Micah M Murray

The primary foci of my research are within several domains, including: 1) the functional organization of sensory-cognitive systems, 2) multisensory processing, and 3) the development of methodological and analytical tools for electroencephalography (EEG) in conjunction with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). These topics have been addressed by applying a wide breadth of state-of-the-art brain imaging and psychophysical methodologies, with a parallel objective being to facilitate transversal interpretations across species, brain imaging techniques, and populations (e.g. healthy cohorts and neuropsychological and neuropsychiatric patients).
The underlying technical approach in my group is to use EEG as a neuroimaging technique. This is predicated on the notion that spatio-temporal information is critical for a comprehensive understanding of brain function. Electromagnetic recordings have a major advantage in their high temporal resolution, which is essential for addressing when during sensory-cognitive processing during brain areas become active and in what processing step(s) each is involved. Temporal information is equally critical for addressing questions of sequential versus parallel activation, feedforward versus feedback processing, and how information is ‘bound’ into unified percepts. However, it remains debated how to use such non-invasive recordings to actually glean statistically-based, neurophysiologic interpretations of response modulations. My ongoing work in this area, in strong collaboration with the group of Prof. Christoph Michel (www.brainmapping.unige.ch) as part of our joint direction of the EEG Brain Mapping Core of the Centre d’Imagerie Biomedicale (www.cibm.ch), is directed at developing analysis techniques that benefit from the added information of high-density electrode montages. These efforts have lead to the development of an analysis software, Cartool (http://brainmapping.unige.ch/cartool.htm), that is freely available to researchers and is now used by leading EEG laboratories world-wide.
 

De Lucia M, Clarke S, Murray MM (2010)
A temporal hierarchy for conspecific vocalization discrimination in humans
Journal of Neuroscience 30(33): 11210-21

Cappe C, Thut G, Romei V, Murray MM (2010) Auditory-visual multisensory interactions in humans: timing, topography, directionality, and sources. Journal of Neuroscience, 30(38):12572-80.

De Lucia M, Cocchi L, Martuzzi R, Meuli R, Clarke S, Murray MM (2010) Perceptual and semantic contributions to repetition priming of environmental sounds. Cerebral Cortex, 20: 1676-1684.

van Zaen J, Uldry L, Duchêne, C, Prudat Y, Meuli RA, Murray MM, Vesin J-M. (2010) Adaptive tracking of EEG oscillations. Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 186: 97-106.

Romei V, Murray MM, Cappe C, Thut G. (2009) Preperceptual and stimulus-selective enhancement of low-level human visual cortex excitability by sounds. Current Biology, 19: 1799-1805.

Martuzzi R, Murray MM, Meuli RA, Thiran JP, Maeder PP, Michel CM, Menendez RGP, Andino SLG. (2009) Methods for determining frequency- and region- dependant relationships between estimated LFPs and BOLD responses in humans. Journal of Neurophysiology 101:491-502.

Murray MM, Spierer L. (2009) Auditory spatio-temporal brain dynamics and their consequences for multisensory interactions in humans. Hearing Research, 258: 118-130.

Toepel U, Knebel JF, Hudry J, Le-Coutre J, Murray MM (2009) The brain tracks the energetic value in food images. Neuroimage 44:967-974.

Murray MM, Brunet D, Michel CM. (2008) Topographic ERP analyses: a step-by-step tutorial review. Brain Topography 20: 249-264.

Lavoie S, Murray MM, Deppen P, Knyazeva MG, Berk M, Boulat O, Bovet P, Bush AI, Conus P, Fornari E, Meuli RA, Solida A, Vianin P, Cuénod M, Buclin T, Do KQ (2008) Glutathione precursor, N-acetyl-cysteine, improves mismatch negativity in schizophrenia patients. Neuropsychopharmacology, 33: 2987-99.

De Santis L, Clarke S, Murray MM (2007) Automatic and intrinsic auditory ‘what’ and ‘where’ processing in humans revealed by electrical neuroimaging. Cerebral Cortex, 17: 9-17.

Martuzzi R, Murray MM, Michel CM, Maeder PP, Thiran JP, Clarke S, Meuli RA (2007) Multisensory interactions within human primary cortices revealed by BOLD dynamics. Cerebral Cortex, 17:1672-9.

Murray MM, Camen C, Andino SLG, Bovet P, Clarke S (2006) Rapid brain discrimination of sounds of objects. Journal of Neuroscience, 26: 1293-1302.

Murray MM, Imber ML, Javitt DC, Foxe JJ (2006) Boundary completion is automatic and dissociable from shape discrimination. Journal of Neuroscience, 26: 12043-12054.

Murray MM, Foxe JJ, Wylie GR (2005) The brain uses single-trial multisensory memories to discriminate without awareness. Neuroimage, 27: 473-8.

Murray MM, Molholm S, Michel CM, Heslenfeld DJ, Ritter W, Javitt DC, Schroeder CE, Foxe JJ (2005) Grabbing your ear: rapid auditory-somatosensory multisensory interactions in low-level sensory cortices are not constrained by stimulus alignment. Cerebral Cortex, 15: 963-74.

Murray MM, Michel CM, Grave de Peralta R, Ortigue S, Brunet D, Andino SG, Schnider A (2004) Rapid discrimination of visual and multisensory memories revealed by electrical neuroimaging. Neuroimage, 21: 125-35.

Michel CM, Murray MM, Lantz G, Gonzalez S, Spinelli L, Grave de Peralta R (2004) EEG source imaging. Clinical Neurophysiology, 115: 2195-2222.