Professor of Physiology and Pharmacology

The Everling lab studies the brain mechanisms of "executive" functions like paying attention, suppressing automatic responses, generating voluntary behavior and switching between different tasks and instructions.

We focus on the prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex, cortical regions at the anterior end of the brain that have long been known play a central role in orchestrating complex thoughts and actions. Dysfunction of the prefrontal cortex have been implicated in many psychiatric and neurological disorders, including schizophrenia, autism, and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorders.

We employ a combination of sophisticated behavioral training with neuro-physiological techniques. These techniques involve extracellular recordings of the activity of multiple single neurons in different brain areas, microstimulation, neurochemical injections, cortical cooling, and physiological identification of connections with antidromic activation. We also use state-of-the-art functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in humans and non-human primates to investigate the neural areas and processes involved in saccade preparation and visual attention.

Recent Publications:

Hutchison RM, Womelsdorf T, Gati JS, Leung LS, Menon RS, Everling S (2011) Resting-state connectivity identifies distinct functional networks in macaque cingulate cortex. Cerebral Cortex doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhr181

Koval MJ, Lomber SG, Everling S (2011) Prefrontal cortex deactivation in macaques alters activity in the superior colliculus and impairs voluntary control of saccades. J. Neurosci. 31: 8659-8668

Hutchison RM, Leung LS, Mirsattaril SM, Gati JS, Menon RS, Everling S (2011) Resting-state networks in the macaque at 7 T. Neuroimage 56: 1546-1555

Womelsdorf T, Johnston K, Vinck M, Everling S (2010) Theta-band synchronization in anterior cingulate cortex predicts task-rules and their adjustments following errors. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) 107: 5248-5253

Johnston K, DeSouza JX, Everling S (2009) Monkey prefrontal cortical pyramidal and putative interneurons exhibit differential patterns of activity between pro- and anti-saccade tasks. J. Neurosci. 29: 5516-5524

Johnston K, Everling S (2009) Task-relevant output signals are sent from monkey dorsolateral prefrontal cortex to the superior colliculus during a visuospatial working memory task. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 21: 1023-1038

Ford KA, Gati JS, Menon RS, Everling S (2009) BOLD fMRI activation for anti-saccades in nonhuman primates. NeuroImage 45: 470-476

Field CB, Johnston K, Gati JS, Menon RS, Everling S (2008) Connectivity of the primate superior colliculus mapped by concurrent microstimulation and fMRI. PLOS One. 3(2): e3982