David J. Heeger (born 1961) is an American neuroscientist, psychologist, computer scientist, data scientist, and entrepreneur. He is a professor at New York University, Chief Scientific Officer of Statespace Labs, and Chief Scientific Officer and co-founder of Epistemic AI.

Research Heeger's academic research spans a cross-section of engineering, psychology, and neuroscience. In the fields of perceptual psychology, systems neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, and computational neuroscience, Heeger has developed computational theories of neuronal processing in the visual system, and he has performed psychophysics (perceptual psychology) and neuroimaging (functional magnetic resonance imaging, fMRI) experiments on human vision. His primary contribution to computational neuroscience is a theory of neural processing called the normalization model.Carandini, M. and D.J. Heeger, Normalization as a canonical neural computation. Nat Rev Neurosci, 2012. 13(1): p. 51-62.Heeger, D.J., Normalization of cell responses in cat striate cortex. Vis Neurosci, 1992. 9(2): p. 181-197. His experimental research has contributed to our understanding of the topographic organization of visual cortex (retinotopy),Gardner, J.L., et al., Maps of visual space in human occipital cortex are retinotopic, not spatiotopic. J Neurosci, 2008. 28(15): p. 3988-99.Larsson, J. and D.J. Heeger, Two retinotopic visual areas in human lateral occipital cortex. J Neurosci, 2006. 26(51): p. 13128-42.Schluppeck, D., P. Glimcher, and D.J. Heeger, Topographic organization for delayed saccades in human posterior parietal cortex. J Neurophysiol, 2005. 94(2): p. 1372-84.Silver, M.A., D. Ress, and D.J. Heeger, Topographic maps of visual spatial attention in human parietal cortex. J Neurophysiol, 2005. 94(2): p. 1358-71.Huk, A.C., R.F. Dougherty, and D.J. Heeger, Retinotopy and functional subdivision of human areas MT and MST. J Neurosci, 2002. 22(16): p. 7195-7205. visual awareness,Polonsky, A., et al., Neuronal activity in human primary visual cortex correlates with perception during binocular rivalry. Nat Neurosci, 2000. 3(11): p. 1153-9.Lee, S.H., R. Blake, and D.J. Heeger, Traveling waves of activity in primary visual cortex during binocular rivalry. Nat Neurosci, 2005. 8(1): p. 22-3.Lee, S.H., R. Blake, and D.J. Heeger, Hierarchy of cortical responses underlying binocular rivalry. Nat Neurosci, 2007. 10(8): p. 1048-54. visual pattern detection/discrimination,Ress, D. and D.J. Heeger, Neuronal correlates of perception in early visual cortex. Nat Neurosci, 2003. 10: p. 10.Boynton, G.M., et al., Neuronal basis of contrast discrimination. Vision Res, 1999. 39(2): p. 257-69. visual motion perception,Huk, A.C., D. Ress, and D.J. Heeger, Neuronal basis of the motion aftereffect reconsidered. Neuron, 2001. 32(1): p. 161-72.Huk, A.C. and D.J. Heeger, Pattern-motion responses in human visual cortex. Nat Neurosci, 2002. 5(1): p. 72-5.Heeger, D.J., et al., Motion opponency in visual cortex. J Neurosci, 1999. 19(16): p. 7162-74. stereopsis (depth perception),Backus, B.T., et al., Human cortical activity correlates with stereoscopic depth perception. J Neurophysiol, 2001. 86(4): p. 2054-68. attention,Reynolds, J.H. and D.J. Heeger, The normalization model of attention. Neuron, 2009. 61(2): p. 168-85.Herrmann, K., et al., When size matters: attention affects performance by contrast or response gain. Nat Neurosci, 2010. 13(12): p. 1554-9.Ress, D., B.T. Backus, and D.J. Heeger, Activity in primary visual cortex predicts performance in a visual detection task. Nat Neurosci, 2000. 3(9): p. 940-945.Gandhi, S.P., D.J. Heeger, and G.M. Boynton, Spatial attention affects brain activity in human primary visual cortex. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 1999. 96(6): p. 3314-9. working memory, the control of eye and hand movements, neural processing of complex audio-visual and emotional experiences (movies, music, narrative),Hasson, U., et al., A hierarchy of temporal receptive windows in human cortex. J Neurosci, 2008. 28(10): p. 2539-50.Hasson, U., R. Malach, and D.J. Heeger, Reliability of cortical activity during natural stimulation. Trends Cogn Sci, 2010. 14(1): p. 40-8. abnormal visual processing in dyslexia,Demb, J.B., G.M. Boynton, and D.J. Heeger, Brain activity in visual cortex predicts individual differences in reading performance. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 1997. 94(24): p. 13363-6.Demb, J.B., G.M. Boynton, and D.J. Heeger, Functional magnetic resonance imaging of early visual pathways in dyslexia. J Neurosci, 1998. 18(17): p. 6939-51. and neurophysiological characteristics of autism.Dinstein, I., et al., A mirror up to nature. Curr Biol, 2008. 18(1): p. R13-8.Dinstein, I., et al., Normal movement selectivity in autism. Neuron, 2010. 66(3): p. 461-9.Dinstein, I., et al., Unreliable evoked responses in autism. Neuron, 2012. 75(6): p. 981-91.

In the fields of image processing, computer vision, and computer graphics, Heeger has worked on motion estimation and image registration, wavelet image representations,Simoncelli, E.P., et al., Shiftable multi-scale transforms. IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, Special Issue on Wavelets, 1992. 38: p. 587-607. anisotropic diffusion (edge-preserving noise reduction),Black, M., et al., Robust anisotropic diffusion. IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, 1998. 7: p. 421-432. image fidelity metrics (for evaluating image data compression algorithms), and texture analysis/synthesis.Heeger, D.J. and J.R. Bergen. Pyramid-Based Texture Analysis/Synthesis. in Computer Graphics, SIGGRAPH Proceedings. 1995.

Heeger's current research focuses on developing and testing a unified theory of cortical circuit function. The field of neuroscience needs a general theory of brain function, like Maxwell's Equations for the brain. There is considerable evidence that the brain relies on a set of canonical neural circuits that perform a set of canonical neural computations, repeating them across brain regions and modalities to apply operations of the same form. But we lack a theoretical framework for how such canonical computations can support a wide variety of cognitive processes and brain functions. Heeger developed a class of circuit models, called Oscillatory Recurrent Gated Neural Integrator Circuits (ORGaNICs), that recapitulate many key neurophysiological and cognitive/perceptual phenomena including sensory processing and attention in visual cortex, working memory in prefrontal and parietal cortex, and premotor activity and motor control in motor cortex. The theory offers a unified framework for the dynamics of neural activity, and it recapitulates many key neurophysiological and cognitive/perceptual phenomena (including normalization, oscillatory activity, sustained delay-period activity, sequential activity and traveling waves of activity), measured with a wide range of methodologies (including intracellular recordings of membrane potential fluctuations, firing rates of individual neurons, optogenetic manipulations, local field potentials, neuroimaging, and behavioral performance).

Education and career Heeger holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics as well as a master's degree and doctorate in computer science—all from the University of Pennsylvania. He was a postdoctoral fellow at MIT, a research scientist at the NASA-Ames Research Center, and an associate professor at Stanford before joining NYU.

Personal life His father, Alan J. Heeger, is an American physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2000.

Awards

1987 David Marr Prize in computer vision. 1994 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in neuroscience. 2002 Troland Research Award in psychology from the National Academy of Sciences. 2006 Margaret and Herman Sokol Faculty Award in the Sciences from New York University in 2006. 2013 Elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

References

External links Home page Laboratory page