Spatiotemporal ERP Modeling & Brain Development

描述（由申请人提供）：该奖项的候选人是一位博士大气物理学家，寻求将他的职业生涯转向神经科学的定量研究。他是美国国家科学基金会资助的大气动力学研究人员。凭借他在物理学、非线性动力学、时间序列分析、应用数学和复杂系统计算机模拟方面的强大背景，他已经在追求这一新的职业方面取得了显着的进步。在他的发展心理生物学博士后研究期间，他表现出成为多学科团队重要成员的强大潜力，并明确致力于定量神经发育研究，他对文献的贡献和广泛的初步结果证明了这一点。该奖项的科学目标是为在成人、婴儿和胎儿灵长类动物中进行的事件相关电位（ERP）实验开发新的定量分析方法，然后将这些实验结果与模拟潜在神经系统发育的计算神经模型联系起来。关于MMN（错配负性）和P3a“古怪”ERP组件的源网络的特定假设将用新方法进行测试。结果将导致新的临床和诊断工具的发展，以评估婴儿和无反应成人皮质功能的完整性。他的职业奖励计划经过精心设计，以极大地促进他的科学发展。他有独特的需求，将满足具体的临床和教学资源和正式的课程工作，包括负责任的研究行为的研讨会。他将受到一个团队的认真指导和建议，该团队是根据他们对合作的兴趣和可用性、专业知识和资源的适当性以及以前在促进研究人员进步方面的成功而选择的。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The candidate for the award is a PhD atmospheric physicist seeking to redirect his career into quantitative research in neuroscience. He was a highly productive NSF funded investigator in atmospheric dynamics. With his strong background in physics, nonlinear dynamics, time series analysis, applied mathematics and computer simulations of complex systems he has already made remarkable strides in pursuit of this new career. During his post-doctoral fellowship in developmental psychobiology, he has demonstrated a strong potential to be a significant member of a multi-disciplinary team and a definite commitment to quantitative neuro-developmental research, witnessed by his contributions to the literature and extensive initial results. The scientific objective of the award is to develop new quantitative methods of analysis for event related potential (ERP) experiments performed in adults, infants and fetal primates, and then to link these experimental results to computational neural models that will simulate development of the underlying neural systems. Specific hypotheses regarding source networks of the MMN (mismatch negativity) and P3a "oddball" ERP components will be tested with the new methods. Results should lead to the development of new clinical and diagnostic tools that assess the integrity of cortical function in infants and non-responsive adults. His career award plan has been carefully structured to substantially contribute to his scientific development. His has unique needs that will be met with specific clinical and didactic resources and formal course work including a seminar in responsible conduct of research. He will be conscientiously mentored with guidance and advice from a team of individuals chosen for their interests in collaboration and availability, appropriateness of expertise and resources, and previous success in fostering the progress of researchers.