Janahan Selvanayagam

Neuroscientist

About

Janahan Selvanayagam is a neuroscience postdoctoral research fellow under the supervision of Dr. Steven Kennerley at the University of Oxford. He is interested in how cognitive functions are instantiated in neural circuits. He is currently investigating how subjects learn to solve navigation tasks on a touchscreen, and replay of this activity during sleep.

Selvanayagam completed his BSc in Neuroscience under the supervision of Dr. Veena Dwivedi and PhD in Neuroscience under the supervision of Dr. Stefan Everling. His work spans investigations of the neural mechanisms underlying cognitive processes of attention, social gaze, and language in both human and non-human primates.

Publications

Neural activity for complex sounds in the marmoset anterior cingulate cortex

Gilliland, R.L., Selvanayagam, J., Zanini, A., Johnston, K.D., Everling, S.

Nature Communications Biology, 7(1),1310.

2024

Functional Specialization and Distributed Processing across Marmoset Lateral Prefrontal Subregions

Wong, R.K., Selvanayagam, J., Johnston, K.D., Everling, S.

Cerebral Cortex, 34(10),bhae407.

2024

An electrophysiological investigation of referential communication

Dwivedi, V.D., & Selvanayagam, J.

Brain and Language, 254,105438.

2024

Laminar Dynamics of Target Selection in the Posterior Parietal Cortex of the Common Marmoset.

Selvanayagam, J., Johnston, K.D., & Everling, S.

Journal of Neuroscience, 44(21),e1583232024.

2024

A ubiquitous spectrolaminar motif of local field potential power across the primate cortex

Mendoza-Halliday, D., Major, A.J., ..., Selvanayagam, J., ..., Miller, E.K., & Bastos, A.M.

Nature Neuroscience, 27,547-560.

2024

Ultra-high field fMRI identifies an action-observation network in the common marmoset.

Zanini, A., Dureux, A., Selvanayagam, J., & Everling, S.

Communications Biology, 6,553.

2023

Gaze patterns and brain activations in humans and marmosets in the Frith-Happé theory-of-mind animation task.

Dureux, A., Zanini, A., Selvanayagam, J., Menon, R.S., & Everling, S.

eLife, 12,e86327.

2023

Delay-related activity in marmoset prefrontal cortex.

Wong, R. K., Selvanayagam, J., Johnston, K. D., & Everling, S.

Cerebral Cortex, 33(7),3523-3537.

2023

Simultaneous functional MRI of two awake marmosets.

Gilbert, K.M., Clery, J.C., Selvanayagam, J., ... & Everling, S.

Nature Communications, 12,6608.

2021

Interspecies activation correlations reveal functional correspondences between marmoset and human brain areas.

Hori. Y., Clery, J.C., Selvanayagam, J., ... & Everling, S.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(37),e2110980118.

2021

Ketamine disrupts gaze patterns during face viewing in the common marmoset.

Selvanayagam, J., Johnston, K. D., Wong, R. K., Schaeffer, D., & Everling, S.

Journal of Neurophysiology, 126(1),330-339.

2021

Face processing, an important social cognitive ability, is impaired in neuropsychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia. The highly social common marmoset model presents an opportunity to investigate these impairments. We administered subanesthetic doses of ketamine to marmosets to model the cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia. We observed a disruption of scan paths during viewing of conspecifics' faces. These findings support the use of ketamine in marmosets as a model for investigating social cognition in neuropsychiatric disorders.

Effects of Dispositional Affect on the N400: Language Processing and Socially Situated Context.

Dwivedi, V. D., & Selvanayagam, J.

Frontiers in Psychology, 12,566894.

2021

Face selective patches in marmoset frontal cortex.

Schaeffer, D. J., Selvanayagam, J., Johnston, K. D., Menon, R. S., Freiwald, W. A., & Everling, S.

Nature Communications, 11(1),4856.

2020

Single-unit activity in marmoset posterior parietal cortex in a gap saccade task.

Ma, L., Selvanayagam, J., Ghahremani, M., Hayrynen, L. K., Johnston, K. D., & Everling, S.

Journal of Neurophysiology, 123(3),896-911.

2020

Functional Localization of the Frontal Eye Fields in the Common Marmoset Using Microstimulation.

Selvanayagam, J., Johnston, K. D., Schaeffer, D.J., Hayrynen, L.K., & Everling, S.

Journal of Neuroscience, 39(46),9197–9206.

2019

A preliminary investigation of dispositional affect, the P300, and sentence processing.

Selvanayagam, J., Witte, V., Schmidt, L.A., & Dwivedi, V.D.

Brain Research, 1721,146309.

2019

Heuristics in Language Comprehension.

Dwivedi, V.D., Goertz, K.E., & Selvanayagam, J..

Journal of Behavioral and Brain Science, 8(7),430-446.

2018

Education

PhD in Neuroscience

Supervisor: Stefan Everling

Dissertation: Frontoparietal Circuitry Underlying Saccade Control in the Common Marmoset

2018-2024

BSc in Neuroscience

Supervisor: Veena D. Dwivedi

Dissertation: An investigation of individual differences in sentence processing strategies due to dispositional affect using event-related potentials

2014-2018

Experience

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

University of Oxford

2024-

Research Assistant

Brain and Language Lab

2016-2023

Teaching Assistant: Physiology & Pharmacology Laboratory (PhysPharm3000E)

University of Western Ontario

2019-2021

Teaching Assistant: Introduction to Neuroscience (Neuroscience 2000)

University of Western Ontario

2018-2019

Teaching Assistant: Brain and Language (PSYC 3P65)

Brock University

2017-2018

Research Assistant

Neurocognitive Research Lab

2015-2016

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BSc in Neuroscience

2014-2018

Supervisor: Veena D. Dwivedi

Dissertation: An investigation of individual differences in sentence processing strategies due to dispositional affect using event-related potentials

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