Michael Steven Anthony Graziano (born May 22, 1967 ) is an American scientist and novelist who is currently a professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Princeton University . His scientific research focuses on the brain basis of awareness. He has proposed the "attention schema" theory , an explanation of how, and for what adaptive advantage, brains attribute the property of awareness to themselves. His previous work focused on how the cerebral cortex monitors the space around the body and controls movement within that space. Notably he has suggested that the classical map of the body in motor cortex , the homunculus , is not correct and is better described as a map of complex actions that make up the behavioral repertoire. His publications on this topic have had a widespread impact among neuroscientists but have also generated controversy . His novels rely partly on his background in psychology and are known for surrealism or magic realism . Graziano also composes music including symphonies and string quartets.
31-1784: [REDACTED] Look up graziano in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Graziano is both a masculine Italian given name and a surname. Notable people with the name include: Given name [ edit ] Graziano Battistini (1936–1994), Italian professional road bicycle racer Graziano Battistini (footballer) (born 1970), Italian football goalkeeper Graziano Boscacci (born 1969), Italian ski mountaineer Graziano Calvaresi (born 1966), Italian former long-distance runner Graziano Cecchini (born 1953), Italian artist and activist, known for his works of "vandalism" art Graziano Cioni (born 1946), Italian politician Graziano Delrio (born 1960), Italian mayor and politician Graziano Di Prima (born 1994), Sicilian/Italian dancer Graziano Gasparini (1924–2019), Venezuelan architect and architectural historian Graziano Gasparre (born 1978), Italian former cyclist Graziano Girardi (born 1940), Italian politician Graziano Mancinelli (1937–1992), Italian show jumping rider Graziano Origa (20th century), Italian comics artist Graziano Pellè (born 1985), Italian football (soccer) striker Graziano Rossi (born 1954), Italian former Grand Prix motorcycle road racer Graziano Salvietti (born 1956), Italian former professional racing cyclist Graziano Santucci , O.S.A. (died 1517), Italian Roman Catholic bishop of Alatri Fictional [ edit ] Graziano, kinsman to Brabantio in Shakespeare's Othello Surname [ edit ] Guido di Graziano (also known as Guido of Siena), Italian painter in
62-405: A "nerves of steel" state in which defensive reactions were inhibited. Chemical enhancement of these neurons produced a "super flincher" state in which any mild stimulus, such as an object gently moved toward the face, evoked a full-blown flinching reaction. In Graziano's interpretation, these multisensory neurons form a specialized brain-wide network that encodes the space near the body, computes
93-921: A Byzantine style, active during the 13th-century in Siena Mino di Graziano (1289–1323), Italian painter, active in Siena Anthony Graziano (1940–2019), Italian-American mobster Bob Graziano (21st century), American baseball executive Claudio Graziano (born 1953), Italian Army officer who serves as Chairman of the European Union Military Committee David Graziano (born 1972), American screenwriter and producer Giovanni Graziano (born 1995), Italian professional footballer Ilaria Graziano (21st century), Italian singer and vocalist José Graziano da Silva (born 1949), American-born Brazilian agronomist and Director General of
124-678: A Byzantine style, active during the 13th-century in Siena Mino di Graziano (1289–1323), Italian painter, active in Siena Anthony Graziano (1940–2019), Italian-American mobster Bob Graziano (21st century), American baseball executive Claudio Graziano (born 1953), Italian Army officer who serves as Chairman of the European Union Military Committee David Graziano (born 1972), American screenwriter and producer Giovanni Graziano (born 1995), Italian professional footballer Ilaria Graziano (21st century), Italian singer and vocalist José Graziano da Silva (born 1949), American-born Brazilian agronomist and Director General of
155-560: A final locus of motor cortical activity, which holds the limb at a spatial location. Since 2010 Graziano's lab has studied the brain basis of consciousness. Graziano proposed that specialized machinery in the brain computes the feature of awareness and attributes it to other people in a social context. The same machinery, in that hypothesis, also attributes the feature of awareness to oneself. Damage to that machinery disrupts one's own awareness. The attention schema theory (AST) seeks to explain how an information-processing machine could act
186-424: A grip, the arm to bring the hand to the mouth, and the mouth to open. Stimulation of another site always caused the grip to open, the palm to face away from the body, and the arm to extend, as if the monkey were reaching to grasp an object. Other sites evoked other complex movements. The behavioral repertoire of the animal seemed to be rendered onto the cortical sheet. This initial work became controversial because of
217-462: A margin of safety, and helps to coordinate movements in relation to nearby objects with an emphasis on withdrawal or blocking movements. A subtle level of activation might bias ongoing behavior to avoid collision, whereas a strong level of activation evidently causes an overt defensive action. The neurons that encode peripersonal space may also provide a neuronal basis for the psychological phenomenon of personal space. Personal space, described by Hall,
248-406: A motor homunculus. Instead, the motor cortex may contain a mapping of coordinated, behaviorally useful actions that make up a typical movement repertoire. In their initial experiments, Graziano and colleagues used electrical microstimulation on the motor cortex of monkeys. Most previous protocols in the motor cortex used very brief stimulation, such as for a hundredth of a second. Graziano applied
279-419: A postdoctoral researcher and then as a professor of neuroscience and psychology. Graziano has made contributions in three areas of neuroscience: how neurons in the primate brain encode peripersonal space, how the motor cortex controls complex movement, and the possible neuronal basis of consciousness. These contributions are detailed in the following sections. In the 1990s, Graziano with Charles Gross described
310-401: A visual stimulus near or approaching the tactile receptive field. The "visual receptive field" was therefore a region of nearby space affixed to the relevant body part. Some neurons responded to sound sources near the tactile receptive field. Some neurons also responded mnemonically, becoming active when a part of the body moved through space and approached the remembered location of an object in
341-408: Is applying an attentional enhancement to signal Y. Awareness is an attention schema. In that theory, the same process can be applied to oneself. One's own awareness is a schematized model of one's own attention. Graziano writes literary novels under his own name and children's novels under the pseudonym B. B. Wurge. His stated reason for the pseudonym is to ensure that children do not accidentally read
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#1732786629953372-1744: Is different from Wikidata All set index articles graziano [REDACTED] Look up graziano in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Graziano is both a masculine Italian given name and a surname. Notable people with the name include: Given name [ edit ] Graziano Battistini (1936–1994), Italian professional road bicycle racer Graziano Battistini (footballer) (born 1970), Italian football goalkeeper Graziano Boscacci (born 1969), Italian ski mountaineer Graziano Calvaresi (born 1966), Italian former long-distance runner Graziano Cecchini (born 1953), Italian artist and activist, known for his works of "vandalism" art Graziano Cioni (born 1946), Italian politician Graziano Delrio (born 1960), Italian mayor and politician Graziano Di Prima (born 1994), Sicilian/Italian dancer Graziano Gasparini (1924–2019), Venezuelan architect and architectural historian Graziano Gasparre (born 1978), Italian former cyclist Graziano Girardi (born 1940), Italian politician Graziano Mancinelli (1937–1992), Italian show jumping rider Graziano Origa (20th century), Italian comics artist Graziano Pellè (born 1985), Italian football (soccer) striker Graziano Rossi (born 1954), Italian former Grand Prix motorcycle road racer Graziano Salvietti (born 1956), Italian former professional racing cyclist Graziano Santucci , O.S.A. (died 1517), Italian Roman Catholic bishop of Alatri Fictional [ edit ] Graziano, kinsman to Brabantio in Shakespeare's Othello Surname [ edit ] Guido di Graziano (also known as Guido of Siena), Italian painter in
403-745: Is different from Wikidata All set index articles Michael Graziano Graziano was born in Bridgeport Connecticut in 1967 and spent his childhood in Buffalo, New York. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Princeton University in 1989 in Psychology. He attended graduate school in neuroscience at MIT from 1989 to 1991 and then returned to Princeton University to complete his doctoral degree in 1996, in Neuroscience and Psychology. He remained at Princeton University as
434-544: Is particularly profound after damage to the TPJ or STS in the right hemisphere. The conjunction of these two previous findings led to the suggestion that awareness may be a computed feature constructed by an expert system in the brain, that at least partly overlaps the TPJ and STS. In that proposal, the feature of awareness can be attributed to other people in the context of social perception. It can also be attributed to oneself, in effect creating one's own awareness. Why construct
465-467: Is the flexible bubble of space around each person that is protected from intrusion by other people. The peripersonal neurons may also play a central role in the body schema an internally computed model of the body first proposed to exist by Head and Holmes in 1911. In the 2000s Graziano's lab obtained evidence suggesting that the motor cortex might not contain a simple map of the body's muscles as in classical descriptions such as Penfield's description of
496-911: The FAO Leonardo Graziano (born 1975), Italian voice actor Manlio Graziano , Italian scholar specializing in geopolitics and geopolitics of religions Matteo Graziano (born 2001), Argentine rugby player Renee Graziano (born 1968), American reality television personality and author Ricardo Graziano (born 1986), Brazilian ballet dancer and choreographer Rocky Graziano (1919–1990), American boxer Sal E. Graziano (21st century), Italian professional wrestler Michael Graziano (born 1967), American scientist and novelist, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Princeton University See also [ edit ] Graziano Trasmissioni , an Italian company, manufacturer of gearboxes, drivelines and its components [REDACTED] Name list This page or section lists people that share
527-838: The FAO Leonardo Graziano (born 1975), Italian voice actor Manlio Graziano , Italian scholar specializing in geopolitics and geopolitics of religions Matteo Graziano (born 2001), Argentine rugby player Renee Graziano (born 1968), American reality television personality and author Ricardo Graziano (born 1986), Brazilian ballet dancer and choreographer Rocky Graziano (1919–1990), American boxer Sal E. Graziano (21st century), Italian professional wrestler Michael Graziano (born 1967), American scientist and novelist, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Princeton University See also [ edit ] Graziano Trasmissioni , an Italian company, manufacturer of gearboxes, drivelines and its components [REDACTED] Name list This page or section lists people that share
558-464: The action-map view does not contradict the more traditional view of motor cortex as a set of fields with differing functions. Instead, the action map may help to explain why motor cortex is divided into functionally distinct fields and why the fields are arranged spatially as they are. Other researchers have since found a similar, ethological organization to motor cortical regions in monkeys, prosimians, cats, and rats. Notwithstanding, direct tests of
589-542: The cortex are recruited during social perception as people construct models of other people's minds. These regions include, among other areas, the superior temporal sulcus (STS) and the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) bilaterally but with a strong emphasis on the right hemisphere. Second, when these same regions of cortex are damaged, people suffer from a catastrophic disruption of their own awareness of events and objects around them. The clinical syndrome of hemispatial neglect , or loss of awareness of one side of space,
620-424: The dark. The activity of these multisensory neurons therefore signaled the presence of an object near or touching a part of the body, regardless of whether the object was felt, seen, heard, or remembered. Electrical stimulation of these multisensory neurons almost always evoked a complex, coordinated movement that resembled a flinching, blocking, or protecting action. Chemical inhibition of these neurons produced
651-475: The feature of awareness and attribute it to other people? In order to understand and predict the behavior of other people, it is useful to monitor other people's attentional state. Attention is a data handling method by which some signals in the brain are enhanced at the expense of others. According to the AST, when the brain computes that person X is aware of thing Y, it is in effect modeling the state in which person X
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#1732786629953682-410: The idea that the motor cortex contains a movement repertoire have not corroborated this hypothesis. Varying the initial position of the forelimb does not change the muscle synergies evoked by microstimulation of a motor cortical point. Consequently, the evoked movements reach nearly the same final end point and posture, with variability. However, the movement trajectories are quite different depending on
713-419: The initial limb posture and the starting position of the paw. The evoked movement trajectory is most natural when the forelimb lays pendant ~ perpendicular to the ground (i.e., in equilibrium with the gravitational force). From other starting positions, the movements do not appear natural. The paths of the paw are curved with changes and reversals of direction and the passive influence of the gravitational force on
744-415: The map closely resembles the known arrangement of the monkey motor cortex. In Graziano's proposal, many of the complexities of the motor cortex, such as its overlapping maps of the body and its multiple areas with somewhat different mixtures of properties, may be a result of representing the many parts of the movement repertoire each with its own specialized computational requirements. Graziano suggests that
775-459: The method of stimulation on a behavioral time scale. The method was not commonly used in the study of motor cortex although it had been used in the study of other brain regions. That controversy may have partially distracted from the other methods used to study the action map. For example, computational models show that when the complex movement repertoire of a monkey is arranged in a flattened map, with similar movements represented near each other,
806-418: The movements is obvious. These observations demonstrate that while the output of the cortical point evokes a seemingly coordinated limb movement from a rest position, it does not specify a particular movement direction or a controlled trajectory from other initial positions. Thus, in natural conditions a controlled movement must depend on the coordinated activation of a multitude of cortical points, terminating at
837-421: The properties of a set of multisensory neurons in the monkey brain. Building on the work of Hyvarinen and colleagues and Rizzolatti and colleagues Graziano and Gross described a network of brain areas that appeared to encode the space immediately surrounding the body. Each multisensory neuron responded to a touch within a specific "tactile receptive field" on the body surface. Each neuron also responded to
868-489: The same given name or the same family name . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change that link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Graziano&oldid=1250478287 " Categories : Given names Surnames Italian masculine given names Masculine given names Italian-language surnames Hidden categories: Articles with short description Short description
899-489: The same given name or the same family name . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change that link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Graziano&oldid=1250478287 " Categories : Given names Surnames Italian masculine given names Masculine given names Italian-language surnames Hidden categories: Articles with short description Short description
930-465: The stimulation for half a second each time, on a behaviorally relevant time scale, in order to match the typical duration of a monkey's reaching and grasping. The longer stimulation train in Graziano's experiments evoked complex movements that included many joints and that resembled movements from the animal's behavioral repertoire. For example, stimulation of one site always caused the hand to close in
961-441: The way people do, insisting it has consciousness, describing consciousness in the ways that we do, and claiming that it has an inner magic that transcends mere information-processing, even though it does not. AST is currently being incorporated into artificial intelligence systems through the work of the international Astound project . The proposed AST was partly motivated by two sets of previous findings. First, certain regions of