Career: Moving During Deliberation-Online Interplay Between Deciding and Acting

许多人类活动，例如在拥挤的走廊中行走或驾驶汽车以避免事故，都涉及在控制自己的动作时做出快速决策。研究人员已经广泛（但基本上是独立的）研究了人类的决策和运动控制，因此他们的联合影响仍然知之甚少。这个CAREER奖项使用计算建模，神经生理记录和行为方法来解决人类接触过程中不断发展的决策过程和运动控制之间的实时相互作用。许多神经系统疾病，如中风和帕金森病，涉及运动和认知缺陷。该研究计划旨在揭示运动和决策之间相互作用的机制，为运动和认知缺陷的有针对性的患者特定神经康复铺平道路。长期目标是通过关注决策和行动控制之间的相互作用，在研究、教育和社区外展之间建立可持续和互惠的管道。调查员对多样性有坚定的承诺，并提供培训机会，代表性不足的少数民族和女性本科生和研究生。将开发开放式教育游戏和互动程序，并免费提供给小学生和高中生，旨在提高对神经系统疾病的认识，并激励新一代多元化的STEM科学家和行业领导者。研究人员将最佳反馈控制和决策科学的计算模型合并，以了解目标相关证据如何影响在线运动控制。受试者的运动提供了一个不断发展的决策过程的实时测量，以评估1）快速视觉反馈回路如何整合和表达与目标相关的证据和潜在的能量成本，以及2）奖励是否会提高决策过程中调节运动活力和视觉反馈功效的需求。该项目由感知，行动和认知（PAC）计划共同资助，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识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 human activities, such as walking in a crowded hallway or steering a car to avoid an accident, involve making fast decisions while controlling one's movements. Researchers have extensively (but largely independently) studied human decision making and movement control so that their joint influence remains poorly understood. This CAREER award uses computational modeling, neurophysiological recording, and behavioral methods to address the real-time interplay between the evolving decision-making process and movement control during human reaching. Many neurological disorders such as stroke and Parkinson’s disease involve both motor and cognitive deficits. This research program aims to uncover the mechanisms that underpin the interplay between movement and decision making, paving the way for targeted, patient-specific neurorehabilitation of motor and cognitive deficits. The long-term goal is to create sustainable and reciprocal pipelines between research, education, and community outreach by focusing on the interplay between decision making and movement control. The investigator has a strong commitment to diversity and provides training opportunities underrepresented minorities and women undergraduate and graduate students. Open-access educational games and interactive programs will be developed and made freely available to grade-school and high-school students, with the aim of raising awareness about neurological disorders and inspiring a new and diverse generation of STEM scientists and industry leaders.The investigators merge computational models from optimal feedback control and decision sciences to understand how goal-related evidence influences the online control of movement. The subject's movements provide a real-time measure of the evolving decision-making process in order to assess 1) how rapid visuomotor feedback loops integrate and express both goal-related evidence and potential energetic cost and 2) whether reward boosts the need to modulate movement vigor and the efficacy of visuomotor feedback during decision making.This project is jointly funded by The Perception, Action, and Cognition (PAC) Program, the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), and the Decision, Risk, and Management Sciences (DRMS) Program.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.