Jochen Ditterich
Associate Professor
jditterich (at) ucdavis (dot) edu
Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior
Center for Neuroscience
Office
1544 Newton Ct
(530) 754-5084
Lab
(530) 754-6987
Degrees:
2000
PhD
Technical University of Munich, Germany
(Electrical Engineering)
1995
Diploma
Technical University of Munich, Germany
(Electrical Engineering)
Research Interests:
Our lab is interested in neural mechanisms underlying higher-order brain functions linking perception and action, especially decision-making. We are working on answering the question how the brain processes sensory information and combines it with other information in order to select what action to take next and when to take that action. So far, these mechanisms have mainly been studied from a psychological point of view, whereas neurophysiologists have largely concentrated on lower-level mechanisms. We are trying to bridge this gap by utilizing both behavioral and neurophysiological methods and by using mathematical models for exploring potential neural mechanisms. The goal of our research is to provide a solid foundation for understanding human choice behavior, the neural implementation of decision mechanisms, as well as problems with decision-making in psychiatric disorders.
Awards:
1995: VDE (Association for Electrical, Electronic & Information Technologies) / VDI (Association of German Engineers) Award for Outstanding Diploma Theses
1996-98: DFG (German Research Council) Fellowship, Graduate College "Sensory interaction in biological and technical systems"
2000-02: DFG (German Research Council) Research Fellowship, Dept. of Physiology & Biophysics, Univ. of Washington, Seattle
2009-10: Hellman Family Foundation Fellowship
Department and Center Affiliations:
Center for Neuroscience
Department of Neurobiology, Physiology & Behavior (College of Biological Sciences)
Professional Societies:
Society for Neuroscience
CBS Graduate Group Affiliations:
Neuroscience
Graduate Groups not Housed in CBS:
Applied Mathematics
Publications:
Last updated 1/15/2013
Bollimunta A, Totten D, Ditterich J (2012) Neural dynamics of choice: Single-trial analysis of decision-related activity in parietal cortex. Journal of Neuroscience 32:12684-12701
Churchland AK, Ditterich J (2012) New advances in understanding decisions among multiple alternatives. Current Opinion in Neurobiology 22:920-926
Bollimunta A, Ditterich J (2012) Local computation of decision-relevant net sensory evidence in parietal cortex. Cerebral Cortex 22:903-917
Sperka DJ, Ditterich J (2011) SPLASh: a software tool for stereotactic planning of recording chamber placement and electrode trajectories. Frontiers in Neuroinformatics 5:1
Ditterich J (2010) A comparison between mechanisms of multi-alternative perceptual decision making: Ability to explain human behavior, predictions for neurophysiology, and relationship with decision theory. Frontiers in Neuroscience 4:184
Wendelken C, Ditterich J, Bunge SA, Carter CS (2009) Stimulus and response conflict processing during perceptual decision making. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience 9:434-447
Niwa M, Ditterich J (2008) Perceptual Decisions between Multiple Directions of Visual Motion. Journal of Neuroscience 28:4435-4445
Ditterich J (2006) Evidence for time-variant decision making. European Journal of Neuroscience 24:3628-3641
Ditterich J (2006) Stochastic models of decisions about motion direction: Behavior and physiology. Neural Networks 19:981-1012
Hanks TD, Ditterich J, Shadlen MN (2006) Microstimulation of macaque area LIP affects decision-making in a motion discrimination task. Nature Neuroscience 9:682-689
Ditterich J, Mazurek ME, Shadlen MN (2003) Microstimulation of visual cortex affects the speed of perceptual decisions. Nature Neuroscience 6:891-898
Ditterich J, Keller I, Eggert T, Straube A (2002) Modeling visuospatial perception in neglect patients. Biological Cybernetics 86:41-57
Ditterich J, Eggert T (2001) Improving the homogeneity of the magnetic field in the magnetic search coil technique. IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering 48:1178-1185
Ditterich J, Eggert T, Straube A (2000) Relation between the metrics of the presaccadic attention shift and of the saccade before and after saccadic adaptation. Journal of Neurophysiology 84:1809-1813
Ditterich J, Eggert T, Straube A (2000) The role of the attention focus in the visual information processing underlying saccadic adaptation. Vision Research 40:1125-1134
Ditterich J, Eggert T, Straube A (1998) Fixation errors and timing in sequences of memory-guided saccades. Behavioural Brain Research 95:205-217
Laboratory Personnel:
Ditterich Lab
Jochen Ditterich (PI), Jacob Herford (Lab manager)
Teaching Interests:
Systems Neuroscience, Modeling
Courses:
NPB
14
Illusions: Fooling the Brain
(Winter)
NSC
285
Literature in Visual Neuroscience
(Fall)
NSC
222
Systems Neuroscience
(Winter)