William Newsome

William T. Newsome (born June 5, 1952) is a neuroscientist at Stanford University who works to "understand the neuronal processes that mediate visual perception and visually guided behavior."^[1][2] He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Newsome is a Christian.^[3]

According to an article in PNAS, "What sets Newsome's research apart from many other studies in this area is that the techniques he uses—primarily, stimulation of brain areas of primates with microelectrodes—have helped demonstrate cause and effect rather than merely show a correlation between behavior and activity of the brain."^[4]

Awards

• Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator (1997– Present)^[5]
• Member National Academy of Sciences (2000)^[4]
• Member, Society for Neuroscience
• Member, American Philosophical Society
• Champalimaud Vision Award
• Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award, American Psychological Association
• Dan David Prize, Tel Aviv University
• W. Alden Spencer Award, Columbia University (1994)
• Rank Prize in Opto-electronics, Rank Prize Funds, London
• Karl Spencer Lashley Award, American Philosophical Society

Publications

His publications include:

• "A selective impairment of motion perception following lesions of the middle temporal visual area" The Journal of Neuroscience (1988)^[6]
• "Neuronal correlates of a perceptual decision" Nature (1989)
• "Correlated neuronal discharge rate and its implications for psychophysical performance" Nature (1994)^[7]
• "Noise, neural codes and cortical organization" Current Opinion in Biology (1994)^[8]
• "The variable discharge of cortical neurons: implications for connectivity, computation, and information coding" The Journal of Neuroscience (1998)^[9]

Notes and references

See also

• Two-alternative forced choice