Position Title
Distinguished Professor, Dept. of Psychology
Core Faculty and Director Emeritus, Center for Mind and Brain
Faculty, MIND Institute
Affiliated Faculty, Center for Neuroscience
- Department of Psychology
- Center for Mind and Brain
- MIND Institute
- Center for Neuroscience
Dr. Luck’s research focuses on three intersecting areas: a) basic science studies of the neural and cognitive mechanisms of attention and working memory; b) translational research examining dysfunction of attention and short-term memory in psychiatric and neurological disorders; and c) development and dissemination of methods for recording human brain activity.
To understand abstract cognitive functions such as attention and working memory, Dr. Luck focuses on how these processes operate within the visual system, where a rich knowledge of anatomy and physiology provides a solid ground. This has made it possible to demonstrate that attention operates at different levels of processing (e.g., sensory coding vs. awareness) depending on the nature of the sensory inputs and the current task. Dr. Luck’s research has also shown that the amount of information that can be maintained in working memory is surprisingly limited, even for the simplest visual features.
Dr. Luck has also taken the concepts and methods from this basic science research and used them to study cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia and other disorders. This has led to the development of the hyperfocusing theory, which proposes that schizophrenia involves an unusually narrow but intense focusing of cognitive processing resources.
Much of Dr. Luck’s research involves measuring EEG activity and extracting the tiny event-related potentials (ERPs) that reflect the specific perceptual, cognitive, and affective processes triggered by a sensory input. Dr. Luck has also written the standard textbook on ERPs and has trained over 2000 researchers across the globe in a set of ERP Boot Camp workshops.
Graduate group affiliations: