NCS-FO: How Ecology Induces Cognition: Paleontology, Machine Learning, and Neuroscience

我们认为神经系统是动物组织其世界的手段，但深层的时间观表明，组织其大脑的是动物的世界。在3.85亿年前脊椎动物入侵陆地之前，视觉是我们最强大的远距离感觉，在水下时，在短距离内看到的是一个非常模糊的世界，随着眼睛的移动，场景几乎没有变化。一旦在陆地上，视觉在远距离处呈现高对比度的世界，随着眼睛的移动而具有高度的可变性。陆生脊椎动物的大脑比鱼类的大脑更大、更复杂，一个可能的原因是，这种环境为实现遥远目标的长序列行动提供了选择性优势，在某些哺乳动物和鸟类的各种前瞻性认知中达到了最复杂的形式。西北大学的一个研究小组将对规划的计算、行为和神经基础进行研究，这些研究植根于进化和计算感官生态学的视角，并致力于行为学相关的行为。计划是理解行为的机械基础的一种非常重要的能力，因为它参与了各种各样的行为，它的减少有利于冲动和对习惯系统的依赖。到目前为止，规划的实验室研究通常依赖于简化的环境和简单的行为，这些行为要么是有食欲的，要么是（很少）厌恶的，没有感知的目标，其动态性和不可预测性可能是充分分析前瞻性认知的关键。来自神经工程和数据密集型神经科学的方法将被用来解决一个问题，即制定一个更具行为学相关性的，但严格控制的方法来调查规划成为可能。计算和行为工作将用于指导神经生物学干预两个关键的大脑结构，参与反应与反射决策和选择：纹状体和海马。该团队将以远远超出典型学科方法的异常大胆的智力动态范围进行研究，从其植根于进化生物学和计算感官生态学的动机，到最新机器学习方法的扩展，再到虚拟现实系统中活动物行为的单细胞分辨率成像。研究人员将编织在一起的并行协同努力，在模拟规划，一个机电一体化的可重构行为竞技场与机器人捕食者，和双光子单细胞分辨率成像在虚拟现实系统中，导致在行为学相关的背景下显着比目前的实践在实验室环境中更复杂。在神经科学领域，很少有哪一个领域能像对计划的神经基础的研究那样，对社会产生如此大的影响。关于自我控制、棉花糖测试、毅力以及我们在制定长期计划（如退休或为后代适应气候变化）时所面临的挑战的讨论充斥着媒体。该团队的研究目标之一是了解神经系统参与限制前瞻性认知的时间和空间范围的方式，即使在人类中，前瞻性认知也非常有限，朝向可持续性的神经科学。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

We think of nervous systems as the means by which an animal organizes its world, but a deep time perspective suggests that it is rather the world of an animal that organizes its brain. Prior to the vertebrate invasion of land 385 million years ago, vision, our most powerful long-range sense, took in a largely blurry world at short range while underwater, with little variability in scene as the eyes move. Once on land, vision takes in a high contrast world at long range, with high variability as the eyes move. A possible reason for the greatly increased size and complexity of terrestrial vertebrate brains over those of fish is that this environment provides selective advantage to long sequences of actions toward distant goals, reaching its most complex form in varieties of prospective cognition in certain mammals and birds. A team of Northwestern researchers will conduct research into the computational, behavioral, and neural basis of planning, rooted in an evolutionary and computational sensory ecology perspective and a commitment to ethologically relevant behaviors. Planning is an immensely important capacity to understand the mechanistic basis of, as it participates in a diverse range of behaviors, and its diminishment favors impulsivity and reliance on the habit system. Up to now, laboratory studies of planning have typically relied on reduced environments and simple behaviors which are either appetitive or (more rarely) aversive, without a sentient target, the dynamics and unpredictability of which is likely key to the adequate analysis of prospective cognition. Methods from neuroengineering and data-intensive neuroscience will be brought to bear on the problem of making a more ethologically relevant, yet tightly controlled approach to investigating planning possible. The computational and behavioral work will be used to guide neurobiological interventions in two of the key brain structures that participate in reactive versus reflective decision making and choice: the striatum and hippocampus. The team will pursue research with an unusually bold intellectual dynamic range well beyond a typical disciplinary approach, from its motivation rooted in evolutionary biology and computational sensory ecology, to the extension of the latest machine learning methods, through to single-cell resolution imaging of live animal behavior in a virtual reality system. The researchers will knit together parallel synergistic efforts in the simulation of planning, a mechatronically reconfigurable behavior arena with a robot predator, and two-photon single cell resolution imaging in a virtual reality system, resulting in an ethologically relevant context significantly more complex than current practice in laboratory settings. There are few areas of neuroscience that have as much potential to impact society as research on the neural basis of planning. Discussions of self-control, marshmallow tests, grit, and challenges we face in making long term plans such as retirement or adapting to changing climate for future generations fill the media. One of the team's research goals is to understand the manner in which the nervous system participates in constraining the temporal and spatial range of prospective cognition,which is clearly quite limited even in humans, toward a neuroscience of sustainability.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.