Collaborative Research: Emergent motor timing influences perceptual timing

许多现实世界的行为，如敲击音乐节拍，扔球或过马路，都依赖于感知，认知和运动动作之间的精确计时。幸运的是，我们的运动系统通常与我们的感知和认知过程无缝地协同工作。尽管它们在真实的世界中是如何协同工作的，但这些行为方面的研究主要是在实验室中单独进行的。虽然这种方法允许科学的严谨性，并为每个子系统提供了重要的见解，但它很少涉及它们之间的相互作用，而这可能是理解人类行为的基础。更好地理解知觉、认知和运动行为的时间方面是如何相互关联的，也有可能推动技术创新，例如，在认知神经修复术中，一种新型的人机界面，用于帮助瘫痪患者和截肢患者。识别认知，知觉和运动功能之间的时间相互作用具有为运动和知觉时序受损的人群开发新的康复范例的其他翻译潜力。该研究项目旨在评估感知和运动控制中的时间是否以及如何涉及确保无缝整合和塑料共同修饰的共享机制。实验方法结合了运动技能，在增强现实环境中投球，以及时间感知任务。目的1探讨如何从离散投掷动作出现的运动计时修改知觉计时。目标2将这个问题扩展到需要有节奏的投掷动作的情况。目标3考察运动和知觉时间的习得性耦合是否长期持续。总之，这种定量的方法来理解知觉和运动时序之间的联系，将有助于发展一个统一的理论，在现实世界中的时间控制。女性研究者团队还确定了多种外展活动，以促进和宣传科学研究和STEM教育的整合，并增加认知，感知和运动科学中的少数群体代表性。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Many real-world behaviors, such as tapping to a musical beat, throwing a ball, or crossing the street, depend on precise timing among perception, cognition, and motor action. Luckily, our motor systems usually operate seamlessly in concert with our perceptual and cognitive processes. Despite how they work together in the real world, these aspects of behavior have been largely studied separately in the laboratory. While that approach allows scientific rigor and has provided significant insights into each subsystem, it says little about their interaction, which may be fundamental to understanding human behavior. A better understanding of how the temporal aspects of perceptual, cognitive, and motor behaviors are interrelated also has the potential to advance technological innovations, e.g., in cognitive neural prosthetics, a novel human-computer interface for helping paralyzed patients and patients with amputations. Identifying the temporal interactions among cognitive, perceptual, and motor functions has other translational potential for developing new rehabilitation paradigms for populations with impaired motor and perceptual timing. This research program aims to evaluate whether and how timing in perception and motor control involves shared mechanisms that ensure seamless integration and plastic co-modification. The experimental approach combines a motor skill, throwing a ball in an augmented reality environment, with a time perception task. Objective 1 explores how motor timing that emerges from discrete throwing actions modifies perceptual timing. Objective 2 extends this question to situations requiring rhythmic throwing actions. Objective 3 examines whether learned coupling of motor and perceptual timing persists in the longer term. Taken together, this quantitative approach to understanding the connections between perceptual and motor timing will contribute to developing a unified theory of timing control in real-world contexts. The female investigator team has also identified multiple outreach activities to foster and communicate the integration of scientific research and STEM education and to increase minority representation in the cognitive, perceptual, and motor sciences.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.