Duke Institute for Brain Sciences

My main research interest lies with elucidating how the human brain supports ‘cognitive control’, the ability to generate, maintain, and adjust sets of processing strategies (task-sets) in the pursuit of an internal goal. How does an internal goal shape the way we process information? Our general research strategy for answering this question is to fractionate the multifarious concept of cognitive control into experimentally tractable component processes (for example, identifying particular mechanisms for shielding a current task-set from interference by task-irrelevant stimulus information), and to harness behavioral, neuroimaging, and neuro-disruptive techniques to probe their neural underpinnings and interrelations. In practice, this work typically deals with exploring how regions of the frontal and parietal lobes orchestrate mnemonic and attentive processes, and bias sensory and motor activity in line with current goals.

Research Assistant Professor, Northwestern University, Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease Center, 2007-2008

Postdoctoral Fellow, Northwestern University, Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease Center, 2006-2007

Postdoctoral Fellow, Columbia University, Functional MRI Research Center, 2003-2006

Ph.D., Imperial College London, Department of Cognitive Neuroscience and Behaviour, 2002

B.Sc. (1st class Honors), Goldsmiths College, University of London (Psychology), 1999

Etkin, A., Egner, T., Kalisch, R. (2011). Emotional processing in anterior cingulate and medial prefrontal cortex. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 15, 85-93.

Egner, T., Monti, J.M., Summerfield, C. (2010). Expectation and surprise determine neural population responses in the ventral visual stream. Journal of Neuroscience, 30, 16601-16608.

Egner, T. (2010). Motor control: exploring the neurochemistry of subliminal inhibition. Current Biology, 20, R852-R853.