Yuval Nir, PhD | Center for Sleep and Consciousness

Center for Sleep and Consciousness

Yuval Nir, PhD
University of Wisconsin - Madison
School of Medicine
Department of Psychiatry
6001 Research Park Blvd
Madison, WI 53719
Tel: (608) 263 0198
e-mail: ynir@wisc.edu

Yuval Nir studied in the interdisciplinary program at Tel-Aviv University (Israel) covering topics in computer science, cognitive science, biology and philosophy, and received his MSc degree in computer science.

He then obtained a PhD in neurobiology at the Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel) at the lab of Prof. Rafael Malach. His doctoral dissertation compared spontaneous and evoked activities in the human visual and auditory cortices using fMRI, as well as single-unit, LFP and ECoG recordings in collaboration with Prof. Itzhak Fried at UCLA.

Dr. Nir is currently a postdoctoral fellow working with Prof. Tononi. His research focuses on how spontaneous brain activity, and sleep in particular, relate to cognitive processes.

Current research interests include:

Sleep and consciousness ♦ Local activity patterns in sleep ♦ Sleep processes related to plasticity and learning ♦ Neuronal oscillations in cortex, hippocampus and thalamus in sleep and wake ♦ Sleepiness and cognitive impairments upon sleep deprivation ♦ Processing of auditory and sensory inputs during sleep ♦ Dreaming and the brain ♦ Signal propagation in different sleep and wake states ♦ Disconnection from the environment during sleep and anesthesia ♦ Disorders of consciousness ♦ Understanding functional networks through spontaneous brain activity ♦ Similarities and differences between spontaneous and stimulus-evoked conditions

Dr. Nir’s research has been supported in the past and present by the Fulbright Program, the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), the Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP), and the Brainpower for Israel Fund.

Publications:

Andrillon T*, Nir Y*, Staba RJ, Ferrarelli F, Cirelli C, Tononi G, Fried I. Sleep spindles in humans: insights from intracranial EEG and unit recordings. J Neuroscience, in press [Supplementary material]
Vyazovskiy VV, Olcese U, Hanlon EC, Nir Y, Cirelli C, Tononi G. Local sleep in awake rats. Nature, 472(7344):443-72011, 2011 [PubMed]
Soddu A, Vanhaudenhuyse A, Bahri MA, Bruno MA, Boly M, Demertzi A, Tshibanda JF, Phillips C, Stanziano M, Ovadia-Caro S, Nir Y, Maquet P, Papa M, Malach R, Laureys S, Noirhomme Q. Identifying the default-mode component in spatial IC analyses of patients with disorders of consciousness. Human Brain Mapping, Epub ahead of print, 2011 [PubMed]
Nir Y, Staba RJ, Andrillon T, Vyazovskiy VV, Cirelli C, Fried I, Tononi G. Regional slow waves and spindles in human sleep. Neuron, 70(1):153-69, 2011 [PubMed] [Video abstract]
Mukamel R, Nir Y, Harel M, Arieli A, Malach R, Fried I. Invariance of firing rate and field potential dynamics to stimulus modulation rate in human auditory cortex. Human Brain Mapping, 32(8):1181-93, 2011 [PubMed]
Brennan J, Nir Y, Hasson U, Malach R, Heeger DJ, Pylkkänen L. Syntactic structure building in the anterior temporal lobe during natural story listening. Brain Lang, Epub ahead of print, 2010 [PubMed]
Nir Y, Tononi G. Dreaming and the brain: from phenomenology to neurophysiology. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14(2):88-100, 2010 [PubMed]
Fisch L, Privman E, Ramot M, Harel M, Nir Y, Kipervasser S, Andelman F, Neufeld MY, Kramer U, Fried I, Malach R. Neural "ignition": enhanced activation linked to perceptual awareness in human ventral stream visual cortex. Neuron, 64(4):562-74, 2009. [PubMed]
Soddu A, Boly M, Nir Y, Noirhomme Q, Vanhaudenhuyse A, Demertzi A, Arzi A, Ovadia S, Stanziano M, Papa M, Laureys S, Malach R. Reaching across the abyss: recent advances in functional magnetic resonance imaging and their potential relevance to disorders of consciousness. Progress in Brain Research, 177:261-74, 2009. [PubMed]
Nir Y, Mukamel R, Dinstein I, Privman E, Harel M, Fisch L, Gelbard-Sagiv H, Kipervasser S, Andelman F, Neufeld MY, Kramer U, Arieli A, Fried I, Malach R. Interhemispheric correlations of slow spontaneous neuronal fluctuations revealed in human sensory cortex. Nature Neuroscience, 11(9):1100-8, 2008. [PubMed]
Nir Y, Dinstein I, Malach R, Heeger DJ. BOLD and spiking activity. Nature Neuroscience, 11(5):523-4, 2008 [PubMed]
Gilaie-Dotan S, Nir Y, Malach R. Regionally-specific adaptation dynamics in human object areas. Neuroimage, 39(4):1926-37, 2008 [PubMed]
Nir Y, Fisch L, Mukamel R, Gelbard-Sagiv H, Arieli A, Fried I, Malach R. Coupling between neuronal firing rate, gamma LFP, and BOLD fMRI is related to interneuronal correlations. Current Biology, 17(15):1275-85, 2007. [PubMed]
Privman E, Nir Y, Kramer U, Kipervasser S, Andelman F, Neufeld MY, Mukamel R, Yeshurun Y, Fried I, Malach R. Enhanced category tuning revealed by intracranial electroencephalograms in high-order human visual areas. J Neuroscience, 27(23):6234-42, 2007. [PubMed]
Golland Y, Bentin S, Gelbard H, Benjamini Y, Heller R, Nir Y, Hasson U, Malach R. Extrinsic and intrinsic systems in the posterior cortex of the human brain revealed during natural sensory stimulation. Cerebral Cortex, 17(4):766-77, 2007. [PubMed]
Nir Y, Hasson U, Levy I, Yeshurun Y, Malach R. Widespread functional connectivity and fMRI fluctuations in human visual cortex in the absence of visual stimulation. Neuroimage, 30(4):1313-24, 2006. [PubMed]
Hasson U, Nir Y, Levy I, Fuhrmann G, Malach R. Intersubject synchronization of cortical activity during natural vision. Science, 303(5664):1634-40, 2004. [PubMed]