Jerome N. Sanes - US grants

This project investigates the role of the basal ganglia in integrating somatic sensory information and motor commands for executing purposeful movements. This project tests the hypothesis that the basal ganglia use somatic sensory signals to calibrate voluntary muscle activity. Human subjects with two types of pathology-Parkinson's disease (ON and OFF dopaminergic medication) and focal putamen lesion-will be studied to test hypotheses that the basal ganglia: (1) calibrate muscle activity during changing exigencies of voluntary motor action; (2) use somatic sensory inputs for muscle activity calibration needed for voluntary muscle activity. (3) rely upon perception of limb position and muscular effort to calibrate voluntary muscle activity. Muscle activity, limb movements, limb dynamics, and perceptual decisions will be measured in human subjects during isometric and isotonic motor actions using the wrist or combined action of the elbow and shoulder. 1. Do the basal ganglia contribute to calibration of muscle activity during voluntary motor actions? We hypothesize that patients with Parkinson's disease or putamen lesion will not appropriately adjust motor strategy required for changes in intended motor action magnitude, direction, and speed. We predict that basal ganglia dysfunction will specifically disrupt adaptive adjustment of EMG patterns. 2. Do the basal ganglia use somatic sensory information to calibrate muscle activity? Errors in calibrating muscle activity may be related to errors in somatic sensory information to adapt motor output. Experiments will evaluate how basal ganglia dysfunction affects calibration of muscle activity following changes in somatic sensory inputs. We predict that the patients with basal ganglia dysfunction will not adapt their motor strategies when sensory input is modified by shifts in initial limb configuration. 3. Do the basal ganglia rely on perception of limb position and muscular output to calibrate muscle activity? Errors in adapting muscle activity to somatic sensory inputs may be related to disrupted use of perceived limb position or mismatching somatic sensory inputs with motor commands. These experiments will examine perception of limb position and muscular effort in Parkinson's disease and putamen lesion patients. We predict that basal ganglia dysfunction will impair perception of limb position and muscular effort. These studies will provide substantial information on how the basal ganglia use somatic sensory information to adjust motor strategies and to pathophysiological descriptions and analysis of the motor disorders in patients with Parkinson's disease and putamen lesion. The relationships between perceptual judgments and muscle activity could lead to strategies for rehabilitation treatment of basal ganglia disease.

The project's long term goals are to study neural mechanisms of volition and how neural and cognitive information processing changes in human aging. With functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), we will investigate organizing principles of the basal ganglia and cerebral cortex in young and aged human adults. Then we will examine whether aging modifies hypothesized changes in the functional architecture of these brain regions that occurs during repeated sensory stimulation and motor performance, motor skill learning, and conditional motor associations. The first experiment compares relative cerebral blood flow in young and aged adults to develop baseline measures of basal ganglia and cerebral cortical organization. Currently, there remains uncertainty about the precise functional organization of basal ganglia and cerebral cortex in both young or aged adults that occurs during simple sensory and motor tasks. We expect to observe unique activation patterns in a several cortical and basal ganglia regions during presentation of somatic sensory stimuli and performance of simple motor actions. A specific hypothesis of these experiments is that basic brain representation patterns in aging remain similar to those in youth. A prediction of these experiments is the location, size and intensity of activation patterns occurring for somatic sensory stimulation and motor tasks does not differ across aging. A second group of experiments tests the hypothesis that aging diminishes neural adaptation. The experiments examine brain activation occurring during repeated tactile stimulation, movement repetition, formation of visual-motor conditional associations, and acquiring sequential patterns. A specific prediction of these experiments is that aging changes the activation patterns occurring during these "learning" tasks. The experiments will demonstrate the extent to which aging may change the neural representations occurring within the basal ganglia and cerebral cortex during motor learning. Application of the experimental results should enable evaluation of changes occurring in brain physiology not only in human aging, but also in development, neurologic dysfunction, and psychiatric diseases. Understanding the basal ganglia and cerebral cortical basis of learning, visual motor associations, and sequential patterns should enhance rehabilitative strategies for patients with focal brain injury and neurodegenerative and psychiatric diseases.

mainframe computers; computer center; biomedical equipment purchase;

This project investigates the role of the basal ganglia in integrating somatic sensory information and motor commands for executing purposeful movements. This project tests the hypothesis that the basal ganglia use somatic sensory signals to calibrate voluntary muscle activity. Human subjects with two types of pathology-Parkinson's disease (ON and OFF dopaminergic medication) and focal putamen lesion-will be studied to test hypotheses that the basal ganglia: (1) calibrate muscle activity during changing exigencies of voluntary motor action; (2) use somatic sensory inputs for muscle activity calibration needed for voluntary muscle activity. (3) rely upon perception of limb position and muscular effort to calibrate voluntary muscle activity. Muscle activity, limb movements, limb dynamics, and perceptual decisions will be measured in human subjects during isometric and isotonic motor actions using the wrist or combined action of the elbow and shoulder. 1. Do the basal ganglia contribute to calibration of muscle activity during voluntary motor actions? We hypothesize that patients with Parkinson's disease or putamen lesion will not appropriately adjust motor strategy required for changes in intended motor action magnitude, direction, and speed. We predict that basal ganglia dysfunction will specifically disrupt adaptive adjustment of EMG patterns. 2. Do the basal ganglia use somatic sensory information to calibrate muscle activity? Errors in calibrating muscle activity may be related to errors in somatic sensory information to adapt motor output. Experiments will evaluate how basal ganglia dysfunction affects calibration of muscle activity following changes in somatic sensory inputs. We predict that the patients with basal ganglia dysfunction will not adapt their motor strategies when sensory input is modified by shifts in initial limb configuration. 3. Do the basal ganglia rely on perception of limb position and muscular output to calibrate muscle activity? Errors in adapting muscle activity to somatic sensory inputs may be related to disrupted use of perceived limb position or mismatching somatic sensory inputs with motor commands. These experiments will examine perception of limb position and muscular effort in Parkinson's disease and putamen lesion patients. We predict that basal ganglia dysfunction will impair perception of limb position and muscular effort. These studies will provide substantial information on how the basal ganglia use somatic sensory information to adjust motor strategies and to pathophysiological descriptions and analysis of the motor disorders in patients with Parkinson's disease and putamen lesion. The relationships between perceptual judgments and muscle activity could lead to strategies for rehabilitation treatment of basal ganglia disease.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This project focuses upon patterns of human brain activation in the frontal and parietal lobe related to continuous movement tracking and motor learning. We will employ a multimodal neuroimaging approach that integrates anatomic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), functional MRI, magnetoencephalography (MEG), and electroencephalography (EEG) to improve spatial and temporal resolution of non-invasive imaging in humans. The improved technology will help unravel unanswered issues of brain mechanisms of movement and motor learning. Neuroanatomy and neurophysiology studies have revealed an interconnected frontal-parietal lobe network underlying visual-to-motor coordinate transformations; this network also contributes to motor learning. While frontal and parietal structures of humans do exhibit movement and learning related activation patterns, the spatial and temporal resolution of these patterns and how these areas interact during performance and learning remains incompletely specified. Additionally, the nature of movement encoding from functional neuroimaging methods has not been clearly resolved. With time-resolved functional MRI and combined M/EEG recordings, we will investigate the encoding of continuous tracking movements in the frontal and parietal lobes of humans. We will construct motor receptive fields in these brain regions to characterize the activation pattern related to movement position, velocity, and force. An initial series of experiments will examine differences of the motor fields across these brain regions and will determine whether shifts in motor task requirements induce shifts in the motor fields. Next, we will determine whether fundamental shifts in how the movements are guided - by sensory input or memory - also modify the representation of movement variables in frontal and parietal lobes. Finally, we will assess how motor fields and functional coupling of frontal and parietal lobes shift in response to motor learning and memory retrieval. The experiments will demonstrate the extent to which shifts in movement requirements and motor learning modify neural representations for voluntary movements. Application of the multimodal results should enhance the capability to resolve time varying changes in human brain activation and coupling between brain areas.

With support from a National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation Award, Brown University will acquire a 3 Tesla magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system. The MRI system will become housed in a research-dedicated MRI suite within the newly constructed Life Sciences Building at Brown, and it will form the core infrastructure for MRI-related research conducted by more than 100 faculty, research staff, and students in the Brown University community, including its College of Arts and Sciences and Medical School. Researchers at Brown will use the NSF-fund MRI system primarily to investigate fundamentals of brain structure and function. In addition to Brown users, researchers from other nearby institutions, such as the University of Rhode Island, Regina Saliva University, and University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth can have access to the 3 Tesla MRI system.

Non-invasive imaging of the human brain has become a key research tool for life scientists interested in understanding brain mechanisms of sensation, perception, cognition, and voluntary movement. MRI has becoming a cornerstone of such activities since it can provide structure and functional information at previously unobtainable brain locations without the need for invasive measures. Structural MRI can provide sub-millimeter resolution of the cellular and fiber tract regions of the brain. These capabilities now allow precise measurement of local brain volumes and visualization of the source and destination of major axon pathways. Functional MRI can rapidly measure local changes in blood dynamics in volumes as small as 1 cubic mm. Blood dynamics reflect changes in local neural activity, and its exploitation has become a key tool in exploring brain mechanisms of a variety of functions that constitute everyday experience. The NSF funded resource will allow Brown researchers and those from nearby institutions to develop new strategies and knowledge about how the human brain mediates complex behavior.

Projects currently planned for the 3 Tesla MRI system include research in systems and cognitive neuroscience and biomechanics. A major effort will be to enhance spatial and temporal resolution of structural and functional MR imaging, using special equipment of the new 3 Tesla MRI system. In particular, the infrastructure will facilitate investigating specialization of the myriad brain areas that process visual stimuli, not only across the brain, but also within each area. The new MRI system will allow non-invasive imaging of the input and output processing zones of cortical areas. Several investigators will interrogate the functional MRI signals obtained during single instances of perceptual experience or voluntary movement to predict the conscious experience of the observer or to predict the performed movement(s). While these 'mind-reading' efforts currently occur off-line, the team plans to implement them in real-time, and ultimately at high spatial resolution. The addition of the 3 Tesla MRI resource at Brown will boost ongoing educational and research activities and will stimulate novel interactions between students, faculty and researchers working across life, social, physical and applied science disciplines. The instrumentation will also be used in out-reach programs for under-represented minority high-school students participating in summer programs at Brown.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This project aims to understand mechanisms of visual-motor integration in human frontal and parietal lobes. Interactions among brain systems controlling eye and limb position contribute to visual-motor integration. Gaze influences sensory and motor processing at many brain sites in non-human primates;significantly less is known about how gaze regulates human sensory-motor processing. Determining how gaze and limb motor control interact in parietal and frontal areas seems essential to understand purposeful visual-motor integration. We will use functional MRI and electroencephalography to measure frontal and parietal processing underlying gaze and hand movement interactions. We have recently discovered the existence of gaze gain fields in human parietal and frontal areas;the project will use changes in gain fields and gaze-induced modulation of hand movement brain responses to understand integration of visual input, gaze position and hand movements to arrive at a model of parietal-frontal organization for voluntary action. The project has three aims: First, what are the principles for developing and maintaining gaze gain fields in human parietal and frontal lobes? We will investigate organization and changes in gain fields and gaze-induced modulation of hand movement representations as information passes from parietal to frontal lobe in the vision to action stream. Second, is spatial compatibility between gaze and hand movements required when combining visual input and hand movements as information flows from human parietal to frontal areas? For this aim, we will investigate whether eye-hand spatial compatibility and choice of arm effector have key roles in developing gain fields. Third, what coordinate system do arm movement related areas in parietal and frontal cortex use? In these experiments, we will test whether parietal and frontal areas use eye-, head-, body- or world-centered coordinate frameworks when integrating eye position with arm movements. Collectively, the experiments will determine whether spatial compatibility among location of gaze and arm positions represents a key regulatory feature needed to construct activation and functional connectivity patterns of frontal and parietal areas that mediate eye and hand movements. The results will have application to models of sensory motor integration and how dynamic brain representations become created and modified, especially regarding whether motor plans are formed in the parietal lobe and then relayed to frontal cortex or alternatively that the parietal lobe relays fundamental information to frontal structures for eventual planning.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The central objective of this pre-doctoral training program in Neuroscience is to continue providing individualized, high quality training to pre-doctoral students in their middle-to-late years of graduate studies as they prepare to finish their dissertation research. We provide broad, multi-disciplinary training at all levels with a strong foundation in core concepts, skills, methodologies, and advanced comprehension of the scientific literature. Our newly revised core curriculum instructs students at the level of genes, cells, systems, cognition, translational neuroscience, and diseases of the nervous system. We foster an environment unconstrained by traditional discipline boundaries and where graduate students are encouraged to work at the interfaces of these disciplines. At all stages of instruction, we integrate skills considered essential for successful, independent research careers in neuroscience. These include critical thinking and reasoning, effective science writing and oral presentation, knowledge of scientific review processes, and training in ethics. For this program, we will expand recent initiatives to ensure that graduate students have exposure to clinical and disease concepts in neuroscience. These include incorporating seminars from clinicians at Brown into our core curriculum, attendance at Grand Rounds in Neurology, Neuropathology, and Psychiatry at Brown-affiliated Hospital; and compulsory attendance in Year 3 of a new graduate-student only Neurobiology of Disease Course. The majority of our pre-doctoral trainees continue in basic scientific investigations of the nervous system either in academia or in the biotechnology industry. We expect that exposure to clinical issues early in their training will positively influence their research careers. Key features of the Neuroscience Graduate Program at Brown include: Excellence in research along with excellence in education and mentorship; a history of interdisciplinary and translational research particularly in computational neuroscience; and an environment of small but highly productive laboratories where graduate students are equal partners in the research process. The proposed training program has 29 participating faculty, drawn from six different Brown University departments and a target of about 50 pre-doctoral trainees. The faculty trainers are a distinguished and energetic group of brain scientists that collectively cover the spectrum of modern neuroscience research from genes to cognition. We have structures in place that encourage and facilitate research in computational and translational neuroscience that reside at the interface of disciplines including engineering, applied mathematics and neuroscience. Our training covers the full-spectrum of state-of-the art methodologies that we consider essential for a successful career in the neurosciences. These include non-invasive functional MRI, applications of robotics and neuroprosthetics, advanced electrophysiological recordings, mouse transgenics, behavioral studies, molecular manipulations of neuronal genes and functional proteomics

Healthy humans effortlessly and accurately perform a wide range of voluntary movements and actions. Considerable work has revealed many brain sites involved in performing voluntary actions, including areas in the frontal and parietal cortices. By contrast, substantially less is known about brain areas which are involved in the intention to move and when and how these intention-related brain sites mediate movement planning. The current project will use neuroimaging to identify regions in the human cerebral cortex that contribute to planning and preparing voluntary movements. They will also use and novel mathematical methods and analysis tools to describe when each brain region becomes involved in the action planning and the interactions among brain regions. The project outcome will yield a spatial and temporal map of brain activity related to action intention.

Broader impacts of this project include development of analysis tools that can to assess patterns of brain activity related to basic human functions of sensation, perception, thought and action. The methods may also be useful to any system that has sets of time-varying signals, particularly brain-computer interfaces. The project will involve graduate and undergraduate students, some of whom participate in K though 12 outreach programs; thus, the research activities will become disseminated to the local public community.

PROJECT SUMMARY (See instructions): The goal of the Administrative Core of the COBRE Center for Central Nervous System Function is to support the scientific and technical goals of this COBRE Center by providing leadership and an administrative structure to facilitate and coordinate the activities of the Leaders of each Research Project, the overall Principal Investigator, and the Director of the Design and Analysis Core. These functions include: administrative support of the Principal Investigator and for all Project and Core Leaders, collection and maintenance of financial records for all Projects and Cores; preparation of the annual Progress Report; coordinate activities of the Internal Advisory Committee and the External Advisory Committee in their roles of mentoring and evaluating the research and personnel in each Project and Core; organize the COBRE Center's annual retreat and bimonthly research meetings and to assist in data dissemination and sharing. Additional activities may include interactions with relevant departments and programs in faculty searches, external seminar series, and internal journal clubs.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Purposeful human behavior requires attention, decisions and action, all basic functions mediated by brain networks primarily located in the neocortex, but modulated and shaped by sub-cortical processing. Behavioral and brain mechanisms of attention, including vigilance, orienting and perceptual and action selection, are key gateways into high-level function. Thus, in a general and even specific sense, attention, decision making and the ensuing actions define human mental activities. Deficits in these functions are common in both neurological and psychiatric disorders and can result in a wide range of higher-order behavioral deficits. We propose to establish a COBRE Center for Central Nervous System Function at Brown University that will investigate the mechanisms of higher brain function, with a focus on attention, decision making and action and disorders that modify these key systems, using a combination of genetic, behavior, and systems neuroscience approaches. This COBRE consists of five research projects led by junior faculty. Morrow will investigate the neurobiology of children diagnosed with difficult-to-treat autism, a group that often presents with obsessive compulsive behaviors. Amso will investigate the typical development of visual selective attention and the mechanisms of its disruption in autism spectrum disorder. Worden will examine selective attention mechanisms resulting from conflict. Asaad will investigate interactions between neocortex and basal ganglia during attention-based associative decision-making. Song will investigate how multiple neural systems become integrated to select actions, such as choosing to pick up a red instead of a blue pencil. A Design and Analysis Core will facilitate the research goals of these projects and benefit the broader Brown community by developing new tools and optimizing existing ones to image brain structure and function with MRI and EEG and neural recordings; and ensuring proper experimental design and analysis procedures across projects. Project leaders will benefit from senior faculty mentors who will provide support and guidance on research, publication, and grant preparation. An Administrative Core will oversee the operations of this COBRE (Center. The COBRE Center for Central Nervous System Function will fall under the auspices of the Brown Institute for Brain Science. The COBRE Center will leverage the administrative resources available through the Brown Institute for Brain Science to ensure efficient operation and coordinate with other brain science research activities at Brown.

The Directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences offers postdoctoral research fellowships to provide opportunities for recent doctoral graduates to obtain additional training, to gain research experience under the sponsorship of established scientists, and to broaden their scientific horizons beyond their undergraduate and graduate training. Postdoctoral fellowships are further designed to assist new scientists to direct their research efforts across traditional disciplinary lines and to avail themselves of unique research resources, sites, and facilities, including at foreign locations. This postdoctoral fellowship supports a rising scientist in the interdisciplinary area overlapping behavioral science, computational modeling and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), focusing on the process of decision making. Decision-making is a pervasive part of everyday life: in some cases, decisions are irreversible and in others an initial choice can be altered by a change of mind. For instance, when fetching a book off the shelf, one may initially reach toward the wrong title and later adjust the course of their reach in favor of the desired option. Such decisions require precise coordination between several brain systems to allocate attention, select a course of action, and execute hand and eye movements. Importantly, recent research demonstrates that cognition is tightly integrated with perception and action. Specifically, motor areas supporting the execution of eye and hand movements are also critically involved in decision-making; however, while the neural networks of decision-making are relatively well characterized, little is known about how the brain supports online changes to behavior after a decision to act has been executed. This proposal aims to investigate the brain systems supporting the ability to continuously modify decisions during target selection and determine how competition for attentional resources impacts this process. The results of this project will advance our understanding of the brain structures and neural information flow underlying rapid, flexible decision-making during action execution. This has important implications for informing impairments caused by disorders such as traumatic brain injury, stroke, and optic ataxia and the design of more advanced neural prosthetics to better serve amputees in dynamic, real-life settings.

The goal of this research is to provide a more comprehensive understanding of human decision-making by examining how multiple brain systems interact to support changes of mind during target selection. Using a multi-faceted approach including behavioral, electroencephalography (EEG), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and advanced computational modeling techniques, this proposal will investigate the neural substrates that support rapid decision adjustments when executing actions. Specifically, how does the allocation of spatial attention during target selection impact change of mind? Moreover, what is the nature of information flow between higher-order cortical regions and eye- and hand-related motor areas during changes of mind during target selection? These results will represent an important step toward a more complete understanding of the brain mechanisms involved in complex human decision-making in naturalistic settings. This proposal is also supported by the NSF EPSCoR.

The goal of the Administrative Core of the COBRE Center for Central Nervous System Function is to support the scientific, technical and mentoring goals of this COBRE Center by providing leadership and an administrative structure to facilitate and coordinate the activities of the Leaders of each research Project, the overall Principal Investigator, the Deputy and Associate Directors, and the Directors of the Design and Analysis Core and the Behavior and Neuroimaging Core. These functions include: administrative support of the Principal Investigator and for all Project Leaders and Core Directors, collection and maintenance of financial records for all Projects and Cores; preparation of the annual Progress Report; coordinate activities of the Internal Advisory Committee, the University Advisory Committee and the External Advisory Committee in their roles of mentoring and evaluating the research and personnel in each Project and Core; organize the COBRE Center's annual retreat and monthly research meetings and to assist in data dissemination and sharing. Additional activities may include interactions with relevant departments and programs in faculty searches, external seminar series, and internal journal clubs.

Purposeful human behavior requires attention, decisions and construction and production of abstract sequences, all basic functions mediated by brain networks primarily located in the neocortex, but modulated and shaped by sub-cortical processing. In a general and even a specific sense, attention, decision making and production of abstract sequences are key components of human mental activities. Deficits in these functions are common in both neurological and psychiatric disorders and can result in a wide range of higher-order behavioral deficits, including anxiety. We propose to continue, for at least another five years, the COBRE Center for Central Nervous System Function at Brown University that will investigate the mechanisms of higher-brain function focusing on decision making, abstract sequence construction and attention, while developing statistically valid tools to reveal brain connectivity pattern. This COBRE consists of four research projects led by junior faculty and one by an established investigator. Shenhav will investigate brain mechanisms of cognitive interference during value based decision using multi-modal brain recordings. Desrochers will investigate the neural basis of sequence monitoring in humans and non-human primates using neuroimaging and circuit disruption. FeldmanHall will examine the neural and affective mechanisms of socially risky learning using neuroimaging and behavior. Eloyan will develop quantitative methods for brain connectivity network estimation and inference using functional MRI signals. Jones will investigate the causal role of neocortical beta events in human sensory perception. A Design and Analysis Core and a Behavior and Neuroimaging Core will facilitate the research goals of these projects and benefit the broader Brown community by developing new tools and optimizing existing ones to image brain structure and function with MRI and EEG, while insuring proper experimental design and analysis procedures across the projects. Project Leaders will have senior faculty mentors who will provide support and guidance on research, publication, grant preparation, and career development. An Administrative Core will oversee the operations of this COBRE Center. The COBRE Center for Central Nervous System Function will fall under the auspices of the Brown Institute for Brain Science. The COBRE Center will leverage the administrative resources available through the Brown Institute for Brain Science to ensure efficient operation and coordinate with other brain science research activities at Brown.

Computational requirements of contemporary brain science research typically exceed financial and resource management limits of individual investigator laboratories. Many brain science research projects require analysis of large data sets with advanced statistical methods and anatomical reconstruction techniques. These methods require high speed computational and graphics engines operating in a multiple processor environments equipped with large capacity, high speed storage devices. An ongoing limitation in the Brown brain science effort at understanding neural processing is the lack of a contemporary and readily accessible high-speed computational resource. We plan to replace an existing, but 5 year old and now outmoded, central computational resource that has outdated graphic processing units (GPU) and central processing units (CPU) and and limited storage that will serve the computational needs of a core group of brain science investigators at Brown without compromising individual access to stand-alone workstations. The requested computation equipment comprises 13 GPU nodes (total of 52 cores), 12 CPU nodes (288 cores) and 1.2 petabytes of disk storage, which will serve the needs of the assembled brain science researchers. The equipment will become integrated into Brown's high performance Compute Cluster, which has system software that automatically balances GPU and CPU usage, thereby ensuring maximum access to the computational resource for all users. Intensive 3D graphics are off- loaded either to GPUs or to client workstations, thereby further reducing the central computational load. Commercial or open-source software with an open operating environment will be used for analysis using standard and novel statistical and machine learning approaches to assess significance of large data sets. This proposal details the architecture and benefits of a contemporary computational resource for the major and minor users, and more generally the Brown brain science community. The resource was designed to fill immediate and near-term computational and storage needs of a core group of Brown brain scientists. The system can be readily expansion as needs, either computational, storage, or new users, arise. Expansion of the existing core investigators group can occur easily since the computational power or storage capacity of the system can be readily enhanced at relatively low cost. The flexible nature of the system will serve a variety of research needs of the Brown brain science community. The computational resource is expected to bring together researchers at Brown working on the common problem of neural processing.