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High-probability grants
According to our matching algorithm, Maurice A. Smith is the likely recipient of the following grants.
Years |
Recipients |
Code |
Title / Keywords |
Matching score |
1993 |
Smith, Maurice A [⬀] |
F31Activity Code Description: To provide predoctoral individuals with supervised research training in specified health and health-related areas leading toward the research degree (e.g., Ph.D.). |
Minority Predoctoral Fellowship Program - Nigms @ Johns Hopkins University |
0.957 |
1994 — 2000 |
Smith, Maurice A [⬀] |
F31Activity Code Description: To provide predoctoral individuals with supervised research training in specified health and health-related areas leading toward the research degree (e.g., Ph.D.). |
Minority Predoctoral Fellowship Program @ Johns Hopkins University |
0.957 |
2012 — 2016 |
Smith, Maurice 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. |
Dissociating Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motor Learning in Alzheimer's Disease
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Alzheimer's disease (AD) currently impairs an estimated 5 million people in the United States and that number is likely to double in the next 20 years. The social and economic burdens of AD are strikingly high, especially when patients lose independence as the disease progresses. AD is widely considered to be a disease of declarative memory. However, as it progresses motor deficits severely impair activities of daily living and largely determine when patients will lose independence and require nursing home placement. However, the mechanisms for the motor dysfunction in AD are poorly understood and little studied. Traditional neuroanatomical models maintain that AD damages areas critical for declarative memory but largely spares areas responsible for motor learning. However, more recent work challenges the idea of a single motor learning system, suggesting that there are at least two distinct neural systems encoding motor skill, one of which relies on areas damaged in AD. These systems are based on distinct coordinate frames for the representation of the spatial sensorimotor information that underlies motor learning. One reference frame is intrinsic (referenced to the body) and the other extrinsic (referenced to the environment). We hypothesize that the pathological changes observed in AD lead to a specific impairment in processing extrinsically-represented sensorimotor information. We propose to develop two complementary motor learning paradigms that can differentially measure the intrinsic and extrinsic components of motor skill acquisition: visuomotor rotation learning and motor sequence learning. Pilot studies with both paradigms suggest that healthy controls show a pattern where skill is acquired in both intrinsic and extrinsic frames. In contrast, preliminary dta from AD participants suggest a specific but profound impairment of extrinsic learning. These paradigms will provide converging evidence about which aspects of skill acquisition are preserved in AD and which are impaired. We will also use stereotactically-guided brain stimulation to determine the neuroanatomical specificity of intrinsic versus extrinsic reference frames for motor learning and to identify candidate sites for therapy. With this knowledge, retained forms of motor learning can be leveraged to maintain function, and innovative strategies such as noninvasive brain stimulation can be tested to ameliorate deficient forms of motor learning so that patients can prolong independence.
|
1 |
2022 — 2025 |
Smith, Maurice [⬀] |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Identifying Novel Memory Traces That Improve Action Precision
How do we remember a phone number long enough to dial it or remember two numbers long enough to add them together in our head? This type of memory, called short-term working memory, is a cognitive store that allows a few items to be recalled and acted upon within a short span of time. Early studies of working memory suggested that we can typically remember about 5 to 9 unrelated items. More recent work suggests a true capacity of just 3-4 distinct items. A briefer but far more vivid form of short-term memory, called sensory memory, has been identified in the visual, auditory, and tactile systems. Visual sensory memory, for example, is remarkable in that it can provide incredibly detailed information about 64 or more items in recent visual scenes, a far greater capacity than shown for working memory. The present work will study a previously unidentified proprioceptive sensory memory (proprioception refers to information about the position and movement of the body). Like visual sensory memory, proprioceptive sensory memory provides a high-precision but short-lasting store for sensory information and for information about recent motor actions. The hypothesis is that both type of memories, when available, provide high-precision input into the sensorimotor neural circuitry involved in action planning, allowing for extremely high levels of motor precision.<br/><br/>The goals of this proposal are to develop an understanding of the relationship between the availability of novel high-precision proprioceptive and motor command memories and the spatiotemporal properties of improvements in motor precision. The team will begin by identifying the existence of a high-precision sensory memory for proprioception by determining the link between the availability of this novel memory and improved action precision. They will then characterize the extent and time course of the rapid reduction in time scale variability that this memory can provide. Finally, the research will parcel out two novel high-precision hyper-transient memories, proprioceptive sensory memory and motor command memory, based on both spatial and temporal properties, using geometric characterization and direct experimental manipulation. The planned work will develop a framework for understanding how recent sensory and motor memories can work both separately and in combination to improve motor precision during voluntary movement. This project provides a fertile research training opportunity to apply computational and engineering principles and tools to the study of learning and memory in neural circuits for trainees ranging from the undergraduate to the postdoctoral level, and introduces community middle school and high school students to how learning and memory shape the ability to precisely control actions in humans.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
|
0.915 |