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

许多人类活动，如在拥挤的走廊上行走或驾驶汽车以避免事故，都需要在控制动作的同时做出快速决定。研究人员已经广泛地（但很大程度上是独立的）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。该奖项使用计算建模、神经生理学记录和行为方法来解决人类伸手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，如中风和帕金森氏症，都涉及运动和认知缺陷。该研究项目旨在揭示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缺陷的神经康复铺平道路。长期目标是通过关注决策和运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。研究者对多样性有着坚定的承诺，并为未被充分代表的少数民族和女性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，并向小学和高中学生免费提供，目的是提高对神经系统疾病的认识，并激励新一代多样化的STEM科学家和行业领袖。研究人员合并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运动的在线控制。实验对象的运动提供了决策过程演变的实时测量，以评估1)快速视觉运动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消耗；2)在决策过程中，奖励是否增加了调节运动活力的需要和视觉运动反馈的有效性。该项目由感知、行动和认知（PAC）计划、刺激竞争研究的既定计划（EPSCoR）和决策、风险和管理科学（DRMS）计划共同资助。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，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.