CAREER: The neural mechanisms underlying visual target and task switching

人类智力的标志之一是我们能够根据情况的整体背景灵活地调整我们的思维和行为，这种特征被称为“认知灵活性”。在最简单的行为任务中，需要认知灵活性的是视觉“目标切换”范式，它涉及在搜索不同目标的背景下观看相同的视觉刺激。作为扩展，“任务切换”范例通常涉及基于一个刺激属性(例如，无论形状如何匹配形状)搜索目标，然后搜索不同的属性(例如，匹配颜色而不考虑形状)。虽然位于视觉、颞叶和额叶的大脑区域之间的相互作用被认为在灵活地切换目标和任务方面发挥了重要作用，但允许认知灵活性的特定神经机制仍然鲜为人知。事实证明，理解这些神经机制是一项相当大的挑战，至少在一定程度上是因为相关脑区的神经活动反映了不同类型信息的异质和难以理解的混合。在国家科学基金会的支持下，Nicole Rust博士和他的同事将记录受试者执行目标和任务切换范例时的神经信号，然后他们将使用新开发的计算数据分析技术来梳理大脑用来在目标和任务之间灵活切换的神经机制。包括强迫症和自闭症在内的一系列疾病都与认知灵活性基础机制的缺陷有关，因此对这些机制如何运作的基本理解对于开发治疗方法很可能是重要的，以解决这些机制出错时出现的障碍。此外，对认知灵活性背后的神经机制的基本理解，有可能使对构建人工系统感兴趣的机器人和计算机视觉社区受益，这些人工系统可以在目标和任务之间灵活切换，以帮助人类。基于这样一种观念，即科学发现的体验不能仅通过课堂体验来理解，该项目的结果也将被纳入一门专注于分析神经数据的本科教育课程。最后，拉斯特博士将通过提供数据来支持NSF的其他协调努力，这些努力的目的是在STEM相关课程的教学中利用真实数据，并使那些本来无法获得此类数据的人能够参与发现科学。

One of the hallmarks of human intelligence is our ability to flexibly adapt our thinking and behavior based on the overall context of a situation, a trait known as "cognitive flexibility." Among the simplest behavioral tasks that require cognitive flexibility are visual "target switching" paradigms that involve viewing the same visual stimuli in the context of searching for different targets. As an extension, "task switching" paradigms often involve searching for a target based on one stimulus property (e.g., match the shape regardless of color) followed by searching for a different property (e.g., match the color regardless of shape). While interactions between brain areas that lie in the visual, temporal and frontal lobes are thought to play important roles in flexibly switching between targets and tasks, the specific neural mechanisms that allow for cognitive flexibility remain little-understood. Understanding these neural mechanisms has proven to be a considerable challenge, at least in part because the neural activity in the brain areas involved reflect heterogeneous and difficult-to-understand mixtures of different types of information. With support from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Nicole Rust and colleagues will record neural signals as subjects perform target and task switching paradigms and they will then use newly-developed computational data analysis techniques to tease apart the neural mechanisms that the brain uses to flexibly switch between targets and tasks. An array of disorders including obsessive compulsive disorder and autism have been linked to deficits in the mechanisms underlying cognitive flexibility, thus developing a basic understanding of how these mechanisms function is likely to be important for developing treatments to address the disorders that arise when these mechanisms go awry. Additionally, a basic understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying cognitive flexibility has the potential to benefit the robotics and computer vision communities interested in constructing artificial systems that can flexibly switch between targets and tasks to assist humans. Motivated by the notion that the experience of scientific discovery is one that cannot be fathomed through classroom experiences alone, the results of this project will also be incorporated into an undergraduate educational course focused on analyzing neural data. Finally, Dr. Rust will participate in the big data effort by making the data available to support other coordinated NSF efforts that aim to make use of real data in the teaching of STEM related courses and to enable participation in discovery science by those who would otherwise have no access to such data.