CRCNS: Integrative Information Processing

描述(申请人提供)：整合来自各种来源的感觉信息以产生运动指令是人类行为的基础。多感觉和感觉运动整合障碍影响人类健康的许多方面，从社会互动和交流到在复杂环境中的运动。例如，将视线引导到声音的位置是一项复杂的信息处理任务，需要将听觉输入信号转换为移动眼睛的运动命令。这一过程在人类忽视的患者中受到了损害。在这里，我们提出了一种联合计算和实验的方法来说明这个问题。具体地说，我们将研究当猴子对声音进行扫视时，关于声音位置的信息是如何在灵长类下丘、听觉皮质、外侧顶内皮质和上丘的棘波序列中编码的。我们将探索反应模式的性质作为声音位置(目标1)和眼睛位置(目标2)的函数。特别感兴趣的是空间敏感度的形状和眼睛位置对空间敏感度的影响。除了考虑传统类型空间敏感性外，我们还将使用新的计算工具来探索是否可以从这些响应模式中提取信息，并提供高维数据的紧凑描述(目标3)。我们还将开发新的计算技术来改进实验方法，包括自适应采样和交互可视化(目标4)。这些目标将加强我们对从感觉输入到运动输出的神经处理的理解。 这里研究的多感觉和感觉运动整合的问题涉及到各种神经疾病，如中风和其他类型的脑损伤引起的疾病。更好地理解从感觉输入到运动反应的转换将有助于确定感觉-运动整合受损的神经疾病的病理生理基础。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Integrating sensory information from a variety of sources to produce motor commands is fundamental to human behavior. Impairments in multisensory and sensorimotor integration impact numerous aspects of human health, ranging from social interactions and communication to movements in a complicated environment. For example, directing gaze to the location of a sound is a complex information-processing task requiring the conversion of auditory input signals into motor commands to move the eyes. This process is impaired in human neglect patients. Here, we propose a joint computational and experimental approach to illuminate this problem. Specifically, we will investigate how information about sound location is encoded in the spike trains in primate inferior colliculus, auditory cortex, lateral intraparietal cortex, and superior colliculus when monkeys perform saccades to sounds. We will explore the nature of the response patterns as a function of sound location (Aim 1) and eye position (Aim 2). Of particular interest will be the shape of spatial sensitivity and the effects of eye position on spatial sensitivity. In addition to considering conventional types of spatial sensitivity, we will use novel computational tools to explore whet information can be extracted from these response patterns and provide compact descriptions of the high dimensional data (Aim 3). We will also develop new computational techniques to improve the experimental methods, including adaptive sampling and interactive visualization (Aim 4). These aims will enhance our understanding of neural processing from sensory input to motor output. The issues of multisensory and sensorimotor integration investigated here bear on a variety of neurological disorders such as those arising from stroke and other types of brain lesions. A better understanding of the transformation from sensory input to motor response will aid in identifying the pathophysiological substrates in neurological disorders with impaired sensorimotor integration.