CAREER: Efficient brain connectome dynamics enabling transitions across cognitive domains

职业：高效的大脑连接组动力学实现跨认知领域的转变

• 批准号: 2237285
• 负责人: Sepideh Sadaghiani
• 金额: $ 90万
• 依托单位: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-09-01 至 2028-08-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2237285&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Efficient; brain; connectome; dynamics

In everyday life, we must continuously and rapidly transition across diverse cognitive domains such as memory, language, social, emotional, and perceptual processes. This project aims to show how the brain maintains the ability to rapidly transition among such a broad range of cognitive processes while still being able to maintain stable focus on a single process when needed. Specifically, the researchers predict a key role for the brain’s state of connectivity, i.e., how distributed brain regions synchronize activity at any given moment, with spontaneous transitions between a diverse set of such brain states enable transitions across cognitive domains. Here, brain states are considered diverse when each of the states allows a different set of brain regions to connect with each other. Flexible transitions across cognitive domains contribute to adaptive functioning in all areas and stages of life. Thus, understanding what brain processes contribute to cognitive transitions would have broad implications for mental health, education, and beyond. Directly building on this research, hands-on educational innovations and public outreach are planned to create broader awareness of ongoing brain processes and their implications. Due to the wide-ranging importance of cognitive flexibility, insights gained from this project may have far-reaching consequences for understanding and improving developmental trajectories and enhancing quality of life.The ability to switch across cognitive domains is not well-captured in classic shifting paradigms; Prior paradigms typically require switching across a small set of task rules or stimulus features, often within one cognitive domain. The proposed research introduces a more ecologically valid paradigm in which participants detect target images or sounds that rapidly switch among diverse cognitive domains. This paradigm, by design, increases cognitive transition demands. Because cognitive domain transitions in everyday life occur at various speeds, this work takes a cutting-edge approach to record brain connectivity concurrently in fMRI to best capture slow processes, and in EEG to have sensitivity to fast processes. Specifically, Objective 1 tests whether brain connectivity states occur in sequences that optimize the diversity of how brain regions are connected over time. Objective 2 tests whether sequences of diverse brain connectivity states support behavioral performance when rapidly transitioning across cognitive domains, whilst retaining the ability to focus on individual domains.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.

在日常生活中，我们必须持续快速地跨越不同的认知领域，如记忆、语言、社会、情感和知觉过程。这个项目旨在展示大脑如何保持在如此广泛的认知过程中快速转换的能力，同时仍然能够在需要时保持对单个过程的稳定关注。具体地说，研究人员预测了大脑连接状态的关键作用，即分布式大脑区域如何在任何给定时刻同步活动，不同大脑状态之间的自发转换使跨认知域的转换成为可能。在这里，当每种状态允许一组不同的大脑区域相互连接时，大脑状态就被认为是不同的。跨认知领域的灵活转换有助于在生命的所有领域和阶段发挥适应功能。因此，了解大脑过程对认知转变的贡献将对心理健康、教育和其他方面产生广泛的影响。直接建立在这项研究的基础上，计划实践教育创新和公共宣传，以创造对正在进行的大脑过程及其影响的更广泛的认识。由于认知灵活性的广泛重要性，从这个项目中获得的见解可能会对理解和改善发展轨迹以及提高生活质量产生深远的影响。在传统的转换范式中，转换认知领域的能力并不是很好地捕捉到；先前的范式通常需要转换一小组任务规则或刺激特征，通常是在一个认知领域内。这项拟议的研究引入了一种更具生态有效性的范式，参与者可以检测到目标图像或声音，这些图像或声音可以在不同的认知域之间快速切换。这种范式的设计增加了认知转变的需求。由于日常生活中认知领域的转变以不同的速度发生，这项工作采用了一种尖端方法，在fMRI中同时记录大脑连接，以最好地捕捉缓慢的过程，并在EEG中对快速过程具有敏感性。具体地说，目标1测试大脑连接状态是否出现在优化大脑区域随时间连接的多样性的序列中。目标2测试不同大脑连接状态的序列是否支持在认知领域快速转换时的行为表现，同时保持专注于个别领域的能力。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。