Phone: (412) 647-3076
Fax: (412) 647-0108
Email: neg8@pitt.edu

Individual Website: http://www.pitt.edu/~neg8

Ph.D., University of California, San Francisco

Research Interests

The nervous system continuously monitors the environment and when necessary produces overt or covert behavior in response to the sensory stimulation. To facilitate orientation towards objects of interest, the sensory representation of target location is transformed into neural commands that evoke a complex, coordinated, and accurate movement. One aim of my research is to understand the neural implementation of coordinated movements. More specifically, I study the neural control of coordinated movements of the eyes and head, as well as integration of different types of eye movements (for example, saccades and smooth pursuit).

In producing orienting behavior, the efficacy of sensory to motor transformation depends on cognitive processes. One such mechanism, motor preparation, proposes that neural signals encoding the metrics of a desired movement develop gradually. A second area of research is geared to test the motor preparation hypothesis and to investigate the extent of its association with other sensorimotor attributes emphasized by varying task-specific requirements.

These objectives are addressed using both experimental (extracellular recording, microstimulation, chemical microinjections) and computational tools (lumped and distributed network models). An understanding of the cognitive and motor processes that produce integrated orienting behavior has diagnostic value for deficits resulting from disease.

Recent Publications

• Walton MMG, Bechara BP, Gandhi NJ: The role of the primate superior colliculus in the control of head movements. J Neurophysiol, 2007. (In Press).
• Gandhi NJ, Sparks DL: Dissociation of eye and head components of gaze shifts by stimulation of the omnipause neuron region. J Neurophysiol 98: 360-373, 2007.
• Walton MMG, Gandhi NJ: Behavioral evaluation of movement cancellation. J Neurophysiol 96: 2011-2024, 2006.
• Bryant CL, Gandhi NJ: Real-time data acquisition and control system for the measurement of motor and neural data. J Neurosci Methods 142: 193-200, 2005.
• Gandhi NJ, Bonadonna DK: Temporal interactions of air-puff evoked blinks and saccadic eye movements: Insights into motor preparation. J Neurophysiol 93: 1718-1729, 2005.
• Walton MMG, Sparks DL, Gandhi NJ: Simulations of saccade curvature by models that place superior colliculus upstream from the local feedback loop. J Neurophysiol 93: 2354-2358, 2005.