Steve Luck received a B.A. in Psychology from Reed College in 1986, followed by a Ph.D. in Neurosciences from UCSD in 1993. Beginning with his undergraduate thesis and continuing through his doctoral dissertation, Dr. Luck’s research focused on using the event-related potential (ERP) technique to study the role of attention in vision and in higher cognitive processes. He also spent time during this period working with macaque monkeys at the Oregon Regional Primate Research Center and the National Institutes of Health, performing psychophysical testing and single-unit recording. After a brief postdoc at UCSD, Dr. Luck joined the faculty of the Psychology Department at the University of Iowa in 1994, where he expanded his research to include psychophysical studies of visual working memory and translational studies of cognitive dysfunction in psychiatric and neurological populations. While at the University of Iowa, he authored a book on ERP methods and began a series of ERP training workshops (the ERP Boot Camp) that has now included over 500 participants. In 2006, Dr. Luck moved to the UC-Davis Center for Mind & Brain, with an academic appointment in the Department of Psychology. Dr. Luck’s lab currently focuses on three interrelated areas: a) basic mechanisms of attention and working memory in healthy young adults; b) dysfunction of cognition in psychiatric and neurological disorders; and c) development and dissemination of ERP methods. Dr. Luck has been very active in the training of graduate students and postdocs over the years, and several of his trainees have gone on to faculty positions at major research universities. In his training efforts, Dr. Luck stresses the importance of understanding both the cognitive and neural aspects of brain function at a deep level, with the ultimate goal of understanding how neural circuits give rise to cognitive function.

Publications:

Luck, S. J. (2005). An Introduction to the Event-Related Potential Technique. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Zhang, W., & Luck, S. J. (2008). Discrete fixed-resolution representations in visual working memory. Nature, 453, 233-235.

Luck, S. J., & Gold, J. M. (2008). The construct of attention in schizophrenia. Biological Psychiatry, 64, 34-39.

Woodman, G. F., & Luck, S. J. (2007). Do the contents of visual working memory automatically influence attentional selection during visual search? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 33, 363-377.

Luck, S. J., Fuller, R. L., Braun, E. L., Robinson, B., Summerfelt, A., & Gold, J. M. (2006). The speed of visual attention in schizophrenia: Electrophysiological and behavioral evidence. Schizophrenia Research, 85, 174-195.

Vogel, E. K., Woodman, G. F., & Luck, S. J. (2005). Pushing around the locus of selection: Evidence for the flexible-selection hypothesis. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17, 1907-1922.

Woodman, G. F., & Luck, S. J. (1999). Electrophysiological measurement of rapid shifts of attention during visual search. Nature, 400, 867-869.

Luck, S. J., Chelazzi, L., Hillyard, S. A., & Desimone, R. (1997). Neural mechanisms of spatial selective attention in areas V1, V2, and V4 of macaque visual cortex. Journal of Neurophysiology, 77, 24-42.

Luck, S. J., Girelli, M., McDermott, M. T., & Ford, M. A. (1997). Bridging the gap between monkey neurophysiology and human perception: An ambiguity resolution theory of visual selective attention. Cognitive Psychology, 33, 64-87.

Luck, S. J., & Vogel, E. K. (1997). The capacity of visual working memory for features and conjunctions. Nature, 390, 279-281.