Biographical Sketch
Keeran Maharajh received a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of New Mexico in
2003, while performing his graduate research at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Since then he completed his postdoctoral training at the University of Colorado Denver
(CU Denver) in all aspects of MEG neuroimaging. He is currently a faculty member at
CU Denver on a NIH Career Development Award (K25), designed for formal neuroscience
training and related research.
Curriculum Vitae
Research Philosophy
Broadly speaking, I am interested in expressing human cognition and perception
within a mathematical basis. The behavioral neuroscience field contains many
definitions and relationships of these actions. Extending these phenomenological
descriptions, I seek to investigate whether a unique underlying mathematical
formalism based on the developing science of complex systems exists. Such
a functional definition should describe general aspects of both conscious and
subconscious processes and also, hopefully, where the twain meet.
- Computational Aspects
A large number and widely distributed spatial scale of neurons are usually in-
volved in cognition, and as such, techniques based from statistical physics may
be useful for its description. On this scale, I am not interested in dynamics at
the cellular level, but rather at the emergent statistical properties based on in-
teractions of its many constituents. It is then hypothesized that cognition can be
viewed as part of this emergence. I propose to use information/probability the-
ory as elucidated by Edwin T. Jaynes and others as the framework for the math-
ematical description. Within this framework, cognition is seen as neural representations
of the combined probabilities of histories and perception, constrained by intended
action/goals.
- Experimental Aspects
Due to the emphasis on functional aspects of neural information processing
at multiple time scales, magnetoencephalography (MEG) is used for my neu-
roimaging experiments. It provides a spatial resolution between that of EEG
and fMRI, allowing for discrimination of neural sources and their potentially
differing activity at the millisecond resolution. So far, my MEG related exper-
imental research has focused on sensory processing and resting state no-task
conditions, including the wake-sleep transition. Studies have been conducted
on both normal subjects and patients with mental disorders, in adults and ado-
lescents.
Future Work
My viewpoint of cognition is seen as a time dependent process which is insepara-
ble from sensory aspects/environment and experimental tasks/goals. Therefore,
I propose to develop an appropriate neurofeedback MEG experiment, in which
these variables can accordingly be tuned based on current neural states. This
experimental paradigm will hopefully provide a substrate onto which the infor-
mation theoretic model can initially be based.
Publications via PubMed
MEG Research
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