About

Xiaomo Chen, M.E., Ph.D., is the Principal Investigator and an Assistant Professor at the Cognitive Control Lab at UC Davis. His research focuses on cognitive control within the field of neuroscience, and he is involved in leading the lab's efforts in understanding neural mechanisms underlying cognitive functions. As a faculty member at the Department of Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior, he contributes to advancing knowledge in neuroengineering and medicine, and he is actively engaged in mentoring students and conducting research that explores the neural basis of cognition.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Neuroscience
• Biology
• Psychology
• Cognitive psychology

Selected publications

• Functional interactions among neurons within single columns of macaque V1

  eLife · 2022 · 37 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Neuroscience
  • Biology

  Recent developments in high-density neurophysiological tools now make it possible to record from hundreds of single neurons within local, highly interconnected neural networks. Among the many advantages of such recordings is that they dramatically increase the quantity of identifiable, functional interactions between neurons thereby providing an unprecedented view of local circuits. Using high-density, Neuropixels recordings from single neocortical columns of primary visual cortex in nonhuman primates, we identified 1000s of functionally interacting neuronal pairs using established crosscorrelation approaches. Our results reveal clear and systematic variations in the synchrony and strength of functional interactions within single cortical columns. Despite neurons residing within the same column, both measures of interactions depended heavily on the vertical distance separating neuronal pairs, as well as on the similarity of stimulus tuning. In addition, we leveraged the statistical power afforded by the large numbers of functionally interacting pairs to categorize interactions between neurons based on their crosscorrelation functions. These analyses identified distinct, putative classes of functional interactions within the full population. These classes of functional interactions were corroborated by their unique distributions across defined laminar compartments and were consistent with known properties of V1 cortical circuitry, such as the lead-lag relationship between simple and complex cells. Our results provide a clear proof-of-principle for the use of high-density neurophysiological recordings to assess circuit-level interactions within local neuronal networks.

  DOI

• Parietal Cortex Regulates Visual Salience and Salience-Driven Behavior

  Neuron · 2020 · 65 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Psychology
  • Neuroscience
  • Cognitive psychology
  DOI

Recent grants

• Interacting neural mechanisms of selective visual attention and value-based decision-making

  NIH · $227k · 2019–2021

Frequent coauthors

• Tirin Moore

  79 shared

• Shude Zhu

  Howard Hughes Medical Institute

  54 shared

• Ethan B Trepka

  Howard Hughes Medical Institute

  42 shared

• Veit Stuphorn

  Johns Hopkins University

  33 shared

• Ruobing Xia

  Howard Hughes Medical Institute

  32 shared

• Yu jin Oh

  Howard Hughes Medical Institute

  24 shared

• Marc Zirnsak

  Stanford University

  18 shared

• Gabriel M. Vega

  Howard Hughes Medical Institute

  12 shared

Labs

• Cognitive Control Lab at UC DavisPI

Education

• Ph.D., Psychology and Brain Sciences

  Johns Hopkins University

  2013

• M.E., Biomedical Engineering

  Tsinghua University

  2008

Similar researchers at University of California, Davis

• Blake Meyersh-126
• J. Bruce Germanh-114
• John Douglas McPhersonh-108
• Steven J. Luckh-104
• Paul J. Hagermanh-99