Collaborative Research:NCS-FO:Volitional modulation of neural activity in the visual cortex

该项目由理解神经和认知系统的综合策略（NSF-NCS）资助，这是一个由计算机和信息科学与工程（CISE），教育和人力资源（EHR），工程（ENG）以及社会，行为和经济科学（SBE）董事会共同支持的多学科计划。即使是对世界的基本感知也不像光进入眼睛或声音进入耳朵那么简单。 相反，感知涉及将传入的感官信息与认知过程（如过去的经验，关于世界的知识和个人倾向）相结合。 换句话说，两个人观察相同的事件（即，接收相同的感官信息）可以对环境中发生的事情做出不同的解释。 大脑如何将感官信息与这些认知过程相结合，以及这在大脑中发生的位置，并不完全清楚。 该项目的关键创新是使用脑机接口（BCI）来区分大脑活动的哪些方面是感官与认知，以及两者如何在大脑中结合以产生对世界的感知。 BCI以其帮助瘫痪患者和截肢者的能力而广为人知，它允许他们仅仅通过思考移动来移动计算机光标或机器人手臂。 很少有研究使用脑机接口作为实验工具来了解大脑的感觉区域，因为这个项目试图做到这一点。 这项工作可能会让我们更深入地了解我们如何感知世界，以及如何使用BCI来帮助治疗精神疾病和恢复受伤后的功能。 此外，研究人员正在为本科课程开发基于BCI的实验室练习，培训研究人员精通实验和计算神经科学，并让包括女性和代表性不足的少数民族在内的本科生参与研究。 该项目的重点是视觉区域V4，这是已知的视觉感知过程中的感觉和认知过程的十字路口。 为了剖析神经活动的哪些方面是感官与认知的，研究人员训练动物受试者自愿调节他们的V4活动。 BCI为受试者提供其V4活动的每时每刻的听觉反馈。 本项目评估V4活动的哪些方面可以自愿（即，V4活动的意志调制如何影响视觉感知，以及在视觉感知期间V4和另一个大脑区域（前额叶皮层）之间的相互作用有多可塑。 在这项研究中使用脑机接口的主要优点是，它允许研究人员挑战受试者产生特定的神经活动模式。 研究人员可以在BCI中指定哪些活动模式会产生奖励。 这种技术使他们能够评估神经活动的哪些方面可以由动物意志控制（即，认知的），以及哪些方面与外部世界硬连线（即，感官）。这种BCI范式的应用非常广泛，可以用于研究其他感觉、认知和运动系统。

This project is funded by Integrative Strategies for Understanding Neural and Cognitive Systems (NSF-NCS), a multidisciplinary program jointly supported by the Directorates for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), Education and Human Resources (EHR), Engineering (ENG), and Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE). Even basic perception of the world is not as simple as light coming into the eyes or sound coming into the ears. Rather, perception involves combining the incoming sensory information with cognitive processes such as past experiences, knowledge about the world, and personal tendencies. In other words, two people observing the same events (i.e., receiving the same sensory information) can arrive at different interpretations of what is happening in the environment. How the brain combines sensory information with these cognitive processes, and where this occurs in the brain, is incompletely understood. The key innovation of this project is to use a brain-computer interface (BCI) to tease apart which aspects of the brain's activity are sensory versus cognitive and how the two are combined in the brain to produce perception of the world. BCIs are widely-known for their ability to help paralyzed patients and amputees by allowing them to move a computer cursor or robotic arm simply by thinking about moving. Few studies have used BCIs as an experimental tool to understand sensory areas of the brain, as this project seeks to do. This work is likely to lead to a deeper understanding of how we perceive the world, as well as insights into how BCI can be used to help treat psychiatric disorders and recover function after injury. Furthermore, the investigators are developing BCI-based lab exercises for undergraduate courses, training researchers to become well-versed in experimental and computational neuroscience, and involving undergraduates, including women and underrepresented minorities, in the research. This project focuses on visual area V4, which is known to be a crossroads for sensory and cognitive processes during visual perception. To dissect what aspects of neural activity are sensory versus cognitive, the investigators train animal subjects to volitionally modulate their V4 activity. The BCI provides subjects with moment-by-moment auditory feedback of their V4 activity. This project assesses what aspects of V4 activity can be volitionally (i.e., cognitively) modulated, how volitional modulation of V4 activity affects visual perception, and how malleable is the interaction between V4 and another brain area (prefrontal cortex) during visual perception. The key advantage of using BCI for this study is that it allows the investigators to challenge the subjects to produce particular patterns of neural activity. The investigators can specify in the BCI which patterns of activity yield a reward. This technique allows them to assess what aspects of the neural activity can be volitionally controlled by the animal (i.e., cognitive), and what aspects are hard-wired to the outside world (i.e., sensory). The applications of this BCI paradigm are extremely broad, and can be used to study other sensory, cognitive, and motor systems.