DistriBrainRep · Studying brain representations as a distributed process: from neural code to behavior
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2019-06-15 → 2021-06-14
- EU contribution
- €195,455
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-ST
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Results in brief
Studying brain representations as a distributed process: from neural code to behavior
Daily situations expose us to a continuous and rich stream of information (sights, sounds, verbal information etc.) that changes momentarily. This information must be processed and integrated with our prior knowledge of the world in order to create a comprehensible experience of our environment. For example, being confined to your house without being able to visit friends would not make sense unless you integrate the knowledge of an ongoing pandemic and recall its implications; understanding why you woke up with a headache and why your friend is not answering your calls necessitates the integration of knowledge of events that took place the previous night at the pub. How this integration of information is achieved by the human brain is a fundamental question in cognitive neuroscience, which also has implication onto medical conditions in which this integration is impaired.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
We know coffee not only by its taste, but also by its name and association with caffeine. How our brains enable this association between stimulus-aspects and guides our behavior accordingly (e.g. determining whether we should drink coffee or discuss it) is one of the core questions of cognitive neuroscience. Neuroimaging research of brain activity indeed confirm that the brain simultaneously processes stimuli across distributed areas, each selective for a specific stimulus aspect. However, the computational research of stimulus representations (how fine-grained activity patterns relate to specific stimuli), is currently constrained to the detailed inspection of isolated brain areas. The proposed project offers a new formalism and method that may link these two research streams, initiating the study of representations as a distributed neural process. By combining the computational and experimental knowledge of the host with the functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) expertise of the researcher, the proposed project aims to reveal: 1) what computational principle underlies representations of different stimulus-aspects across brain areas, 2) whether distributed representations can co-express to form an overall knowledge of a stimulus, and 3) what mechanism regulates the expression of representations to allow flexible behavior. These questions will be addressed by studying brain activity evoked by stimuli composed of multiple aspects (visual, phonetic, associative) and by drawing from fMRI, brain stimulation and computational methods. Hence, the proposed work will provide the researcher with diverse training-through-research and a platform for establishing interdisciplinary collaborations. Expected results may bridge between the two major streams of cognitive neuroimaging to form a new understanding of how neural computations underlie distributed cognitive processes, which in turn gives rise to complex human behavior.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON · LondonCoordinatorUnited Kingdom
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union