CAREER: Neural Dynamics of Sleep-Mediated Learning in Brain Computer Interface (BCI) Applications

脑机接口(BCI)允许个人的大脑活动控制外部设备或应用程序(例如，假肢、轮椅或计算机屏幕上的光标)，但熟练地学习使用BCI通常需要大量的时间和精力，这可能会让用户感到沮丧。更好地理解睡眠在脑机接口学习中的作用可能会允许在脑机接口应用程序中进行干预，以加快学习速度。众所周知，睡眠可以促进各种任务的学习和记忆巩固，并且可以操纵睡眠来增强和加快学习(例如，通过在睡眠期间播放与任务相关的听觉提示)。然而，睡眠对脑-机接口学习的重要性仍不清楚。这项研究将研究睡眠是否在学习BCI任务中发挥作用，以及睡眠是否可以通过隐蔽的听觉声音来加速BCI学习。这项工作将提供安全、非侵入性、基于睡眠的干预所需的基本科学知识，使个人能够通过参与睡眠期间活跃的学习途径，更快地掌握辅助BCI设备的使用。加强对睡眠和学习之间基本关系的理解也将有助于更好地治疗认知和记忆缺陷与睡眠异常有关的疾病(例如精神分裂症)。这个项目还提供了研究机会，通过课程开发和扩展计划来加强本科生和K-12教育，这些活动包括睡眠和学习、BCI和大脑活动的各个方面。本项目将使用计算和实验方法来研究睡眠在BCI学习中的作用。受试者将通过调节他们在睡眠前后的大脑活动来移动光标。同时，将收集神经数据：要么是来自健康受试者的脑电数据(以探测大规模神经动力学)，要么是来自接受侵入性监测的患者的人类颅内深电极数据(以探测电路水平和单个神经元动力学)。在使用相同基本设计的其他研究中，与任务相关的或精心选择的非任务相关的听觉提示将在睡眠期间秘密播放。这些研究将确定对BCI应用程序的睡眠中介学习至关重要的神经动力学，以及以最佳方式参与这些过程并操纵睡眠以加快学习的方法。为这项工作开发的自适应刺激范式的推广可以应用于刺激被呈现以操纵、探测和表征大脑动力学的广泛背景下；为了促进这种研究，该软件将免费提供。这项拟议的工作将为研究睡眠和学习的大规模和潜在变革性研究计划奠定基础，因为实验者选择和干扰控制BCI任务的映射的能力可能有助于识别对睡眠中介学习至关重要的神经特征，并可能揭示与睡眠中介学习相关的新机制。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Brain Computer Interfaces (BCIs) allow an individual’s brain activity to control an external device or application (e.g., a prosthetic arm, wheelchair, or cursor on a computer screen), but learning to use BCIs proficiently often takes significant time and effort, which can be frustrating to the user. A better understanding of the role of sleep in BCI learning may allow for interventions that speed up learning in BCI applications. Sleep is known to boost learning and memory consolidation for a variety of tasks and sleep can be manipulated to enhance and speed up learning (e.g., by playing task-related auditory cues during sleep). However, the importance of sleep for BCI learning remains unknown. This research will examine whether sleep plays a role in learning BCI tasks and whether sleep can be manipulated using covert auditory sounds to speed up BCI learning. This work will provide the basic science knowledge needed for a safe, non-invasive, sleep-based intervention that will allow individuals to master the use of an assistive BCI device more quickly by engaging learning pathways that are active during sleep. An enhanced understanding of the fundamental relationship between sleep and learning will also lead to better treatment for diseases in which cognitive and memory deficits are tied to abnormal sleep (e.g., schizophrenia). This project also offers research opportunities that will enhance undergraduate and K-12 education through curriculum development and outreach initiatives that incorporate aspects of sleep and learning, BCIs, and brain activity.This project will employ computational and experimental methods to investigate the role of sleep in BCI learning. Subjects will move a cursor by modulating their brain activity before and after sleep. Simultaneously, neural data will be collected: either EEG data from healthy subjects (to probe large-scale neural dynamics) or human intracranial depth electrode data from patients undergoing invasive monitoring (to probe circuit-level and single neuron dynamics). In additional studies using the same basic design, task-related or carefully chosen non-task-related auditory cues will be played covertly during sleep. These studies will identify the neural dynamics crucial to sleep-mediated learning of BCI applications and the ways in which to optimally engage these processes and manipulate sleep to speed up learning. The generalization of the adaptive stimulation paradigm developed for this work could be applied in broad contexts in which stimuli are presented to manipulate, probe, and characterize brain dynamics; to facilitate such investigations, the software will be made freely available. The proposed work will lay the foundation for a large-scale and potentially transformative research program to investigate sleep and learning, as the experimenter’s ability to choose and perturb the mappings that control BCI tasks may facilitate the identification of the neural features critical for sleep-mediated learning and potentially reveal novel mechanisms related to sleep-mediated learning.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.