2003 |
Tse, Peter U |
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. |
Form Analysis in the Visual Motion Pathway
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): If the brain processes information in an approximately modular fashion, how do specialized modular circuits that process radically different types of information cooperate in order to solve common problems? The present proposal seeks to investigate an instance of this general question by focusing on form-motion interactions in the visual pathway. It is important to understand how disparate and perhaps distant neuronal circuits, processing different types of information such as shape and motion, come to interact. Until fairly recently, form analysis was thought to proceed along the ventral pathway in relative isolation of dorsal motion processing. For instance, it was thought that form analysis played little role in solving the correspondence problem in apparent motion. Recent psychophysical data and evidence from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), however, suggest that motion and form are processed together at the earliest stages of visual processing, and continue to interact even at the highest levels of representation. The goal of the proposed research is to determine the neural circuitry involved in form-motion interactions in the visual pathway, and to uncover the nature of the 3D representations of form that are attained rapidly from visual input, which may then guide the analysis of 3D motion in a scene. To this end, several fMRI experiments are proposed to address when, how, and where form and motion interact in the visual system. The primary stimulus probe will be a type of apparent motion developed by the PI, where two discrete images shown in succession appear to be smoothly animated. Theoretical and empirical evidence support the view that this type of stimulus involves a very rapid interaction between the form and motion processing pathways. Taken together, these studies will provide important insights into the specific operations engaged when circuits known to process different types of information interact. Such insights may ultimately aid in the development of more effective cognitive rehabilitation strategies for the treatment of brain injury. Without an understanding of how modules cooperate, science and medicine cannot adequately repair brains where cooperation among modular circuitry has broken down.
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0.936 |
2006 — 2009 |
Tse, Peter |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Mapping Visual Attention With Change Blindness in 3d
Consider the variety of visual scenes that one might encounter over the course of a typical day, and the different ways that visual attention can be allocated from one scene to the next. From searching for keys to shopping for groceries to mingling at a party, attention must be spread over and across the objects in a person's visual environment. The distribution of visual attention is a key component of the perceptual and behavioral functions that have evolved to endow human behavior with its remarkable flexibility and adaptivity. Cognitive scientists have been studying the allocation of attention for many years, but the large majority of these studies have used relatively limited measures of attention, mostly in the context of simple, two-dimensional visual stimuli.
With support of the National Science Foundation, Dr. Tse will develop a new method of measuring the distribution of attention, in all three dimensions of space. This new method takes advantage of the well-established finding that, while global changes are occurring in visual scence (like the lights in a room flickering on and off), a person can detect only local changes that are being attended to (like the movement of a talker's lips). Dr. Tse has developed a way to use local change detection as a means of mapping out the allocation of attention across complex, realistic visual objects and scenes. Such "attentional maps" will provide a rich source of data for testing theories of the functional and neural bases of visual attention.
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0.915 |
2016 — 2020 |
Gray, Charles Tse, Peter Caplovitz, Gideon Sheinberg, David |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Rii Track-2 Fec: Neural Basis of Attention
Non-Technical Description This Research Infrastructure Improvement Track-2 Focused EPSCoR Collaboration (RII Track-2 FEC) proposal is a collaboration between four institutions in New Hampshire, Montana, Nevada, and Rhode Island, namely Dartmouth College, Montana State University, the University of Nevada Reno, and Brown University. The project will develop a greater understanding of attention, which is important to society in multiple ways, including the promotion of worker productivity, driver safety, and vigilance of military and security personnel. The ultimate goal of the project is to develop a unified model of attention that applies across multiple domains, from single cells to large brain circuits. The project will assemble the world?s largest consortium of scientists focused on creating a unified understanding of attention, including seven neurophysiologists, five cognitive neuroscientists, one modeler, and one neurologist. Other goals of the project are to develop lasting collaborations and promote future grant proposals, build research and industrial pipelines for neuroscience trainees, foster the professional development of junior faculty, and extend educational opportunities to traditionally disadvantaged groups, including Native Americans and low socio-economic status students.
Technical Description The project will investigate the neural basis of attention at micro- and macroscopic scales, using a diverse array of brain imaging methods, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), and electrocardiography (EcoG), in humans and monkeys. The research will be divided into four themes: 1) Neurophysiological effects of attention on multi-unit patterns and rates of neural firing, 2) The relationship of attention to working memory, 3) Large-scale cortical dynamics of attention, and 4) Tying data together via micro- and macro-circuit models of attention. Three female junior faculty participants will lead a yearly conference for female and under-represented minority (URM) graduate students, post-docs and junior faculty to foster mentoring and career development. The project will also include outreach to middle and high schools, including the development of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) targeting K-12 science teachers.
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0.915 |
2018 — 2020 |
Tse, Peter |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Ncs-Fo: Collaborative Research: Developing Underwater Eeg Electrodes For Octopus Research
The octopus is a social animal, with high intelligence and problem-solving skills, that is very distant from humans in terms of its evolution. This project aims to fabricate neuroelectric sensors and experimental protocols that would enable studying visual and higher level cognitive processes in the octopus while they are engaged in natural behaviors in an underwater environment. This will necessitate development of new engineering solutions for crafting electroencephalography (EEG) sensors that can record signal underwater, new solutions for removing noise artifacts from these highly complicated recordings, as well as careful design of experiments that could study such behaviors in a virtual-reality environment. While the brain of the octopus is very different from that of the human, it does support well-defined cognitive functions. Therefore, understanding whether and how octopuses' brains implement processes such as learning, attention, habituation, and surprise can produce new and important understandings of how neurobiological systems can support function. This research might reveal that the neural substrates of cognitive function in the octopus are organized according to principles that differ drastically from those found in in humans.
This EAGER project has several aims. It will develop the first underwater EEG, first testing well-validated paradigms on humans performing task underwater and benchmarking against known waveforms. The electrodes will be constructed so that they do not corrode in salt water. It will also develop high-quality virtual reality stimulation that could impact octopuses' behavior in an underwater environment. It will utilize EEG frequency-tagging techniques to determine processing of environmental stimulus by the octopus. This will allow studying whether octopuses present characteristic responses that are analogous to surprise, adaptation, working memory and attention effects (in primates and other vertebrates). The study will also allow answering how and in what manner do octopuses sleep. All data, artifacts and modeling software will be made publicly available and constitute an important resource for the community. The results of this study could impact our general understanding of how brains support complex cognitive functions, with direct relevance to artificial intelligence efforts.
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.
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0.915 |
2021 — 2023 |
Tse, Peter |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Ncs-Fo: Collaborative Research: Electroencephalography of Octopus Bimaculoides Using Frequency Tagging
Complex brains have evolved in only three lineages on planet earth: chordates, such as ourselves, arthropods, such as honeybees, and molluscs. Among the molluscs the octopus stands out as the brainiest and smartest. In fact, an octopus has about half a billion neurons, which is comparable to the number of neurons in the cortex of a dog. Just as wings evolved many times, in the birds, bats and pterodons, complex brains have evolved to solve similar problems, such as vision and planning, in convergent ways. To understand universal principles of neural organization and computation, it would be beneficial to learn about the commonalities and differences between our brains and perhaps the most different brain on the planet, that of the octopus. While some anatomical work has moved in this direction, there has been a relative paucity of work looking at octopus cognition. Because octopuses cannot talk, Behavior and objective measurements of their neural activity is one way to assess their cognition. A great deal of work has focused on observing octopus behavior. Relatively little research has focused on octopus neurophysiology, primarily because it is a technically difficult issue to either place invasive electrodes inside an octopus, or to place non-invasive electrodes on slippery octopus skin, especially when they can easily remove them with their arms.
This project will focus on developing a non-invasive way to get measurements of octopus neural activity using underwater electroencephalography (EEG). Researchers will place the octopuses on densely packed, fixed electrodes on the floor of a container, rather than attempting to place electrodes on the octopus, as one does in human EEG. This approach takes advantage of the fact that octopuses naturally want to occupy a small crevice and peer out onto the scene, because they are opportunistic and stealthy ambush hunters, rather like cats, who themselves have to avoid being eaten. The goal of the present work is to continue to develop co-PI Besio’s tripolar electrode technology in an interactive cycle with EEG experiments that ask questions about octopus cognition. To date, the team has struggled with various technical problems such as corrosion caused by saltwater, or artifacts in the EEG signal introduced by water. The team’s goal is to develop a fully functioning octopus EEG system over the next two years of funding, to gather sufficient preliminary data to put in a larger proposal concerning octopus cognition using EEG in the future. This project will allow the scientific community to learn how the most 'alien' brain on earth functions, potentially teaching scientists about universal principles of neural computation, which could shed light on how human brains work and also inform design in artificial intelligence systems that could benefit society.
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.
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0.915 |