Jung Uk Kang, a graduate student in the lab of Larry Snyder, MD, PhD, Professor of Neuroscience at Washington University School of Medicine, is one of two recipients of the 2023 O’Leary Prize for Excellence in Neuroscience Research. The award honors the most original and important work in neuroscience presented by graduate students and postdocs during the annual O’Leary Prize Competition. Kang’s talk was entitled, “Inter-areal communication in posterior parietal cortex supporting eye-hand and bimanual coordination.”
The O’Leary Prize was established in 1975 to honor Dr. James L. O’Leary, who was a faculty member for decades in the Department of Anatomy (now Neuroscience) and Department of Neurology. Kang and fellow recipient Simone Brioschi, PhD, each receive $1,000.
Read Kang’s research summary:
Understanding the relationship between long-range communication and brain function is a fundamental question in systems neuroscience. We studied communication between two areas in the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) during coordinated eye and arm movements. We show that inter-areal and inter-hemispheric communication in PPC has a causal role in coordinated movements. Our results provide new insight into behavioral and neural correlates of functional connectivity, and have broad implications in both basic science and clinical studies.