RESEARCH TRAINING IN LEARNING, DEVELOPMENT, AND BIOLOGY

本提案要求一笔新的培训经费，用于支持罗切斯特大学脑与认知科学系内的学习、发展和生物学的博士前和博士后培训项目。该培训项目包括来自大脑和认知科学系的九名教员，他们都研究人类和动物复杂行为的学习和发展。这个项目反映了我们对学习研究综合方法的潜力的认识：目前计算建模、神经生理学和行为研究的方法已经开始有足够的形式相似性，可以相互提供信息；同时，他们为学习和发展问题带来了独特的视角，因此他们的融合可以带来新的见解。因此，我们的课程旨在培养学生从行为，计算和神经生理学方法的联合角度研究学习和发展可塑性。围绕我们在大学的小组是在每个相关领域和系统的成熟功能的额外项目。每年招收博士生2人，博士后2人；当与其他支持来源相结合时，这将允许一个大约5-7名博士生在这个项目中，以及其他相关项目的博士生和博士后学生。学员将通过脑与认知科学系进入，并将接受学习、发展与生物学、语言与认知、感知和基础神经科学等核心课程和高级研讨会的培训，以及行为研究、计算建模和神经科学研究的研究方法、课程和研究经验的培训。我们的项目教师拥有5个不同学科的学位，我们通过各种不同的方法方法对重叠问题进行研究，这使得培训的广度成为可能。我们目前为10名博士生提供咨询，重点关注学习和发展可塑性，他们是我们能够吸引的高质量学生的典范。

This proposal requests a new training grant to support a predoctoral and postdoctoral training program in Learning, Development, and Biology, housed within the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Rochester. The training program includes nine faculty members from the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, all of whom study learning and development of complex behaviors in humans and animals. This program reflects our recognition of the potential for a synthetic approach to the study of learning: current approaches to computational modeling, neurophysiological, and behavioral investigations have begun to share enough formal similarities to be mutually informative; at the same time, they bring distinctive perspectives to the problem of learning and development, so that their integration can lead to new insights. Our program therefore aims to train students in the study of learning and developmental plasticity from the joint perspectives of behavioral, computational, and neurophysiological approaches. Surrounding our group at the University are additional programs in the mature functioning of each of the relevant domains and systems. We request support for 2 predoctoral students and 2 postdoctoral students per year; when combined with other sources of support, this will permit a larger group of approximately 5-7 predoctoral students in this program, as well as predoctoral and postdoctoral students in other related programs. Trainees will enter through the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and will be trained in core courses and advanced seminars in Learning, Development & Biology, Language & Cognition, Perception, and Basic Neuroscience, and in research methods, courses, and research experience in behavioral studies, computational modeling, and neuroscience studies. This breadth of training is made possible by the fact that our program faculty have degrees in 5 different disciplines and ourselves conduct research on overlapping problems from a variety of different methodological approaches. We currently advise 10 predoctoral students with a focus on learning and developmental plasticity, who exemplify the high quality of students we are able to attract.