Faculty Profile

Visual Attention Laboratory
Division of Sleep Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital

My research is primarily concerned with studying how visual attention is controlled in a dynamic world. The brain must efficiently allocate limited processing resources to deal with complex stream of visual information arriving from the eyes. This is the phenomenon of selective attention. How is attention deployed? How do we search for desired objects in the visual field? How do we track moving objects? These are the broad questions which motivate my research. In the context of Sleep Medicine, I am interested in how the global state of the observer (sleep, wakefulness, and circadian phase) affects various aspects of attention (and cognition in general).

NIH/NIMH, Control of Dynamic Attention, Todd S. Horowitz, PhD

Santhi N, Aeschbach D, Horowitz TS, Czeisler CA. The Impact of Sleep Timing and Bright Light Exposure on Attentional Impairment during Night Work.
J Biol Rhythms. 2008 Aug;23(4): 341-52. [PMID: 18663241]

Horowitz TS, Choi WY, Horvitz JC, Cote LJ, Mangels JA. Visual search deficits in Parkinson's disease are attenuated by bottom-up target salience and top-down information.
Neuropsychologia. 2006 Mar 29; [Epub ahead of print] [PMID: 16580700]

Alvarez GA, Horowitz TS, Arsenio HC, Dimase JS, Wolfe JM. Do multielement visual tracking and visual search draw continuously on the same visual attention resources?
J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 2005 Aug;31(4):643-67. [PMID: 16131240]

Wolfe JM, Birnkrant RS, Kunar MA, Horowitz TS. Visual search for transparency and opacity: attentional guidance by cue combination?
J Vis. 2005 Mar 30;5(3):257-74. [PMID: 15929650]

Santhi N, Duffy JF, Horowitz TS, Czeisler CA. Scheduling of sleep/darkness affects the circadian phase of night shift workers.
Neurosci Lett. 2005 Aug 26;384(3):316-20. Erratum in: Neurosci Lett. 2005 Dec 30;390(3):187. [PMID: 15919151]

Wolfe JM, Horowitz TS, Kenner NM. Cognitive psychology: rare items often missed in visual searches.
Nature. 2005 May 26;435(7041):439-40. [PMID: 15917795]

Horowitz TS, Holcombe AO, Wolfe JM, Arsenio HC, DiMase JS. Attentional pursuit is faster than attentional saccade.
J Vis. 2004 Jul 20;4(7):585-603. [PMID: 15330704]

Wolfe JM, Horowitz TS. What attributes guide the deployment of visual attention and how do they do it?
Nat Rev Neurosci. 2004 Jun;5(6):495-501. Review. [PMID: 15152199]

Thornton IM, Horowitz TS. The multi-item localization (MILO) task: measuring the spatiotemporal context
of vision for action.
Percept Psychophys. 2004 Jan;66(1):38-50. [PMID: 15095938]

Wolfe JM, Horowitz TS, Kenner N, Hyle M, Vasan N. How fast can you change your mind? The speed of top-down guidance in visual search.
Vision Res. 2004 Jun;44(12):1411-26. [PMID: 15066400]

Horowitz TS, Cade BE, Wolfe JM, Czeisler CA. Searching night and day: a dissociation of effects of circadian phase and time awake on visual selective attention and vigilance.
Psychol Sci. 2003 Nov;14(6):549-57. [PMID: 14629685]

Wolfe JM, Oliva A, Horowitz TS, Butcher SJ, Bompas A. Segmentation of objects from backgrounds in visual search tasks.
Vision Res. 2002 Dec;42(28):2985-3004. [PMID: 12480070]

Horowitz TS, Tanigawa T. Circadian-based new technologies for night workers.
Ind Health. 2002 Jul;40(3):223-36. Review. [PMID: 12141370]

Horowitz TS, Cade BE, Wolfe JM, Czeisler CA. Efficacy of bright light and sleep/darkness scheduling in alleviating circadian maladaptation to night work.
Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab. 2001 Aug;281(2):E384-91. [PMID: 11440916]

Horowitz TS, Wolfe JM. Search for multiple targets: remember the targets, forget the search.
Percept Psychophys. 2001 Feb;63(2):272-85. [PMID: 11281102]

Wolfe JM, Alvarez GA, Horowitz TS. Attention is fast but volition is slow.
Nature. 2000 Aug 17;406(6797):691. [PMID: 10963584]

Horowitz TS, Wolfe JM. Visual search has no memory.
Nature. 1998 Aug 6;394(6693):575-7. [PMID: 9707117]