Richard A. Andersen

Early work centered on the discovery and elucidation of cortical gain fields, a general rule of multiplicative computation used by many areas of the cortex. Andersen and Zipser of UCSD developed one of the first neural network models of cortical function, which generated a mathematical basis for testing hypotheses based on laboratory findings. His research established that the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) is involved in forming movement intentions—the early and abstract plans for movement. Previously this part of the brain was thought only to function for spatial awareness and attention. His laboratory discovered the lateral intraparietal area (LIP) in the PPC and established its role in eye movements. He also discovered the parietal reach region, an area involved in forming early reach plans. His lab has also made a number of discoveries related to visual motion perception. He established that the middle temporal area processes the perception of form from motion. He found that the perception of the direction of heading, important for navigation, is computed in the brain using both visual stimuli and eye movement signals. His lab has also determined how eye position and limb position signals are combined for eye-hand coordination.

Awards he has received have included the McKnight Neuroscience Brain Disorders Award, NASA Tech Brief Award, the McKnight Technical Innovation in Neuroscience Award, the Spencer Award from Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons and the McKnight Foundation Scholars Award. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002.

Born in New Kensington, Pennsylvania, Andersen received his undergraduate degree in biochemistry at the University of California, Davis, in 1973 and his PhD in physiology under the mentorship of Professor Michael Merzenich from the University of California, San Francisco, in 1979. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship with Professor Vernon Mountcastle at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1981. After serving as an assistant and associate professor at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California and an adjunct associate professor at the University of California, San Diego, he moved to MIT, first as an associate and later as a full professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Science. In 1993 he moved to Caltech to join the Division of Biology.

Richard A. Andersen (born October 27, 1950) is an American neuroscientist. He is the James G. Boswell Professor of Neuroscience at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. His research focuses on visual physiology with an emphasis on translational research to humans in the field of neuroprosthetics, brain-computer interfaces, and cortical repair.