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

许多人类活动，比如在拥挤的走廊上行走，或者为了避免事故而驾驶汽车，都需要在控制自己的行动的同时做出快速决定。研究人员对人类的决策和运动控制进行了广泛的(但基本上是独立的)研究，因此人们对它们的联合影响仍然知之甚少。这一职业奖使用计算建模、神经生理学记录和行为方法来解决不断演变的决策过程和人类伸展过程中的运动控制之间的实时相互作用。许多神经系统疾病，如中风和帕金森氏症，都涉及运动和认知障碍。这项研究计划旨在揭示支撑运动和决策之间相互作用的机制，为有针对性的、针对患者的运动和认知障碍的神经康复铺平道路。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、教育和社区推广之间建立可持续和互惠的管道。调查员坚定地致力于多样性，并为代表不足的少数群体和女本科生和研究生提供培训机会。将开发开放获取的教育游戏和互动程序，并向小学生和高中生免费提供，目的是提高人们对神经疾病的认识，并激励新一代STEM科学家和行业领袖。研究人员融合了最优反馈控制和决策科学的计算模型，以了解与目标相关的证据如何影响在线运动控制。受试者的动作提供了对不断发展的决策过程的实时测量，以评估1)快速的视觉运动反馈环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)奖励是否提高了在决策过程中调节运动活力和视觉运动反馈的有效性的需要。该项目由感知、行动和认知(PAC)计划、已建立的刺激竞争研究计划(EPSCoR)和决策、风险、这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.