
Yale E. Cohen - US grants
Affiliations: | University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States | ||
Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, United States | |||
Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA |
Area:
auditory system, prefrontal cortexWebsite:
http://www.med.upenn.edu/auditoryresearchlab/We are testing a new system for linking grants to scientists.
The funding information displayed below comes from the NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools and the NSF Award Database.The grant data on this page is limited to grants awarded in the United States and is thus partial. It can nonetheless be used to understand how funding patterns influence mentorship networks and vice-versa, which has deep implications on how research is done.
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High-probability grants
According to our matching algorithm, Yale E. Cohen is the likely recipient of the following grants.Years | Recipients | Code | Title / Keywords | Matching score |
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1992 — 1993 | Cohen, Yale E | 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. |
Analysis of Auditory Space in the Forebrain @ Stanford University |
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1994 | Cohen, Yale E | 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. |
Auditory Space in the Forebrain @ Stanford University |
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2001 | Cohen, Yale E | 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. |
Neural Mechanisms of Uni-Modal and Cross-Modal Attention @ Dartmouth College The long-term objective of this research is to examine the neural mechanisms underlying spatial attention and, in particular, different forms of spatial attention. Attention modulates the brain's representations of sensory stimuli and helps extract those aspects of the stimuli that are immediately relevant. For example, when searching for someone in a crowd, attention can be used to key in on a selected visual feature, such as color. Similarly, when listening to a symphony orchestra, attention allows us to focus on the music being played by particular sections (e.g., the violin section) of the orchestra. Besides working on individual senses, attention can cross stimulus-modality boundaries and link evens that involve different senses. For example, in the ventriloquism effect, if a person's lips are moving, their lips are perceived to be the source of the speech, regardless of the fact that the speech source originates elsewhere. While attention can be conceptualized as being uni-modal or cross-modal, it is unclear whether these forms of attention are mediated by common or distinct neural mechanisms. One hypothesis is that attention is controlled by a single "supra-modal" attentional system. An alternative hypothesis is that spatial attention results from the cooperation of different auditory and visual attentional system. Human studies, using psychophysical and electrophysiological techniques that were designed to test these alternative hypotheses have provided evidence in support of both hypotheses. This important issue can be probed further by comparing the responses of single neurons that are recorded while a monkey is engaged in tasks that probe uni-modal or cross-modal spatial attention. The advantage of this technique is that couples the high spatial and temporal resolution of single-unit recordings with the power of the awake, behaving monkey preparation. This proposal uses this technique to examine whether, in the lateral intraparietal area, attention is mediated through a supra-modal mechanism or through modality-dependent mechanisms. Since the macaque is a good model of human cortical function, this study has ramifications for the treatment of human disease. For example, underlying attention may increase our understanding of neuropathologies that have an attentional element such as neglect and schizophrenia. |
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2003 | Cohen, Yale E | R55Activity Code Description: Undocumented code - click on the grant title for more information. |
Auditory Responses in the Parietal Cortex @ Dartmouth College neurons; visual stimulus; auditory stimulus; parietal lobe /cortex; cues; neural information processing; vocalization; operant conditionings; electrophysiology; Macaca mulatta; behavior test; |
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2005 — 2006 | Cohen, Yale E | 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. |
Ethological Categorization and the Prefrontal Cortex @ Dartmouth College [unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Communication is 1 of the fundamental components of both human and non-human animal behavior. While the benefits and importance of language in human evolution are obvious, other non-human communication systems are also important. These communication systems are important, because for most, if not all, species, they are critical to the species' survival. For example, auditory communication signals (i.e., species-specific vocalizations, SSVs) play a fundamental role in the socioecology of several species of non-human primates, such as rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta). While neurophysiological experiments examining the representation of SSVs in the non-human primate cortex have a long and rich history, there have not been any studies, to date, that have tested how neurons code the abstract qualities of SSVs. This grant proposal examines this important issue by testing how neurons in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vPFC) code the information conveyed by SSVs. The experiments in this grant proposal test the following general hypothesis: vPFC neurons are preferentially modulated by the information conveyed by SSVs and not by their spectrotemporal properties. In EXPERIMENT #1A, we test whether vPFC neurons code the information conveyed by SSVs in superordinate (e.g., food versus nonfood) or subordinate (high-quality food or low-quality food) categories. In EXPERIMENT #1B, we test the hypothesis that vPFC neurons respond to transitions between SSVs based on presentation context and the information conveyed by the SSVs. Together, these studies will provide a more comprehensive understanding of the role that the vPFC has in representing the information conveyed by the SSVs and the role of the PFC, in general, in the representing information in category-dependent formats. [unreadable] [unreadable] |
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2005 — 2009 | Cohen, Yale E | 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. |
Auditory Response Properties of the Prefrontal Cortex @ Dartmouth College DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Communication is one of the fundamental components of human and non-human animal behavior. The ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vPFC) in rhesus monkeys has recently been identified as a cortical area that plays an important role in auditory-object and vocalization processing. This grant proposal tests the response properties of vPFC neurons in order to determine its role in auditory-object processing. In Aim #1, we construct the spectrotemporal receptive field (STRF) of vPFC neurons to determine how the vPFC codes the features of ensembles of vocalizations and ripple noise (an artificial stimulus with properties similar to vocalizations). We test two alternative hypotheses. First, if the vPFC is involved in low-level feature extraction, as measured by our STRF model, we hypothesize that (1) a significant proportion of vPFC neurons have significant STRFs and that (2) the STRFs are accurate predictors of a neuron's response to an auditory stimulus. The second, alternative hypothesis is that if the vPFC is involved in computations related to higher-order mechanisms beyond feature extraction, such as auditory-object processing, we hypothesize that a significant proportion of vPFC neurons do not have significant or predictive STRFs. In Aim #2, we test the selectivity of vPFC neurons for the spatial and non-spatial attributes of an auditory stimulus. Since the vPFC is thought to be part of a pathway involved in auditory-object processing, we hypothesize that vPFC neurons should be modulated preferentially by the non-spatial attributes of an auditory stimulus. We hypothesize that the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex are more selective for the non-spatial attributes of an auditory stimulus but only when monkeys attend selectively to these attributes. To test this hypothesis, we compare the selectivity of vPFC neurons to auditory stimuli when monkeys attend to changes in the spatial or non-spatial attributes of an auditory stimulus and (2) do not attend overtly to either of these attributes. In Aim #3, we test whether vPFC neurons respond to auditory and visual communication signals that convey similar information. We hypothesize that vPFC neurons will respond preferentially to stimuli that transmit complementary information. To test this hypothesis, vPFC activity is obtained while species-specific vocalizations and the visual images of the facial expressions that typically accompany or do not accompany the production of these vocalizations are presented. |
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2008 — 2012 | Cohen, Yale E | 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. |
Representations of Communication Signals in the Auditory Cortex @ University of Pennsylvania DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Communication is one of the fundamental components of human and non-human animal behavior. The lateral belt of the auditory cortex (LB) in rhesus monkeys has recently been identified as a cortical area that plays an important role in vocalization processing. This grant application, which uses auditory-object analysis as a theoretical framework, tests the role of LB neurons in processing communication signals, both species-specific vocalizations and human spoken words. In Aim 1, we test the capacity of neural activity in the lateral belt (LB) to differentiate between different vocalizations (auditory objects). We hypothesize that (1) LB neurons preferentially code different vocalizations as opposed to their spectrotemporal acoustic features and that (2) the capacity of LB neurons to code different vocalizations increases as the number of simultaneously tested neurons increases. In Aim 2, we test the hypothesis that LB neurons respond in a categorical manner. Moreover, we hypothesize that the neural sensitivity of individual LB neurons mirrors the monkeys'perceptual sensitivity. This Aim is accomplished by obtained extracellular recordings of LB neurons while monkeys participate in a delayed category-to-match task. During this task, the monkeys categorize two human phonemes and morphed versions of these phonemes. In Aim 3, we test the hypothesis that LB activity is less sensitive to the variance that occurs naturally in vocalizations than to types of variance that are not found naturally. We also hypothesize that this sensitivity mirrors the monkeys'behavioral sensitivity. This aim is accomplished by correlating recordings of LB neurons with the monkeys'performance on a delayed category-to-match task. During this task, the monkeys categorize vocalizations and these sets of artificial stimuli. |
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2010 — 2018 | Cohen, Yale E | R13Activity Code Description: To support recipient sponsored and directed international, national or regional meetings, conferences and workshops. |
Conferences For Advances and Perspectives in Auditory Neurophysiology (Apan) @ University of Pennsylvania DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The annual meeting of Advances and Perspectives in Auditory Neurophysiology (APAN; http://www.med.upenn.edu/APAN/) is a one-day satellite meeting of the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience; the first APAN symposium was in 2003. APAN is held the day prior to the start of the Society for Neuroscience meeting. In 2014, this date will be November 14. The typical attendance of APAN is approximately 200 participants. Because the funda-mental goal of hearing science and auditory neuroscience is to understand the biological basis of sound perception and to use this knowledge to mitigate hearing disorders, the primary Aim of APAN is to bring together the cohort of auditory neuroscientists who are engaged in identifying the neural correlates (both cortical and sub-cortical) of auditory behavior-including the perceptual, cog-nitive, and sensorimotor factors-that underlie communication processing, multi-sensory processing, and neural plasticity. Bringing together this group of scientists in this forum is critical because many of th theoretical approaches, techniques, and methodologies of this research field are relatively unique and not shared by other hearing researchers. Consequently, a focused symposium spurs the scientific enterprise in this important research area. Our second Aim is to facilitate meaningful and educational inter-actions between junior and senior auditory neuroscientists throughout the program and to promote meritorious women and minority scientists. In our selection criteria for oral presentations, we have consistently, since our inception, highlighted the contributions of junior scientists as well as women and minority scientists. In 2013, we established poster teasers that give a cadre of junior scientists' opportunities to draw attention to their posters as a short oral presentation. In 2014, we have established a Young Investigator Spotlight talk that will feature an outstanding junior scientist We plan on continuing to offer travel awards for junior scientists that offset the cost of travel t APAN. At a programmatic level, we are proud that women scientists have always been a substantial contingent of members on the Program Committee and, more currently, on the Organizing Committee. Finally, APAN is extremely relevant to the scientific mission of the NIDCD for three reasons. First, most scientists at this symposium are funded through NIDCD mech-anisms, and conduct basic research on auditory processing and plasticity, both with and without hear-ing prosthetics. Second, APAN provides an out-standing training opportunity for junior auditory neuro-scientists. Finally, the translational and clinical impact of many of the presentations is high due to their focus on fundamental mechanisms underlying auditory perception, whose dysfunction can lead to various hearing-related problems. |
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2011 — 2012 | Cohen, Yale E | 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.) |
Behavioral and Neural Correlates of Auditory-Object Integration and Segregation @ University of Pennsylvania DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Objects are the core building blocks of our auditory-perceptual world. However, when our current understanding of auditory-object processing is compared to the putative steps needed to process auditory objects, it is clear that there are key gaps in our knowledge. The most fundamental and important gap is our lack of understanding of the relationship between the acoustic features of an auditory stimulus, neural activity, and perception. Indeed, what we know of this relationship is lacking at the most fundamental level: the manner in which stimuli are integrated and segregated into one or more perceptual auditory objects. Two key innovations of this proposal are designed to fill this gap in our understanding. First, the PI directly tests the relationship between the acoustic features of auditory stimuli, single-neuron activity, and subjects' behavioral reports of auditory-object integration and segregation. Second, the PI records and contrasts neural correlate of auditory-object processing in both the primary auditory cortex and the secondary auditory cortex (i.e., the anterolateral belt). Aim #1 tests whether neurons in the auditory cortex code for (1) the acoustic features of an auditory stimulus, or (2) the monkeys' behavioral reports of auditory-object integration and segregation. This Aim is achieved by evaluating the hypothesis that neural activity in the primary auditory cortex is reliably modulated by the acoustic features of an auditory stimulus but is not modulated by the subjects' behavioral reports. In contrast, it is also hypothesized that neural activity in the secondary auditory cortex (the anterolateral belt) is reliably modulated by the subjects' behavioral reports but is not modulated by the acoustic features of an auditory stimulus. Both hypotheses are tested by recording extracellular from neurons in the auditory cortex while monkeys participate in a one-interval, two-alternative-forced-choice task that requires them to listen to an auditory stimulus and report whether they hear one or two auditory objects. |
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2014 — 2018 | Cohen, Yale E | 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. |
Representations of Sound Processing in the Auditory Cortex @ University of Pennsylvania DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Sound perception is mediated by neural computations in the ventral auditory pathway. This pathway begins in the core auditory cortex-specifically, the primary auditory cortex and the rostral field R. These core areas project to the anterolateral (AL) and middle-lateral belt regions of the auditory cortex. In turn, these belt regions project directly and indirectly to the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vPFC). Although there is broad agreement that this pathway is critical for sound perception, there is no consensus on the contribution of different regions of this pathway to sound perception. This grant proposal closes this knowledge gap by identifying how sound perception arises from neural activity and the hierarchical flow of information processing in the ventral auditory pathway. Thus, the overarching goal of this grant proposal is to identify the systems-level properties of the brain that contribute to sound perception. In Aim #1, we identify the hierarchica flow of information processing in the ventral pathway that underlies a listener's ability to segregate and group auditory stimuli into one or more sounds. To address this gap in our knowledge, neural activity is recorded while monkeys participate in an auditory-streaming task. This one-interval, two-alternative forced-choice task requires the monkey to report whether they hear one or two auditory streams. The auditory stimulus is a sequence of tone bursts. On a trial- by-trial basis, we systematically manipulate the properties of the sequence, which changes the probability that the monkey reports one or two auditory streams. While the monkeys are participating in this task, spiking activity is recorded in core auditory cortex, AL, and vPFC. The data generated from this task test the hypotheses that (1) neural activity in core auditory cortex is modulated by the spectral and temporal properties of the auditory stimulus, but this modulation correlates poorly with the monkey's behavior; (2) neural activity in AL is better correlated with behavioral performance; and (3) vPFC activity correlates best with the monkey's behavior. In Aim #2, we identify the neural-population codes in the ventral pathway underlying a listener's tolerance to identity-preserving changes in a sound. To address this knowledge gap, we record neural activity while monkeys listen and attend to different sounds and identity-preserving transformations of these sounds. We hypothesize that, in the ventral pathway, neural-population codes underlying a listener's tolerance to identity-preserving changes in a sound are first found in AL. More specifically, we hypothesize that (1) AL spiking activity is more invariant to identity-preserving changes in a sound than activity in core auditory cortex; (2) average sparseness is the same in core auditory cortex and AL; and (3) on a neuron-by-neuron basis, sparseness is positively correlated with local-feature sensitivity but inversely correlated with single-neuron tolerance. |
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2015 — 2016 | Cohen, Yale E (co-PI) Recanzone, Gregg Howard [⬀] |
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.) |
Causal Role of Pfc in Auditory Perception and Age-Related Plasticity @ University of California At Davis DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Selective auditory attention allows individuals to selectively attend to a dining companion's voice in a loud, noisy restaurant or toward the location of different musicians in a band. Attentional dysfunction is one of the hallmarks of human aging. Indeed, whereas aging's effect on hearing can often be characterized by changes in the audiogram, nearly half of all humans over 75 years of age suffer from dysfunction in perceptual and cognitive components of audition, such as selective auditory attention, even in cases where the audiogram is normal. These deficits lead to social isolation, depression, and other types of cognitive dysfunction. The neural mechanisms underlying auditory attention, the causal role that different brain areas play in attention, and the effect that aging has on attentio are not known. In the auditory system, stimuli are hypothesized to be processed by two cortical pathways: (1) a dorsal pathway from the auditory cortex to the prefrontal cortex (dPFC) that mediates spatial components of audition and (2) an analogous ventral pathway that mediates non-spatial components of audition in adjacent regions of the prefrontal cortex (vPFC). This anatomical segregation leads us to our hypothesis that the PFC is a major participant in the top-down control of selectively attending to different auditory features (spatial and non-spatial. Further, we also hypothesize that natural aging reduces the effectiveness of this top-down control, giving rise to age-related auditory attention deficits. Aim #1 tests the causal role of th PFC in auditory attention. Young adult animals participate in a spatial or non-spatial auditory attention task while either the vPFC or the dPFC is selectively inactivated by cortical cooling. We hypothesize that inactivation of the dorsal pathway will cause selective behavioral deficits on the spatial task, whereas inactivation of the ventral pathway will cause selective behavioral deficits on the non-spatial task. Aim #2 tests the effect of aging on auditory attention by comparing the results of cortical cooling in young vs. aged animals. We hypothesize that, in the geriatric monkeys, the ability of directed attention to improve behavioral performance will be impaired relative to young adult monkeys. Second, we hypothesize that the PFC activity in geriatric monkeys is diminished and, as a consequence, inactivation of either pathway will impair performance less in geriatric monkeys relative to younger adult monkeys. These results will provide the foundation of knowledge necessary to develop remedial therapies to limit or reverse attention deficits in the aged. |
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2015 — 2019 | Cohen, Yale E Fishman, Yonatan |
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. |
Multi-Scale Study of Auditory Scene Analysis in the Ventral Auditory Pathway @ University of Pennsylvania DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Sound perception and auditory scene analysis are thought to be mediated by the ventral auditory pathway, including core auditory cortex, the medial lateral and anterolateral belt regions of auditory cortex, and the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. The dorsal auditory pathway, in contrast, is thought to mediate spatial and audiomotor behaviors and includes core auditory cortex, the caudolateral and caudomedial belt regions of auditory cortex, and the parietal and frontal cortices. Our current knowledge regarding the roles of these pathways in auditory scene analysis and auditory perception is very limited. The overarching goal of this grant proposal is to identify the systems-level, circuit-level, and lamina specific properties of the auditory brain that contribute to sound perception and auditory scene analysis. To achieve this goal, monkeys will participate in a sound-detection task, which requires them to detect a target tone burst that is embedded within an auditory sequence comprised of other tone bursts. By systematically manipulating the spectral and spatial attributes of the sequence, we change the probability that the monkey can detect the target. This task provides an objective behavioral measure of auditory scene analysis because the target tone burst can only be detected when the sequence is segregated into two auditory streams. While the monkey is participating in this task, neural activity is recorded in one (in Specific Aim #1) or two simultaneously (in Specific Aim #2) brain regions using multi-contact, linear-array electrodes. Electrodes are inserted orthogonal to the cortical laminae to enable us to characterize the laminar distribution of neural activity in each brain region. For each cortical lamina and brain region, we test the correlation between neural activity (i.e., single-unit activit and neural-population responses [e.g., multi-unit activity]) and the monkey's behavioral performance. Specific Aim #1 identifies the neural circuitry in auditory cortex that mediates the integration of spatial information with spectral information to form perceptual representations of an auditory scene. Specific Aim #2 identifies the differential contributions of feedforward versus feedback connections between the prefrontal cortex and the auditory cortex to the neural mechanisms and computations underlying auditory scene analysis. Individually and collectively, the Specific Aims provide valuable, quantitative insights into neural bases of sound perception and auditory scene analysis. |
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2016 | Cohen, Yale E | R13Activity Code Description: To support recipient sponsored and directed international, national or regional meetings, conferences and workshops. |
International Conference On Auditory Cortex @ University of Pennsylvania PROJECT SUMMARY A fundamental goal of hearing research and auditory neuroscience is to understand the neurophysiological mechanisms that underlie sound perception and auditory cognition and to use this knowledge to mitigate hearing disorders. One of the premier venues for promoting scientific progress toward this goal is the International Conference on Auditory Cortex (ICAC; http://auditorycortex.org/). In 2017, ICAC will take place on September 10-15 in Banff, Alberta, Canada; this will be the first time that ICAC will be held in North America. ICAC is the only multi-day meeting that focuses exclusively on the neurophysiological underpinnings of auditory perception. Further, because ICAC takes place in a cloistered setting and without any parallel sessions, it maximizes formal and informal scientific discourse in a collegial atmosphere. Aim #1 is to bring together auditory scientists to exchange ideas, methods, and concepts on auditory perception. The goal of the 2017 meeting is to promote our understanding of the neurophysiological mechanisms that underlie sound perception and auditory cognition and to use this knowledge to mitigate hearing disorders. In particular, the organizers of ICAC are interested in attracting scientists that (1) employ methodologies and conceptual/theoretical paradigms that are often novel to studies of auditory cortex; and (2) whose research focuses on studying the structure and function of the auditory cortex through a synthesis of both human and animal research. Aim #2. To facilitate meaningful and educational interactions between junior and senior auditory neuroscientists during the program and to broaden the pipeline for women and minority scientists in auditory research. ?Trainee talks? give a cadre of students and post-doctoral fellows opportunities to advertise their posters as a short oral presentation. Select speaker slots will be reserved for junior faculty members and post-doctoral fellows. Further, we will award a number of travel grants for graduate students and post-doctoral fellows that offset the cost of attending ICAC to significantly increase the footprint of trainees at the 2017 ICAC. This judging also provides an opportunity for the senior scientists on the Program Committee to provide valuable oral feedback to these trainees. ICAC is extremely relevant to the scientific mission of the NIDCD. This conference supports the NIDCD mission in three ways. First, the program brings together successful junior and established investigators who represent a substantial component of NIDCD-sponsored programs to foster new ideas in hearing research. Second, the conference provides a superb environment in which to educate and engage students and junior faculty in our field. Third, the program features numerous presentations on clinically relevant research into temporary and permanent hearing loss, vulnerability to acoustic noise, tinnitus, cognitive and psychological factors influencing hearing (attention, tinnitus), and language acquisition. |
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2018 — 2021 | Balasubramanian, Vijay (co-PI) [⬀] Cohen, Yale E |
T32Activity Code Description: To enable institutions to make National Research Service Awards to individuals selected by them for predoctoral and postdoctoral research training in specified shortage areas. |
@ University of Pennsylvania Project Summary The overall objective of this training program is to identify, motivate, and train the next generation of neuroscientists in Computational Approaches to the Neuroscience of Audition and Communication (CANAC). This objective maps elegantly onto the 2017-2021 NIDCD Strategic Plan and its Priority Areas that aim to understand the neural basis of hearing and communication at different scales of analysis and in real-world listening environments. These Priority Areas require not only rigorous experimental manipulations and data collection but also coherent computational theory to understand the data and to make testable predictions for future science. As such, we propose a T32 training program to develop the next-generation of scientists grounded in the experimental neuroscience of auditory and communication systems, while also being thoroughly trained and versed in theory and computation. A unique aspect of this training proposal is its integrative philosophy which leverages a highly collaborative and cross-disciplinary approach to science fostered by faculty on the Penn campus: students will master techniques from diverse traditional fields to become independent investigators vested with skills in both computation and experimental neuroscience. Our program curriculum includes core and elective courses designed to achieve this breadth of knowledge and is consolidated by suggested research laboratory rotations that will be taken by interested first- and second-year predoctoral students from associated graduate groups. Upon successful completion of a preliminary exam at the end of the second year, interested students will apply formally to our program, based on a written statement of interests and plans, a thesis proposal, grades, and letters of recommendation. Accepted trainees will receive two years of funding for PhD-thesis work and individual advising on current training options, funding opportunities, and future career plans. Students will receive cross-disciplinary training: they will be co-mentored by two faculty members, one whose expertise is computational and another whose expertise is in the experimental neuroscience of auditory and communication systems. Additionally, because of the direct translational and clinical importance of audition and communication, clinical faculty will also serve as members of the trainees' thesis committees. We will instruct all of our trainees in the responsible conduct of research, and will continue efforts to enhance diversity of our applicants via targeted recruitment, broad advertising, and dissemination of program outputs. We have devised a sophisticated evaluation team to keep track of progress and outcomes, and plan a comprehensive training program for predoctoral trainees, including journal clubs, seminar series, and an annual retreat. Together, these activities comprise an integrative, directed training program that will develop a talented and diverse pool of students to become long-term leaders in the field of auditory and communication neuroscience. ! |
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2019 — 2021 | Cohen, Yale E | R13Activity Code Description: To support recipient sponsored and directed international, national or regional meetings, conferences and workshops. |
Conferences For Advances and Perspectives in Auditory Neuroscience (Apan) @ University of Pennsylvania PROJECT SUMMMARY The annual meeting of Advances and Perspectives in Auditory Neuroscience (APAN; http://www.med.upenn.edu/APAN/) is a one-day satellite meeting of the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience; the first APAN symposium was in 2003. The typical attendance of APAN is ~225 people; mostly, graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and other trainees. The primary Aim of APAN is to bring together the cohort of neuroscientists who are engaged in identifying the neural correlates (both cortical and sub-cortical) of auditory behavior ?including the perceptual, cognitive, and sensorimotor factors? that underlie communication, multisensory processing, and neural plasticity. Bringing together this group of scientists in this forum is critical because many of the theoretical approaches, techniques, and methodologies of this research field are relatively unique. Consequently, a focused symposium spurs the scientific enterprise in this important research area. Our second Aim is to facilitate meaningful and educational interactions between junior and senior neuroscientists throughout the program and to promote women and those in underrepresented groups in communicative and auditory neuroscience. In our selection criteria for oral presentations, we have consistently, since our inception, highlighted the contributions of junior scientists as well as women and those from underrepresented groups. In 2013, we established ?poster teasers? that give a cadre of junior scientists? opportunities to draw attention to their posters as a short oral presentation. In the previous grant cycle, we established a ?Young Investigator Spotlight? talk that features an outstanding junior scientist. In the current proposal, we are offering a second Spotlight talk and will increase the number of travel awards trainees to offset the cost of travel to APAN. Both of these changes facilitate a more inclusive APAN community. Finally, APAN is extremely relevant to the scientific mission of the NIDCD for a variety of reasons. For example, the majority of scientists at APAN are funded through an NIDCD mechanism and conduct basic research on communication, auditory processing, plasticity, and hearing prosthetics. Further, APAN provides an outstanding training opportunity for junior neuroscientists. Finally, the translational and clinical impact of many of the presentations is high due to their focus on fundamental mechanisms underlying auditory perception, whose dysfunction can lead to various hearing-related problems. We seek funding to continue this flagship conference. |
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2019 — 2021 | Balasubramanian, Vijay (co-PI) [⬀] Cohen, Yale E |
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. |
Coincidence and Continuity: Uncovering the Neural Basis of Auditory Object Perception @ University of Pennsylvania SUMMARY Auditory objects are the foundational building blocks of our auditory-perceptual world. Auditory objects are formed, in part, by the brain?s ability to extract and organize spectral and temporal regularities from the acoustic environment. This ability allows a person to hear their friend?s voice amongst the noise of a crowded restaurant. In many cases, temporal regularities are formed across multiple frequency channels. This example and several others suggest that the brain can track this temporally correlated neuronal activity across multiple frequency channels and uses this activity as a means to form auditory objects and organize the auditory environment. Despite its clear importance to auditory perception, there is little to no direct evidence in support of the hypothesis that temporal regularities are encoded as temporally correlated activity and that this activity can guide behavior. To fill this information gap, we combine rigorous psychophysics with high-density neuronal recordings and computational theory to identify the interaction of temporal regularities with dynamic network structures and perception. Thus, the overall goal of this proposal is to identify the mesoscopic circuits of the auditory cortical hierarchy that learn temporal regularities ?i.e., coincidence and continuity? of the environment and how neuronal representations of these regularities contribute to two key components of auditory perception: figure-ground segregation and to perceptual invariance, respectively. In Aim 1, we posit that figure-ground segregation is facilitated by the dynamic imprinting into cortical circuits of instantaneous correlations (i.e. temporal coincidence) across frequency bands of the acoustic target. Thus, we test whether tone bursts with synchronous onsets increase the intrinsic noise correlations of cortical neurons, which, in turn, facilitates a listener?s ability to hear a figure stimulus amongst a noisy ground stimulus. In Aim 2, we hypothesize that stimulus invariances are learned from smooth (i.e., temporally continuous) changes in the spectrotemporal structure of auditory stimuli. Based on this theory, we hypothesize that the brain interprets temporally continuous variations in an auditory stimulus as natural transformations of underlying auditory objects and drives hierarchical learning of invariant perceptual representations. Individually and collectively, the Aims provide valuable, quantitative insights into auditory perception and its underlying neuronal mechanisms. The PIs are uniquely qualified to conduct this research with complementary expertise in psychophysics, population neuronal recordings, and computational/theoretical neuroscience. |
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2020 — 2021 | Cohen, Yale E Geffen, Maria Neimark [⬀] Kording, Konrad P. (co-PI) [⬀] |
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. |
Neuronal Circuits For Context-Driven Bias in Auditory Categorization @ University of Pennsylvania NEURONAL CIRCUITS FOR CONTEXT-DRIVEN BIAS IN AUDITORY CATEGORIZATION In everyday life, because both sensory signals and neuronal responses are noisy, important cognitive tasks, such as auditory categorization, are based on uncertain information. To overcome this limitation, listeners incorporate other types of signals, such as the statistics of sounds over short and long time scales and signals from other sensory modalities into their categorization decision processes. At the behavioral level, such contextual signals bias categorization by shifting the listener's psychometric curve. At the neuronal level, categorization requires a transformation of sensory representation into a representation of category membership that is modulated by these contextual signals. While categorical representations have been found in the cortex, the cell types and neuronal mechanisms supporting the emergence of these representations remains unknown. Furthermore, the mechanisms by which neuronal categorical representations are modulated by contextual signals, giving rise to a behavioral bias, have not been explored. Our goal is to identify the contribution of specific cell types to categorization and to understand the neuronal mechanisms for how contextual signals bias auditory categorization. Multiple studies have demonstrated that neurons in auditory cortex (AC) and the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) are involved in auditory categorization. Based on the well-described circuit architecture of the AC, recent studies, and our preliminary data, we propose a series of hypotheses that delineate the role of excitatory-inhibitory circuits within AC in creating and biasing categorical stimulus representations and for the role of PPC-AC projections in driving the source for the bias signal. To test these hypotheses, we train mice in a two-alternative-forced choice task in which mice categorize the task, associations). frequency of a ?target? sound into one of two overlapping categories (?low? or ?high?). While mice participate in this we systematically manipulate three bias signals (short-term and long-term stimulus statistics, and cross-modal Thisdesign allows us to frame the cognitive task within a Bayesian framework, which generates formal computational models for the function of specific neuronal cell types that are tested experimentally. behavioral activity. category. in auditory We will combine this and computational framework with electrophysiological recordings and optogenetic manipulations of neuronal First, we will test whether distinct neuronal cell types in AC differentially encode information about stimulus Second, we will test whether and how specific inhibitory neuronal cell types in AC mediate context dependence auditory categorization. Third, we will test whether and how cortico-cortical feedback mediates context dependence in categorization. Aligned with the goals of the BRAIN initiative, our project will deliver a mechanistic framework for a cortical circuit supporting a complex behavior. These results will quantitatively address an important open question to what extent the same or distinct neuronal populations integrate information across multiple temporal scales and across sensory modalities, generalizing or specializing the representation of the bias in categorization. |
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