Associate Teaching Professor
Research Areas: Understanding multimodal touch perception in humans.
E-mail: leslee.lazar@iitgn.ac.in
In our everyday life, we rely on the brain’s somatosensory system to perceive different tactile events on the surface of our skin like shapes, textures, hardness, softness, curvatures, vibrations, temperature etc. I am interested in understanding the organization of the human tactile system and how it underlies our rich haptic experience. Specifically, I am interested in how higher-level processes like language, emotion, and body image interact with the low-level representations of external tactile stimuli. Also, no sensory system operates in isolation; our brain constantly uses signals from various sensory modalities to make sense of the world around us. I am keen to understand how the tactile system interacts with the visual, auditory, and proprioceptive senses.
Education:
- Post Doctoral Fellowship: Harvard Medical School (Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre), Boston, USA
- PhD: Neuroscience, National Brain Research Centre, Manesar, India
- MSc: University of Madras
- BSc: Loyola College
Professional and Teaching Experience:
- Assistant Teaching Professor – Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Gandhinagar (Dec 2019 to Present)
- Visiting Faculty – Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Gandhinagar (Dec 2016 – Dec 2019)
- Post-Doctoral Research Fellow – Harvard Medical School (BIDMC) (Jan 2014 – July 2015)
- Research Associate – National Brain Research Centre, India (Aug 2013 – Jan 2014)
Selected Publications:
- Lazar L, Chand P, Rajan R, Mohammed H, Jain N, Somatosensory cortex of macaque monkeys is designed for opposable thumb, Cerebral Cortex, 28 February 2022
- Lazar. L. The Cognitive Neuroscience of Design Creativity. Journal of Experimental Neuroscience, Volume: 12 October 31, 2018.
- Kambi N, Tandon S, Mohammed H, Lazar L, Jain N. Reorganization of the primary motor cortex of the adult macaque monkeys after sensory loss resulting from partial spinal cord injuries. J Neurosci. 2011 Mar 9; 31 (10):3696-3707
- Tandon S, Kambi N, Lazar L, Mohammed H, Jain N. Large-scale expansion of the face representation in somatosensory areas of the lateral sulcus after spinal cord injuries in monkeys. J Neurosci. 2009 Sep 23; 29(38):12009-19
Courses Taught:
- CG 506 – Experimental Techniques in Cognitive Science
- CG 605 – Learning and Memory
