Sensory processing is traditionally viewed as a passive process in which a biological sensors like photo- and mechanoreceptors transducer physical energy into some form of neural firing code. However, mounting evidence suggests an alternate view. In this view, most sensory processing is active, and largely determined by motor/attentional sampling routines. In this view, the neural encoding of sensory information is specific to a motor/attentional context. Due to rhythmicity in the motor routine, as well as to its entrainment of ambient rhythms in sensory regions, sensory inflow tends to be rhythmic. Attentional manipulation of frequency, and particularly the phase of oscillatory rhythms in sensory pathways is then instrumental to perceptual selection. These observations summarize the essentials of an “Active Sensing” perspective, and argue for experimental paradigms in which there is increased emphasis on the study of sensory processes as specific to the dynamic motor/attentional context in which inputs are acquired.

Charles Schroeder received his PhD at the University of North Carolina, in thefield of psychology. He worked for many years as a professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and is currently employed as a professor at the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons and as a Research Scientist VII at the Nathan S. Kline Institute. He has a wide range of scientific interests including visual physiology and attention, multisensory processing and integration, somatosensory physiology and auditory processing.

Representative papers:

• Lakatos P, O'Connell MN, Barczak A, Mills A, Javitt DC, Schroeder CE. (2009). The leading sense: supramodal control of neurophysiological context by attention. Neuron. 64:419-430.

• Lakatos P, Karmos G, Mehta AD, Ulbert I, Schroeder CE. (2008). Entrainment of neuronal oscillations as a mechanism of attentional selection. Science 320(5872):110-113. 

• Schroeder CE, Lakatos P, Kajikawa Y, Partan S, Puce A. (2008) Neuronal oscillations and visual amplification of speech. Trends Cogn Sci. 12(3):106-113.