Dr. Kaskan joined the faculty of Neurological Surgery at Einstein College of Medicine in September 2020 after training in microelectrode recording techniques for targeting deep brain structures following his postdoctoral fellowship in the Laboratory of Neuropsychology at the National Institute of Mental Health.

There, he specialized in understanding the role of the amygdala in reward learning, attention, motivation, and value representation. Information relayed from the amygdala to visual cortex remains a long-standing interest. The role projections from the amygdala to the ventral striatum play in incentive salience and motivation is also a significant research interest.

Dr. Kaskan continues these lines of investigation through neurophysiological recordings and brain stimulation in patients performing behavioral tasks in the operating room and epilepsy monitoring unit, and in parallel studies, in healthy human subjects using scalp EEG. Behavioral tasks incorporate eye-tracking and pupillometry as measures of attention and autonomic tone, respectively.

Dr. Kaskan received his bachelor's degree from Clark University, and went on to study at Cornell University and RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Tokyo, Japan. He earned his Ph.D. in Psychology (Neuroscience) from Vanderbilt University, and completed his postdoctoral training at the National Institutes of Health, with partial support from a NARSAD Young Investigator Grant from the Brain and Behavior Foundation (2014).

Kaskan PM, Nicholas MA, Dean AM, Murray EA. 2022. Attention to stimuli of learned versus innate biological value relies on separate neural systems. JNeurosci 7, 42(49) 9242-9252.

Kaskan PM, Dean AM, Nicholas MA, Mitz AR, Murray EA. 2019. Gustatory responses in macaque monkeys revealed with fMRI: Comments on taste, taste preference, and internal state. NeuroImage 184: 932–942.

Kaskan PM, Costa VD, Eaton HP, Zemskova JA, Mitz AR, Leopold DA, Ungerleider LG, Murray EA. 2017. Learned value shapes responses to objects in frontal and ventral stream networks in macaque monkeys. Cerebral Cortex 27, 5: 2739–2757.

Baldwin M, Kaskan PM, Zhang B, Chino Y, Kaas JH. 2012. Cortical and subcortical connections of V1 and V2 in early postnatal macaque monkeys. JCN 520: 544-69.

Kaskan PM, Dillenburger BC, Lu HD, Roe AW, Kaas JH. 2010. Orientation and direction-of-motion response in the middle temporal visual area (MT) of New World owl monkeys as revealed by intrinsic-signal optical imaging. Front Neuroanat 4: 23.

Kaskan PM, Lu HD, Dillenburger BC, Kaas JH, Roe AW. 2009. The organization of orientation-selective, luminance-change and binocular domains in the second (V2) and third (V3) visual areas of New World owl monkeys as revealed by intrinsic-signal optical imaging. Cerebral Cortex 19: 1394-1407.

Kaskan PM, Lu HD, Dillenburger BC, Roe AW, Kaas JH. 2007. Intrinsic-signal optical imaging reveals cryptic ocular dominance columns in primary visual cortex of New World owl monkeys. Front Neuroscience 1 (1) 67-75.

Kaskan PM, Kaas JH. 2007. Cortical Connections of the Middle Temporal and the Middle Temporal Crescent Visual Areas in Prosimian Galagos (Otolernur garnetli). Anat Rec 290, 349-366.

Collins CE, Xu X, Khaytin I, Kaskan PM, Casagrande VA, Kaas JH. 2005. Optical imaging of visually evoked responses in the middle temporal area after deactivation of primary visual cortex in adult primates. Proc Natl Acad Sci US A 102(15):5594-5599.

Kaskan PM, Franco EC, Yamada ES, Silveira LC, Darlington RB, Finlay BL 2005. Peripheral variability and central constancy in mammalian visual system evolution. Proc Biol Sci 272(1558):91-100.

Xu X, Collins CE, Kaskan PM, Khaytin I, Kaas JH, Casagrande VA. 2004. Optical imaging of visually evoked responses in prosimian primates reveals conserved features of the middle temporal visual area. Proc Natl Acad Sci US A 101(8):2566-2571.

Kaskan PM, Finlay BL. 2001. Encephalization and its developmental structure: How many ways can a brain get big? In Evolutionary Anatomy of the Primate Cerebral Cortex, Cambridge University Press.