Arthur Kramer is the Director of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science & Technology (as of June 2010) and the Swanlund Chair and Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Illinois.   He received his Ph.D. in Cognitive/Experimental Psychology from the University of Illinois in 1984. He holds appointments in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience program, and the Beckman Institute. Professor Kramer’s research projects include topics in Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience, Aging, and Human Factors.  A major focus of his labs recent research is the understanding and enhancement of cognitive and neural plasticity across the lifespan.  He is a former Associate Editor of Perception and Psychophysics and is currently a member of six editorial boards. Professor Kramer is also a fellow of the American Psychological Association, American Psychological Society, a former member of the executive committee of the International Society of Attention and Performance, and a recent recipient of a NIH Ten Year MERIT Award. Professor Kramer’s research has been featured in a long list of print, radio and electronic media including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, CBS Evening News, Today Show, NPR and Saturday Night Live.

Art Kramer's research focuses on several different topics. First, he and his students are interested in understanding changes in various aspects of cognition, and the supporting brain structure and function, across the adult lifespan. For example, he has been examining the manner in which executive control processes (e.g. planning, scheduling, working memory, inhibition, task coordination) change from early to late adulthood and has discovered that contrary to the modal view changes in these processes are selective rather than general in nature. Furthermore, he has found substantial individual differences in the rate of change in these processes across the adult lifespan and is currently examining the source of these differences. Second, Kramer and his students are interested in interventions that can capitalize on the cognitive and brain plasticity of older adults in an effort to enhance cognitive vitality throughout the lifespan. To that end, they have conducted, and are in the process of conducting, a series of randomized clinical trials exploring the effects of aerobic fitness training and cognitive training on brain function and selective aspects of cognition of older adults. In recent cross-sectional and longitudinal studies they have discovered substantial sparing of selective regions of cortical gray and white matter for lifetime exercisers and have also observed that older individuals who are aerobically trained show interesting changes, potentially reflecting more efficient processing, in patterns of cortical activation (as reflected through fMRI), as they perform a series of cognitive tasks. Ongoing research is following up these intriguing findings and examining the influence of multi-task training on regional changes in patterns of brain activation of old and young adults.

Kramer and his research group are also interested in understanding how humans search for and extract critical details of the visual environment. To that end they have developed a number of novel paradigms, in collaboration with their colleagues at the University of Illinois and other universities, to examine issues such as the manner in which covert and overt (eye movements) attention are coordinated during visual search, the role and nature of memory processes during search in complex visual environments, and the manner in which humans construct and maintain representations of scenes as they move through complex environments. He has been examining these issues in both well controlled laboratory environments as well as in simulated real-world environments such as automobile driving (using the high fidelity driving simulator in the Beckman Institute) and in artificial environments created in Beckman Institutes six-sided CUBE.

To these research questions, Kramer and colleagues bring to bear methodologies ranging from reaction time and accuracy, and simulation and mathematical modeling to neuroimaging techniques, such as event-related brain potentials and functional and anatomical MRI.

Kramer's research receives support from the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Institute for the Study of Aging, General Motors Corporation, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.