Michael Silver | Research UC Berkeley

Research Expertise and Interest

cognitive neuroscience, pharmacology, learning, attention, visual perception, neuroimaging

Research Description

Michael Silver is a Professor of Optometry and Vision Science, and Neuroscience. The research goals of Michael Silver's laboratory are to better understand how the human brain constructs representations of the environment and how these representations are modified by cognitive processes such as attention, expectation, and learning. They address these questions by applying a combination of behavioral, brain imaging, modeling, and pharmacological techniques to the study of healthy human participants as well as patients who suffer from diseases that affect visual perceptual processing.

In the News

An abstract illustration of a brain emerging from a white box with blue, green and pink colors swirling across the illustration

Three Years In, ‘Uniquely Berkeley’ Psychedelic Research Center Looks to the Future

The UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics says a new — and free — online course and first-of-its-kind voter perceptions survey are just the beginning.

Portrait of UC Berkeley neuroscientist Michael Silver with images of brains in the background

UC Berkeley launches new center for psychedelic science and education

Fifty years after political and cultural winds slammed shut the doors on psychedelic research, UC Berkeley is making up for lost time by launching the campus’s first center for psychedelic science and public education. With $1.25 million in seed funding from an anonymous donor, the new UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics will conduct research using psychedelics to investigate cognition, perception and emotion and their biological bases in the human brain.

‘Nuff said: Humans get the gist of complex sounds

New research by neuroscientists at UC Berkeley, suggests that the human brain is not detail-oriented, but opts for the big picture when it comes to hearing.

Alzheimer's drug boosts perceptual learning in healthy adults

Research on a drug commonly prescribed to Alzheimer's disease patients is helping neuroscientists at the University of California, Berkeley, better understand perceptual learning in healthy adults.

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