The National Science Foundation (NSF) made 19 awards to cross-disciplinary teams across the country to conduct innovative research focused on neuronal and cognitive systems. These awards are supported through the NSF Integrative Strategies for Understanding Neural and Cognitive Systems (NCS) program that supports innovating, boundary crossing efforts to push the frontiers of brain science. Each award provides the research team with up to $1 million over 2-4 years.
Dr. Huk and his collaborator Dr. Memming Park (Stony Brook) receieved this award to support their project Connecting Spikes to Cognitive Algorithms This project aims to reveal the unseen mental processes that create meaningful behavior from the patterns of activity that neuroscientists can record between neurons. The technical goal of the project is to develop of a data-driven framework amenable to visualization and interpretation of neural activity underlying cognition. The project will also develop statistical methods that can be applied to recordings from cortical areas involved in visuo-motor decision making and used to investigate the dynamics of how cognitive strategies change with changing sensory evidence changes, and the underlying dynamics that sustain spatial working memory.
