Funded Awards

Abstract Noninvasive tools capable of selectively manipulating neural systems in the human brain are needed to advance our neuroscientific understanding of brain function and develop novel non-pharmacologic psychotherapeutics and are a major focus of Brain Initiative funding.

The central nervous system (CNS) changes throughout life, and its interactions with the world produce activity- dependent plasticity that enables it to acquire and maintain useful behaviors.

Gait impairment and Freezing of gait (FOG), lead to falls, injury (even death), loss of independent living, and are common in neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s Disease (PD), affecting over 7 million people worldwide.

To take advantage of recent and ongoing advances in intensive and large-scale computational methods, and to preserve the scientific data created by publicly funded research projects, data archives must be created as well as standards for specifying, identifying, and annotating deposited data.

The mammalian brain is believed to be optimally designed for robust and adaptable computation of the sensory inputs from the world, with respect to both its hardware (network structure) and software (network dynamics).

Project Summary/Abstract The distributed brain network of the hippocampus supports memory and related cognitive abilities. Disruptions of this network occur in many neurological disorders such as epilepsy, brain injury, and neurodegenerative disease.

We experience the world as a continuous sequence of events, but we remember the events as segmented episodes (e.g., my sister’s wedding). During encoding, we associate a sequence of relevant events and segment deviant events.

Project Summary Approximately, 40% of TBI patients discharged from the hospital will develop long-term disability with 70% experiencing chronic cognitive impairments that disrupt vocational, social, and emotional functioning.

Playing a game of chess, driving a car, or even reading this sentence all require that the brain retain and integrate information over short periods of time. This retaining and integration of information is accomplished by working memory.

Perceptual decision-making is a complex cognitive function critical for health, reproductive success, and survival. In this process, an informed choice based on sensory evidence is made through engagement of circuits across the brain.

Project Summary (Overall: Cracking the Olfactory Code) Sensation drives perception, which informs decisions and actions. Olfaction is the main sense used by most animals to interact with the environment.

Humans and animals often make decisions under uncertainty, whereby each decision affects not only the immediate reward gain but also longer-term information gain.

Throughout the brain, specialized systems carry out different but complementary functions, sometimes independently but often in cooperation. However, we do not understand how their activity is dynamically coordinated, and dysregulation of this is associated with many mental health conditions.

Neuroscientific data contain information from an incredible diversity of species, are generated by a plethora of devices, and encapsulate the results of scientific thinking and decision making.

Neuromodulation is crucial for information processing throughout the brain. Neuromodulators influence neuronal function by acting through G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) to alter neuronal excitability and synaptic transmission, which can then affect circuit functions.

Project Summary The overall premise of this proposal is to understand how the transformation of the signals from proprioceptive afferents within muscles leads to the representation of movements in somatosensory cortex.

Optogenetics and chemo-optogenetics are powerful tools for modulating cell activities with light.

Project Summary A central goal of systems neuroscience is to relate behavior to its underlying circuit dynamics. This task is complicated by the complex and circuitous paths along which information flows as it is encoded and processed in the many steps between sensory inputs and motor outputs.

The initiation and maintenance of organized movement through the basal ganglia is strongly influenced by its feed-forward and feedback inhibitory architecture. The substantia nigra pars compacta (SNc) and pedunculopontine nucleus (PPN) contribute to the overall output of the basal ganglia.

Project Abstract Essential Tremor (ET) is a progressive disease that leads to significant disability and markedly diminished quality of life.