CAREER:Single-neuron mechanisms of social attention in humans

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The ability of people to focus visual attention on salient objects or people in our visual field is one of the most fundamental cognitive functions in humans. This ability is critically important in order to learn and interact socially with others. In particular, visual attention to social stimuli (i.e., social attention) plays a vital role in guiding social behaviors. Impaired social attention underlies many psychiatric and neurological disorders, such as autism and ADHD. However, very little is known about human visual attention at the single-neuron level. The goal of this CAREER project is to understand the underlying neural processes involved in human social attention using technology that provides the highest degree of spatial resolution (location of brain activity) and temporal resolution (timing of brain activity) currently available. The investigators will collaborate with neurosurgeons and record directly from neurons in the human brain, as patients undergo treatment of epilepsy. These neurons reside in brain regions involved in attention, decision making, or processing of socially relevant images. The research will elucidate how single neurons, within specific brain regions, contribute to visual attention. Results will provide novel insight into how these processes differ in psychiatric and neurological disorders. This study will contribute to teaching materials and outreach to clinical communities. The data acquired and analysis tools developed will be made freely available to other researchers in order to advance science in the field of cognitive neuroscience research and human neural recordings.The research team will investigate the neural circuits of social attention in humans for both goal-driven attention (Aim 1) and stimulus-driven attention (Aim 2). The research will: (1) characterize social attention signals in the medial temporal lobe (amygdala and hippocampus) and prefrontal cortex (in particular the orbitofrontal cortex); (2) analyze attention signals from different brain regions using comprehensive functional connectivity analysis; and (3) compare neural mechanisms for goal-driven vs. stimulus-driven attention. Together, with the unique human single-neuron recordings, the research will address important fundamental neuroscience questions by providing comprehensive analysis of the neural circuits underlying social attention in humans. The outcomes of this research are important to understand the neural mechanisms of impaired visual attention in patients with psychiatric and neurological disorders and will be informative for development of future targeted intervention strategies. This research will also integrate undergraduate education and generate tools and methods to enable new research groups to conduct state-of-the-art human single-neuron recordings.This project is jointly funded by the Cognitive Neuroscience Program and by the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).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.