CRCNS: Integrative Information Processing

描述（由申请人提供）：整合来自各种来源的感觉信息以产生运动命令是人类行为的基础。多感觉和感觉运动整合障碍影响人类健康的许多方面，从社会互动和沟通到复杂环境中的运动。例如，将目光引导到声音的位置是一项复杂的信息处理任务，需要将听觉输入信号转换为运动命令来移动眼睛。这一过程在人类忽视患者中受损。在这里，我们提出了一种联合计算和实验的方法来阐明这个问题。具体来说，我们将研究当猴子对声音进行扫视时，灵长类动物下丘、听觉皮层、外侧顶叶内皮层和上丘的尖峰序列是如何编码声音位置信息的。我们将探索作为声音位置（目标1）和眼睛位置（目标2）的函数的响应模式的本质。特别有趣的是空间敏感度的形状和眼睛位置对空间敏感度的影响。除了考虑传统类型的空间敏感性外，我们还将使用新的计算工具来探索是否可以从这些响应模式中提取信息，并提供高维数据的紧凑描述（目标3）。我们还将开发新的计算技术来改进实验方法，包括自适应采样和交互式可视化（目标4）。这些目标将增强我们对从感觉输入到运动输出的神经处理的理解。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Integrating sensory information from a variety of sources to produce motor commands is fundamental to human behavior. Impairments in multisensory and sensorimotor integration impact numerous aspects of human health, ranging from social interactions and communication to movements in a complicated environment. For example, directing gaze to the location of a sound is a complex information-processing task requiring the conversion of auditory input signals into motor commands to move the eyes. This process is impaired in human neglect patients. Here, we propose a joint computational and experimental approach to illuminate this problem. Specifically, we will investigate how information about sound location is encoded in the spike trains in primate inferior colliculus, auditory cortex, lateral intraparietal cortex, and superior colliculus when monkeys perform saccades to sounds. We will explore the nature of the response patterns as a function of sound location (Aim 1) and eye position (Aim 2). Of particular interest will be the shape of spatial sensitivity and the effects of eye position on spatial sensitivity. In addition to considering conventional types of spatial sensitivity, we will use novel computational tools to explore whet information can be extracted from these response patterns and provide compact descriptions of the high dimensional data (Aim 3). We will also develop new computational techniques to improve the experimental methods, including adaptive sampling and interactive visualization (Aim 4). These aims will enhance our understanding of neural processing from sensory input to motor output. The issues of multisensory and sensorimotor integration investigated here bear on a variety of neurological disorders such as those arising from stroke and other types of brain lesions. A better understanding of the transformation from sensory input to motor response will aid in identifying the pathophysiological substrates in neurological disorders with impaired sensorimotor integration.