Mriganka Sur, Ph.D.

Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT
Email: msur@ai.mit.edu
Web: Click here

Professor Mriganka Sur, the Sherman Fairchild Professor of Neuroscience, is head of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur in 1974 with a Bachelor of Technology degree. He received the MS (1975) and PhD (1978) from Vanderbilt University. After doing postdoctoral research at SUNY Stony Brook and a faculty appointment at Yale University School of Medicine, Professor Sur joined the faculty of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT in 1986. He was named full Professor in 1993, associate department head in 1994, and head in 1997.

He has received numerous awards and honors, including the Charles Judson Herrick Award from the American Association of Anatomists (1983), the A.P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship (1985), the McKnight Neuroscience Development Award (1988), the MIT Graduate Student Council Teaching Award (1989), the School of Science Prize for Excellence in Graduate Teaching (2000), the Distinguished Overseas Lectureship of the Australian Neuroscience Society (2000), the Sigma Xi Distinguished Lectureship (2001), and the Distinguished Alumnus Award of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (2002). He has delivered numerous lectures worldwide and serves on the editorial boards of major journals in neuroscience. He was appointed Hans-Lukas Teuber Scholar in the Brain Sciences in 1997, and to the Sherman Fairchild Chair in 1998.

Professor Sur uses experimental and theoretical approaches to study the cerebral cortex of the brain, the seat of our highest abilities. His laboratory studies the plasticity of cortex during brain development, and dynamic changes in mature cortical networks during information processing, learning and memory. In a seminal experiment, his laboratory examined how the environment influenced the development of cortical circuits by "rewiring" the brain. The retina, which normally projects to visual structures in the brain, was induced to project to structures that normally process hearing. Vision altered the development of neuronal connections in auditory cortex, and enabled animals to use their "hearing" cortex to "see". These findings have important implications for restoring function after brain damage, and for constructing neural prostheses for recovery from stroke or trauma. In a set of significant recent experiments, his laboratory has shown how neurons of the mature visual cortex alter their responses dynamically based on the spatial and temporal context of stimuli. These studies provide fundamental information on higher brain mechanisms, including those involved in vision, pattern recognition and learning.