He has delivered numerous lectures worldwide, serves as editor, and on the editorial boards of, major journals in neuroscience, and on international advisory boards. He served on the advisory boards of NeuroFocus, a Berkeley, California-based neuromarketing company.. Professor Miller is the co-founder and Chief Scientist of SplitSage. and a co-founder of Neuradia Pharmaceuticals.Research
Miller's research aims to understand how the prefrontal cortex, a neural system located in the frontal lobe of the brain, subserves cognitive control. Cognitive or executive control involves the higher-order processing that comes into play when our behavior has to be guided by plans, thoughts, and goals. This sort of behavior contrasts with the one that is primarily driven by external stimuli or by emotion, as well as with behavior that is stereotypical and automatic. Although the prefrontal cortex has long been thought to mediate executive functions in the human brain, the mechanisms through which PFC regulates this goal-oriented, purposeful behavior were not clearly understood.Research conducted in Earl Miller's laboratory has shown that such cognitive control is manifested in the neural activity in the primate PFC. The activation of PFC neurons reflect the abstract cognitive process that guides behavior during a control-demanding task. PFC neurons, thus, have been documented to represent top-down information such as abstract rules like "same vs. different", to process the category or quantity of visual stimuli, and to guide the allocation of attentional resources. PFC activity has also been shown to reflect the flexible remapping of stimulus-response associations. These results have arisen through a combination of electrophysiological, psychophysical, and computational techniques. One of his chief contributions is demonstrating that cortical neurons can be multifunctional. This has been a major advance beyond earlier theories that posited that each neuron has a specific function. This property gives the brain greater computational horsepower and endows flexibility, a hallmark of higher-level cognition.
Miller has innovated techniques for recording from many neurons simultaneously in multiple brain areas. This is a departure from the classic single-neuron recording approach. It allows detailed and direct comparison of neuron properties between brain areas that are not confounded by extraneous factors and examination of the temporal dynamics of activity between neurons. Miller's lab has used this approach to make a number of discoveries of how different brain areas collaborate to produce thought and action. This includes recent discoveries that oscillating "brain waves" may control the timing of shifts of attention and that different items simultaneously held in short-term memory line up on different phases of each brain wave. The latter may explain why we can only think about a few things at the same time.
The Miller Lab has also mounted evidence for an update to the oldest and most fundamental neural model of cognition: Working memory. For the past 50 years, working memory has been thought to rely on cortical neurons that fire continuous impulses that keep thoughts “online”. New work from the Miller lab has revealed more complex dynamics. The impulses fire sparsely and interact with brain waves of different frequencies. Higher frequency brain waves carry the contents of working memory while lower frequency brain waves act as control signals that gate access to and clear out working memory.
Miller's paper with Jonathan Cohen, An Integrative Theory of Prefrontal Cortex Function, has been designated a Current Classic as among the most cited papers in Neuroscience and Behavior. It is the 5th most-cited paper in the history of Neuroscience. His paper with Tim Buschman, Top-down versus Bottom-up Control of Attention in the Prefrontal and Posterior Parietal Cortices was The Scientist's Hot Paper for October 2009.
Selected Awards and Honors
Doctor of Science, Kent State University.The George A. Miller Prize in Cognitive Neuroscience.
Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Paul and Lilah Newton Brain Science Award
Miller and Cohen identified as the 5th most-cited paper in the history of neuroscience
The Goldman-Rakic Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Cognitive Neuroscience
Kent State University Professional Achievement Award.
Elected to the Memory Disorders Research Society, 2016
Commencement Address at Kent State University.
Amar G. Bose Research Fellowship,
MERIT Award, National Institute of Mental Health
The Mathilde Solowey Award in Neurosciences
Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science,
Picower Professorship at MIT
The Society for Neuroscience Young Investigator Award
National Academy of SciencesTroland Research Award
Tenured at MIT two years ahead of schedule
John Merck Scholar Award,
McKnight Scholar Award,
Pew Scholar Award
Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow
Phi Beta Kappa
Full list of awards and honors can be found .