Integrating Sense of Direction in Cortical Control of Navigation

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Proposal Number: 0702057Proposal Title: Integrating Sense of Direction in Cortical Control of NavigationPI Name: Si, Jennie PI Institution: Arizona State UniversityThe objective of this research is to study a specific set of sensory motor integration tasks to gain fundamental understanding of cognition based navigational control. The approach is to chronically record from the anterior thalamic nucleus and the motor areas simultaneously in behaving rats. The proposed behavioral apparatus consists of a directionally controlled robotic vehicle which the rat can steer left, right, or straight ahead by pressing one of three corresponding levers. At the start of each trial, the vehicle is preset to move in a biased direction that requires a sequence of corrections from the rat's lever control to reach a destination. The proposed work also attempts at modeling and interpreting how neural information from sensory and motor areas interact and impact on one another in relation to the cognitive direction based navigational control. Intellectual merit. The ability to study neuronal mechanism of high order cognition has just become possible with technological advancement and the fast developing knowledge from relevant disciplines. The proposed research is a concrete step to break the ground toward an understanding of skilled movement that requires sophisticated sensory motor integration.Broader impacts. As most of the research has focused on specific cue-directed movements, the proposed work has the potential to break new ground and provide a cognitive perspective of the complex movement control systems with quantitative and neurophysiological evidence obtained through chronic neural recordings. New brain machine interfaces may become possible relying on cognition based navigation and control.