Cynthia F. Moss - US grants

DESCRIPTION (adapted from applicant's abstract): Spatial perception and spatially-guided behavior are central to the healthy functioning of humans, and a broader knowledge of these processes will facilitate treatment and rehabilitation when they fail to develop normally or break down through disease. The studies described in this research proposal will yield data that advance our general understanding of auditory information processing, the perceptual organization of auditory space and spatially-guided behavior. Combining behavioral and neurophysiological experiments, the proposed research program exploits the acoustic imaging system of the echolocating bat, an animal that relies on the spatial analysis of dynamic auditory scenes to guide its behavior. Three inter-related lines of research are proposed: 1) perceptual studies 2) adaptive behavior studies, and 3) neural sensorimotor studies. Perceptual experiments will closely examine the analysis of auditory scenes through the integration and stream segregation of acoustic information over time. Adaptive motor experiments will utilize the bat's head-aim, pinna adjustments and vocalization patterns in target tracking tasks to study perceptually-guided behaviors that depend upon the spatial analysis of auditory scenes. Experiments on sensorimotor mechanisms will focus on the functional organization of the midbrain superior colliculus, a neural structure believed to play a role in transforming polymodal sensory information into signals relayed to brainstem structures that control appropriate orienting responses. Extracellular recording will examine the spatio-temporal patterns of neural activity that encode the direction and distance of an acoustic stimulus, and microstimulation experiments will explore how activation of local neural populations directs orientation-specific behaviors in the echolocating bat. Behavioral experiments will study the effect of superior colliculus lesions on the sensorimotor integration required for target ranging, tracking and interception by bats. Specializations and general principles arising out of the data obtained from this model system can be used to develop a broader understanding of the mechanisms that support perceptual organization and spatially-guided behavior, factors that are believed to hold importance across sensory modalities and in a variety of animal species.

DESCRIPTION (adapted from applicant's abstract): Spatial perception and spatially-guided behavior are central to the healthy functioning of humans, and a broader knowledge of these processes will facilitate treatment and rehabilitation when they fail to develop normally or break down through disease. The studies described in this research proposal will yield data that advance our general understanding of auditory information processing, the perceptual organization of auditory space and spatially-guided behavior. Combining behavioral and neurophysiological experiments, the proposed research program exploits the acoustic imaging system of the echolocating bat, an animal that relies on the spatial analysis of dynamic auditory scenes to guide its behavior. Three inter-related lines of research are proposed: 1) perceptual studies 2) adaptive behavior studies, and 3) neural sensorimotor studies. Perceptual experiments will closely examine the analysis of auditory scenes through the integration and stream segregation of acoustic information over time. Adaptive motor experiments will utilize the bat's head-aim, pinna adjustments and vocalization patterns in target tracking tasks to study perceptually-guided behaviors that depend upon the spatial analysis of auditory scenes. Experiments on sensorimotor mechanisms will focus on the functional organization of the midbrain superior colliculus, a neural structure believed to play a role in transforming polymodal sensory information into signals relayed to brainstem structures that control appropriate orienting responses. Extracellular recording will examine the spatio-temporal patterns of neural activity that encode the direction and distance of an acoustic stimulus, and microstimulation experiments will explore how activation of local neural populations directs orientation-specific behaviors in the echolocating bat. Behavioral experiments will study the effect of superior colliculus lesions on the sensorimotor integration required for target ranging, tracking and interception by bats. Specializations and general principles arising out of the data obtained from this model system can be used to develop a broader understanding of the mechanisms that support perceptual organization and spatially-guided behavior, factors that are believed to hold importance across sensory modalities and in a variety of animal species.

DESCRIPTION (Provided by applicant): This application is a joint effort of the Departments of Psychology, Biology, Animal & Avian Sciences, and Neuroscience and Cognitive Science Graduate Program at the University of Maryland, College Park. We have, at the University of Maryland, an exceptional group of faculty with common research interests in neuroethology. The breadth of experimental approaches and species studied provides us with an opportunity to offer research training at the graduate and postdoctoral levels that is unmatched by any other institution. At the core of the research training program are 14 funded investigators with proven research and training records, most of whom are located in the same building. There is a strong history of scientific interaction among this group, and well-established research collaborations exist among faculty and laboratory groups. The proposed program will provide financial support for two predoctoral and two postdoctoral fellows each year. Our program in neuroethology emphasizes comparative neurobiology, evolution of nervous systems, and animal behavior. The major goal of our program is to produce scientists who have an understanding of brain-behavior relations and evolution in a variety of animal systems. We anticipate that the individuals trained in our program will conduct full-time research in comparative neurobiology and evolution in academic settings. At the very least, our training will ensure that they are able to put their work into the appropriate context and help add to our growing understanding in the fields of neurobiology, evolution and animal behavior. Our focus on comparative neurobiology, evolution and animal behavior will be achieved through formal courses, seminars, an annual symposium, an annual research forum, and most important, daily research activities and cross-laboratory interactions. With the exception of an ethics course, we do not require formal course work for postdoctoral trainees, but they are encouraged to audit appropriate courses. Predoctoral and postdoctoral trainees are recruited nationally. It is noteworthy that the core faculty of our training program have strong records of recruiting and retaining women and minorities, a high priority among the members of our research group.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Fundamental to health human function is the transformation of sensory information to motor commands for adaptive behaviors such as reaching, grasping, tracking, and steering in the environment. A more complete understanding of the mechanisms that support these vital functions of the nervous system will facilitate treatment and rehabilitation when they fail to develop normally or break down through disease. Our CRCNS project takes an innovative, multidisciplinary approach to advance technology and theory on this central problem in neurobiology and medicine, drawing on the coordinated efforts in engineering, systems neuroscience and computational modeling. Specifically, we propose to integrate miniaturized radio telemetry recordings, advanced signal processing, control systems theory, adaptive motor studies and spatial behaviors. Empirical studies will employ an animal model that has evolved a highly successful adaptive sonar-guidance system, the echolocating bat. This mammal actively controls a complex of motor behaviors, guided by dynamic, 3-D spatial information extracted from acoustic signals. We will collect, analyze, and interpret behavioral and neural recordings from a free-flying echolocating bat, and this data will be used in computational models of sensorimotor feedback control and spatial navigation through complex environments. This work will direct the development of new algorithms for adaptive control in robotics and applications in neuromorphic engineering. It will also lay the foundation for a wide range of biomedical applications, such as implantable neural prostheses, ultra-lightweight low power sensors, controllers, medical tool design, and sonar-based assistive medical devices.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Spatially-guided behaviors are central to the healthy functioning of humans, and a broader knowledge of sensorimotor integration will facilitate treatment and rehabilitation when it fails to develop normally or breaks down through disease. Individuals with impaired visual function depend largely on audition to direct their movements, and yet surprisingly, blind individuals may show impaired audiomotor integration, perhaps because they lack the visual input normally used to calibrate this sensorimotor feedback system. To date, little research effort has been directed at understanding the integration of auditory information with motor programs for spatially-guided behavior in mammals, and the studies described in this proposal will yield data that advance our general understanding of auditory information processing and adaptive motor control for spatial orientation. Combining behavioral and neurophysiological experiments, the proposed research program exploits the acoustic imaging system of the echolocating bat, an animal that relies on the spatial analysis of dynamic auditory scenes to guide its behavior. Three inter-related lines of research are proposed: 1) We plan a series of experiments with free-flying echolocating bats engaged in complex spatial tasks, designed to study spatial localization, tracking and obstacle avoidance. 2) We plan neural recording experiments from the midbrain of the bat as it listens to synthesized acoustic stimuli that mimic the dynamic characteristics of sonar signals used for insect capture. We will also record from the midbrain of tethered animals that are actively engaged in echolocation behavior on a platform, allowing us to study both premotor and auditory evoked activity. These experiments will allow us to examine how the bat's sonar signal production shapes auditory responses to echoes. 3) Finally, we will collect, analyze and interpret the first CNS recordings from a free-flying echolocating bat. Our approach is motivated by important results from other systems, which demonstrate that spatio-temporal activity patterns in the nervous system can depend on behavioral state, task and context. Together, these studies have wide-ranging impact for neuroscience, biological research techniques, robotics design, control theory and the development of assistive medical devices.

The PIs and Co-PIs of grants supported through the NSF-NIH Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience (CRCNS) program meet annually. This will be the third meeting of CRCNS investigators. The meeting brings together a broad spectrum of computational neuroscience researchers supported by the program, and includes poster presentations, talks and plenary lectures. The meeting is scheduled for June 3-5, 2007 and will be held in College Park, MD.

The proposed core includes principal investigators who use computer controlled data acquisition and stimulus generation as well as an array of physiological data collection methodologies from single unit studies to ABRs to EEGs and MEGs. Studies in the laboratories participating in this core involve analysis and synthesis of sound, and computer controlled stimulus presentation and data acquisition. Often the stimuli are highly complex, as, for example, speech, animal vocalizations, and harmonic complexes. Though n recent years when new equipment is being purchased, there are efforts made to improve the compatibility of hardware and software across participating laboratories, significant difficulties associated with different equipment setups, methodologies, transducers, and software still impede smooth collaborations among nvestigators. Many of these can be solved at the software level, still others must be solved at the hardware evel, and some can only be solved by creative software/hardware combinations. The goal of this core is to provide highly experienced and well-qualified computer personnel who will become familiar with the ndividual core laboratories and work to overcome incompatibilities, resolve computer and instrumentation differences across laboratories, and suggest efficient and feasible solutions to intransigent incompatibility problems. Additional core goals are to provide general computer troubleshooting and maintenance assistance to core participants, to provide software and hardware assistance in the development of specialized equipment in the laboratories, and to develop and maintain mechanisms for computer-based communication throughout the Core Center.

The broad goal of this project is to understand the processes that support perception and action in complex settings. The research focuses on spatial perception and navigation in the echolocating bat, an auditory specialist that produces high frequency sonar calls and listens to echo returns to determine the location of objects in its environment. The echolocating bat modifies its sonar calls in response to echo information from targets (insect prey) and obstacles, and quantitative analyses of this animal?s adaptive vocal behavior will be used to infer its perception of a changing environment. The biological component of this research combines behavioral and neurophysiological experiments to gain insight to how sensory information from complex scenes is coded and used to guide behaviors. Analysis of behavioral and neural data will be coordinated with modeling efforts and the development of a robotic spatial navigation system. Together, the biological and engineering arms of this research project will generate new knowledge that contributes to a deeper understanding of perception and action in complex, natural environments. Students and postdocs working on this project will learn to translate knowledge and methodologies across biology and engineering, ranging from ethology and neurobiology to computational modeling and robotic demonstrations. These individuals will be poised to make major contributions that impact both basic science and future technology, enabling breakthroughs that cannot be achieved through work solely within traditional disciplines. This research project will contribute to a rich library of multimedia materials that will be made available to educators and scientists working in both the private and public sectors: http://www.bsos.umd.edu/psyc/batlab/movies.html. Collectively, this research has wide-ranging impact for neurobiology, interdisciplinary research training, neuroscience techniques, robotics, and the design of assistive devices.

This proposal requests funds to cover registration costs for graduate students and postdoctoral attendees, as well as for local reporters and undergraduates to attend the 10th International Congress of Neuroethology (ICN), to be held on August 5-10, 2012, at the University of Maryland in College Park. Topics to be covered at the meeting include sensory processing and perception, multisensory signaling, locomotion and motor control, behavioral endocrinology, and genetic control of behavior. Some sessions will highlight new technologies, such as automated analysis of complex behaviors emerging in animal groups and optogenetics. The program is designed to incorporate discussion of brain function at different levels of analysis (from biophysics to field behavior) using a wide range of tools and techniques (including those drawn from physics, mathematics, signal processing, molecular biology, genomics, field observations, psychophysics, and neurophysiology) and examined in a diversity of species, both vertebrate and invertebrate. These different approaches are bound together by a common fundamental goal: to uncover neural, computational, and design solutions to natural biological problems that, once identified, can more easily pursued in other species or implemented technologically.

As humans and other animals move around, the distance and direction between their bodies and objects in their environment are constantly changing. Judging the position of objects, and readjusting body movements to steer around the objects, requires a constantly updated map of three-dimensional space in the brain. Generating this map, and keeping it updated during movement, requires dynamic interaction between visual or auditory cues, attention, and behavioral output. An understanding of how spatial perception is generated in the brain comes from decades of research using visual or auditory stimuli under restricted conditions. Far less is known about the dynamics of how natural scenes are represented in freely moving animals. This project will bridge this gap by studying how freely flying bats navigate through their environment using echolocation. Specifically, a team of engineers and neuroscientists will investigate how the bat brain processes information associated with flight navigation. The project team will provide education and training in engineering and science to public school, undergraduate and graduate students, and to postdoctoral researchers. This research will also contribute to a rich library of materials, including videos and a website, which will be available to educators and scientists working in both the private and public sectors.

This project leverages innovative engineering tools, cutting-edge neuroscience methods and neuroethological modeling to pursue a multidisciplinary investigation of dynamic feedback between 3D scene representation, attention and action-selection in freely moving animals engaged in natural tasks. The echolocating bat, the subject of the project's research, actively produces the acoustic signals that it uses to represent natural scenes and therefore provides direct access to the sensory information that guides behavior. The specific goals of the project are to test the hypotheses that 1) natural scene representation operates through the interplay between sensory processing, adaptive motor behaviors, and attentional feedback, 2) spatio-temporal responses to sensory streams across ensembles of neurons sharpen when an animal adapts its behavior to attend to selected targets, and 3) spatio-temporal sharpening of neural responses enables figure-ground segregation in the natural environment. The project integrates 1) novel acoustic measurements and computational analyses to represent the sonar scene based on reconstructions of the bat's sonar transmitter and receiver characteristics, combined with a 3D acoustic model of the environment, 2) quantitative analysis of the echolocating bat's adaptive echolocation and flight behaviors as it negotiates complex environments, 3) multichannel neural telemetry recordings from the midbrain of the free-flying bat as it attends to targets, obstacles and other acoustic signals in its surroundings, and 4) computational modeling of auditory system architecture, attention and working memory mechanisms. Collectively, this research will deepen the understanding of behavioral modulation of natural scene representation.

This project is funded by Integrative Strategies for Understanding Neural and Cognitive Systems (NSF-NCS), a multidisciplinary program jointly supported by the Directorates for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), Education and Human Resources (EHR), Engineering (ENG), and Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE).

Bats perform feats of aerial agility that are unique in the animal kingdom, and completely unparalleled by even the very best robotic flying machines. This project aims to discover the fundamental principles that underlie how these animals achieve such superior flight control performance. Bat flight is powered by a ?hand-wing,? i.e. the wing is actually an evolutionary adaptation of the mammalian forelimb. As such, the bat hand-wing shares the same basic anatomy as the human hand and is highly sensitive to physical forces. The bat hand-wing is highly deformable and controllable, and is unlike any artificial wing that has ever been successfully constructed. The bat hand-wing is built from a very thin membrane that stretches across its fingers and is covered with small wind-sensitive hairs that enable the animal to ?feel? the complex flow of air that envelopes its wing. This unique set of flight and sensing adaptations presents a powerful model to investigate the mechanisms of sensing, brain computation, and movement control. The multidisciplinary research team will characterize and uncover the complex coupling relationships between aerodynamics, tactile sensing, and neural processing using a combination of engineering and biological techniques. This project will lead to deeper understanding of biological flight control, and will lend insights into ingredients that could one day be used in developing new robotic aerial vehicles capable of bat-like flight performance.

This project integrates state-of-the-art experimental measurements and computational flow modeling with behavioral and neurophysiological experimentation and dynamical control systems neural modeling. Using a multidisciplinary approach, the team will test the hypothesis that bat wing sensors carry information about complex airflow patterns and forces to the sensory cortex. The team will also elucidate sensorimotor mechanisms that guide wing adjustments to enhance lift and prevent stall. To achieve these goals, the research includes, : 1) Quantifying the mechanical stimulus inputs to receptors on the bat hand-wing using stereo-particle-image velocimetry, digital image correlation and computational fluid dynamic modeling; 2) Encoding mechanosensory signals from the wings via multichannel neural recordings from bat primary somatosensory cortex; 3) Closed-loop modeling and real-time control based on decoded output of neural signals. This research will yield a deeper understanding of sensorimotor feedback in biological systems while also contributing novel computational and experimental tools in the arena of sensorimotor control, biophysics, and mechanics, with wide applications to many arenas of neuroscience. The project will leverage the JHU?s Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) program and Baltimore Polytechnic?s Ingenuity Project to engage high school students from diverse backgrounds.

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.