1999 — 2001 |
Huettel, Scott A |
F32Activity Code Description: To provide postdoctoral research training to individuals to broaden their scientific background and extend their potential for research in specified health-related areas. |
Functional Neuroimaging Studies of Object Processing
Object processing involves the integration of many sources of information into a single perception or judgment. Both behavioral and neuroscientific studies have demonstrated attentional modulation of object processing: judgments about an object depend on attributes attended to. The proposed studies will investigate the neural bases of this attentional modulation. First, object processing in an attribute judgment task will be examined for different object categories, as established by behavioral research, using functional imaging techniques. Patterns of brain activation will be recorded for four different object categories in both attended and non-attended conditions. Epoch- averaging analyses will reveal components of attentional modulation that are common to all object types and aspects of modulation that depend on the type of object being judged. Second, an event-related analysis technique will be developed. This technique will allow investigation of single-trial attentional effects on object judgments. Investigation of attentional processes will benefit research into clinical syndromes characterized by impaired attentional processing (e.g., schizophrenia, attention-deficit disorder). The current studies will provide a description of the attentional systems in the brain underlying object perception. An understanding of these attentional systems will generate research hypotheses for work with patient populations.
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0.958 |
2002 |
Huettel, Scott A |
R03Activity Code Description: To provide research support specifically limited in time and amount for studies in categorical program areas. Small grants provide flexibility for initiating studies which are generally for preliminary short-term projects and are non-renewable. |
Functional Neuroimaging of Executive Processing
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Deficits in executive processing, defined as the ability to adjust behavior based upon goals and context, have severe consequences for human thought and behavior. In drug abusers, executive processing impairments are manifest in problems with representing the consequences for actions and with inhibiting responses to inappropriate stimuli. This proposal uses functional neuroimaging to investigate the brain mechanisms of executive processing, including how people form and maintain plans for behavior and how they change those plans based upon new information. The proposed experiments will use a novel task designed to separate components of executive processing. The stimulus set will consist of shapes that vary in color and pattern. Subjects will learn rules (e.g., "red items") that partition the set into targets and non-targets. As in the common Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (WCST), the task rules will change infrequently, so that subjects must form new representations of the task rules. However, unlike in the WCST, subjects will not respond to every stimulus, so that selecting which rule to follow can be dissociated from selecting a response. A combination of neuroimaging measures will be employed, within the same task, to investigate the location and timing of activity associated with different aspects of executive processing. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) will be used to identify brain regions associated with learning rules, maintaining learned rules, selecting a new rule, and selecting responses. Scalp-recorded ERP measures will serve to constrain the fMRI results while providing information about the timing of neural events. This research program will inform studies of executive processing, while providing proof-of-concept data for future applications for research support.
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0.958 |
2005 — 2008 |
Huettel, Scott A |
R01Activity Code Description: To support a discrete, specified, circumscribed project to be performed by the named investigator(s) in an area representing his or her specific interest and competencies. |
Neuroimaging of Executive Processing
[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Executive processes facilitate the flexible, top-down control of human behavior. A network of brain regions including prefrontal cortex (PFC), anterior cingulate cortex, and parietal cortex is thought to be central for executive processing. Neuroimaging and lesion studies have suggested that these regions play a role in selection or potentiation of behavior based upon context. The experiments detailed in this proposal will use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the neural mechanisms of response selection, evaluation of feedback and rewards, and the goal-directed control of behavior. This proposal has three specific aims. First, it seeks to elucidate the role of dorsolateral PFC (dlPFC) in behavioral control, to test the hypothesis that executive functions potentiate sets of stimulus-response contingencies rather than responses themselves. The proposed experiments manipulate the amount of information each stimulus in a sequence contributes either to learning a decision rule or to preparing a needed response. Second, it investigates the role of ventromedial PFC (vmPFC) in the potentiation of contingencies between responses and rewards. The proposed experiments manipulate the reward expectation associated with different stimuli and with responses at different points in time, to test the hypothesis that vmPFC supports the resolution of uncertainty about reward-response links. Third, it investigates the interaction between prefrontal systems by examining the influence of reward uncertainty upon decision processes. Some stimuli are associated with uncertainty in future rewards, while others are associated with certain outcomes. The experiments test the hypothesis that increasing activity in vmPFC reward systems results in decreased activity in dlPFC control systems. The proposed research program will have a significant impact upon the understanding of human executive processing, including selection, decision, and working memory components. A better understanding of these processes will lead to further improvements in clinical remediation of neurological and psychiatric disorders characterized by impairments in executive function or behavioral selection (e.g., frontal lobe damage, schizophrenia, Parkinson's disease). [unreadable] [unreadable]
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0.958 |
2006 — 2010 |
Huettel, Scott A |
P01Activity Code Description: For the support of a broadly based, multidisciplinary, often long-term research program which has a specific major objective or a basic theme. A program project generally involves the organized efforts of relatively large groups, members of which are conducting research projects designed to elucidate the various aspects or components of this objective. Each research project is usually under the leadership of an established investigator. The grant can provide support for certain basic resources used by these groups in the program, including clinical components, the sharing of which facilitates the total research effort. A program project is directed toward a range of problems having a central research focus, in contrast to the usually narrower thrust of the traditional research project. Each project supported through this mechanism should contribute or be directly related to the common theme of the total research effort. These scientifically meritorious projects should demonstrate an essential element of unity and interdependence, i.e., a system of research activities and projects directed toward a well-defined research program goal. |
Decision Making and Affective Processing
The efficacy of decision making is often measured by whether or not it leads to rewarding outcomes. Over the past decade, separate research programs have identified separate brain systems that contribute to decision making and to the evaluation of rewards. While the individuation of functionally specific regions within these systems remains an active and ongoing component of cognitive neuroscience, relatively little work has been devoted toward elucidating their interactions. This Project will investigate how reward information alters the functional properties of brain systems for decision making, through a combination of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), intracranial electrophysiological, and behavioral studies. This Project has four specific aims. First, it will determine the consequences of delivery of punctate monetary rewards upon the subsequent activation of brain systems underlying decision making. The experiments will test the hypothesis that rewards have a transient inhibitory effect upon lateral prefrontal regions associated with decision making, through comparison of the effects of performance-dependent and performance-independent rewards with those of other affective stimuli. Second, it will investigate how decision makers incorporate or ignore external recommendations that confirm or refute their prior decisions through experiments that systematically adjust the predictiveness of recommendations in obtaining rewarding decision outcomes. Key regions for the analysis include frontopolar, orbitofrontal and cingulate areas. Third, we will study how decision makers regulate tradeoffs between two factors that are often in opposition: risk and reward. In many situations, by delaying judgment, people pay opportunity costs (e.g., by passing up opportunities for large rewards) in order to make more accurate and confident decisions. The experiments will evaluate how observers manage these costs with insular and orbitofrontal regions targeted as key sites. The fourth and final aim will evaluate the relative timing and spatial specificity of reward effects upon prefrontal systems through the use of intracranial electrophysiology. Its experiments will take advantage of the improved temporal resolution of electrophysiology to characterize the relative timing of activation throughout prefrontal cortex associated with decisions about rewards. They will also provide new data about the function of orbitofrontal cortex, an area often difficult to image using fMRI. These experiments will have important consequences for the understanding of how people make decisions, set goals, and determine preferences among stimuli. A better understanding of these processes will lead to further improvements in clinical remediation of neurological and psychiatric disorders characterized by impairments in executive function, behavioral selection, or stimulus valuation (e.g., frontal lobe damage, schizophrenia. Parkinson's disease).
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0.958 |
2007 — 2008 |
Huettel, Scott A |
R21Activity Code Description: To encourage the development of new research activities in categorical program areas. (Support generally is restricted in level of support and in time.) |
Neural Compensation and Economic Decision Making in Aging
[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Changes in decision making are ubiquitous throughout aging. As examples, the decisions of older adults are more economically conservative and more likely to be compromised by irrelevant information. Historically, these deficits have been explained using concepts derived from behavioral research within cognitive psychology. In this application, we contend that a different, neuroeconomic approach is necessary, one that augments constructs derived from behavioral phenomena with those derived from neuroscientific research. Our approach rests on three hypotheses. First, we hypothesize that many decision-making differences between middle-aged and peri-retirement adults are the result of deficits in information integration: specifically a lack of access to source information, a difficulty in inhibiting irrelevant information, and an increased reliance on emotional information. Second, we contend that age-related deficits are manifest not only in their effects on behavior, but also in their effects on specific patterns of brain function, as younger and older adults employ different sets of cognitive competencies to solve decision problems. Third, we hypothesize that both laboratory and real-world decision behavior will be better predicted by a combination of behavioral and brain- based constructs than by either source of information alone. [unreadable] [unreadable] To test these predictions, we propose an integrated program of behavioral and functional neuroimaging research. Middle aged (40-50y) and peri-retirement (60-70y) adults will be initially screened on a variety of standard cognitive tasks. Two fMRI experiments will use an economically valid advertising paradigm, in which subjects will view a series of products accompanied by valenced facts with source attribution. One experiment will manipulate source credibility, while the other will manipulate information load. Unlike standard neuroeconomic paradigms (e.g., decisions between gambles), subjects will report their judgments about the items at a later time period (e.g., mimicking the advertising-purchasing delay). We will create regression models that include both cognitive measures of behavior and neuroscience measures of brain function, such as the degree of frontal compensation. Our critical, albeit exploratory prediction, is that both product attitudes and real world financial behavior (e.g., the risk level of the subjects' portfolios) will be best explained by using both behavioral and neuroscience constructs. [unreadable] [unreadable] The decision making of older adults is subject to many biases, from a difficulty in accurately integrating information to the increased reliance on emotional information, and these biases lead to problems in investment, health-care choice, and other economic arenas. The proposed experiments will elucidate the changes in the elderly brain that underlie decision-making biases. Better understanding of this brain-behavior relation could lead to interventions or clinical advances that remediate problems with decision making in the elderly, resulting in benefits to public health. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]
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0.958 |
2009 — 2010 |
Huettel, Scott A |
RC1Activity Code Description: NIH Challenge Grants in Health and Science Research |
From Phenotype to Mechanism: Mapping the Pathways Underlying Risky Choice
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This application addresses Broad Challenge Area (03) Biomarker, Discovery and Validation, with specific Challenge Topic, 03-MH-101, Biomarkers in Mental Disorders. We propose to leverage an ongoing collaboration among faculty from several disciplines to identify individual differences in risky decision making and to map biomarkers of those individual differences. Maladaptive decisions when faced with risk are hallmarks of many disorders, including depression, schizophrenia, and anxiety. We adopt a mechanistic research framework that risk-seeking behavior reflects, not one phenotype, but distinct effects of risk information upon multiple brain systems, each with potentially independent genetic contributions. Experiments aggressively integrate cutting- edge methods -- behavioral economics, individual difference neuroimaging, developmental cognitive neuroscience, and genome sequencing -- to determine why some people make risky decisions and others do not. Our project builds upon extensive preliminary data, validated research methods, a collaborative research team, and a substantial research infrastructure. By integrating these methods, we will identify biologically predictive markers of risky decision making that cut across clinically-defined categories of mental disorders. Adaptive decision making, especially under risk, is critical for mental and physical health. This project will identify biomarkers, both neural and genomic, for individual differences in the processes that underlie risky decision making. Mapping these processes will provide important and novel insight into mental health disorders notable for pathologies of decision making.
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0.958 |
2016 — 2021 |
Huettel, Scott A Platt, Michael L [⬀] |
R01Activity Code Description: To support a discrete, specified, circumscribed project to be performed by the named investigator(s) in an area representing his or her specific interest and competencies. |
Mechanisms Regulating Complex Social Behavior @ University of Pennsylvania
? DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Appropriate social behavior often demands self-control. Both neuropsychiatric disorders (e.g., schizophrenia, addiction) as well as disease states (e.g., HIV positivity, brain lesions) can lead to changes in the neural mechanisms involved in self-control - often with effects most strongly manifested in social contexts. Understanding how the brain identifies social contexts, evaluates potential outcomes, and guides selection of appropriate behavior would provide insight into these disorders and the development of new treatments. Recent work - including from our group - demonstrates that neural activity in temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) signals information relevant for identifying social context, that these social signals influence valuation processes in orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and ventral striatum (VS), and that social value signals inform reward comparison processes in ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Yet, this now-standard model for social decision making leaves unanswered key questions about brain function and dysfunction, especially how social contexts can potentiate maladaptive decision making observed in disorders. We propose and empirically test a novel two-stage neural circuit model of social decisions. The first stage involves identification of a social context, which we hypothesize relies on computations in TPJ that shape subsequent valuation and decision processes elsewhere. In a second stage, control processes shape ongoing behavior toward social goals (e.g., maximizing the acquisition of information about others, shaping interpersonal reputations), which we refer to as social control. We propose to evaluate this model using an integrated set of experiments conducted in humans and monkeys. We will use similar tasks that manipulate the nature and quality of social contexts (e.g., cooperative or competitive) for decision making, involve both social and non-social reward outcomes, and provide complementary information from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in humans, neurophysiological recordings in monkeys, and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) in both species (including simultaneous neural recordings in monkeys).
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0.928 |
2016 — 2019 |
Baldin, Ilya Huettel, Scott Von Windheim, Jesko Glass, Jeffrey (co-PI) [⬀] Amsden, Jason |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Pfi:Bic - a Smart, Flexible, Large-Scale Sensing and Response Service System (Lassaress) For Monitoring and Management of Ground, Air and Waterborne Contaminants
Oil leakage from underground cable systems leads to environmental damage and economic loss. World-wide, the impact is estimated at $2 billion in direct economic losses. When environmental and productivity costs are considered, the total harm from underground oil leakage is estimated to be much higher. The goal of this project is to develop a cost-effective, scalable, smart underground oil leak location system that can be modified to serve a host of applications in leak detection and pollution measurement including applications in gas leak detection, water leak detection, and pollution monitoring. The techniques developed through this project have the potential to improve future generations of distributed networked sensors through application of cloud computing technologies. This new smart system, when implemented to detect underground leaks, and more generally, pollutants is expected to make significant, positive environmental impacts. Given the team's past successful work in underground oil leak detection and mitigation, an immediate impact in scaling oil leak detection is expected. At the same time, the mini-mass spectrometers can in the future be configured to monitor many contaminants, thereby addressing a variety of environmental challenges.
Project objectives are: 1) build the core smart system components, 2) develop core algorithms and build the smart system test bed, and 3) validate the test bed functionality in the field. First, mini-mass spectrometers will be fabricated, and a dynamically configurable cloud computing network will be developed with the goal of connecting multiple mini-mass spectrometers into an analytical system to collect leak source data. Collected data will be analyzed and leakage locations will be identified based on distributed sensor readings using an algorithm developed to dynamically optimize sensor positioning and identify leak location. Finally, the smart system will be implemented in the field to monitor a controlled, low-level, perfluorocarbon tracer leak. The expected outcome of this program is a low cost, self-configurable, highly flexible, mobile system that can locate leaks and contaminants with minimal human intervention.
The team consists of faculty at Duke University (Pratt School of Engineering, Nicholas School of the Environment, and Psychology and Neurosciences), and staff at UNC's Renaissance Computing Institute (Chapel Hill, NC) as well as industry partners, PFT Technology, LLC (Bellmore, NY; small business). Duke's team combines material science, computer engineering, mass spectrometry, behavioral science and commercialization expertise. RENCI brings expertise in the latest cyber tools and technologies. Our industry collaborator, PFT Technology, LLC is recognized internationally as the leader in the field of perfluorocarbon-based leak detection, demonstrating successful leak detection programs for utilities in both the U.S. and the U.K.
The project will impact multiple levels of students. Two PhD students (Duke) will be employed by the project. Professional Masters and PhD students in the Nicholas Environmental Innovation and Entrepreneurship Certificate Program (Duke) will, through their coursework, actively follow the progress of this research program to learn important aspects of translational research activities. Undergraduate students in Duke's Pratt School of Engineering Pratt Fellows and Grand Challenge Scholars programs will be offered opportunities to work on the project through these programs. This project will also engage students and faculty at Jordan High School by offering engagement opportunities such as independent study or science fair projects.
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