We move our eyes not only to see the world better but also to guide our movements in the world more accurately. Often we are unaware of how we use our eyes to help us see and move better, because the way we coordinate our eye and hand movements is so dynamic and flexible. During coordination, many areas of the brain become active, and models predict that different areas in the brain must communicate with each other in order to coordinate our eye and hand movements. With funding from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Bijan Pesaran is pursuing two major research goals that develop eye-hand coordination as a model for understanding how brain areas work together during cognition. Flexible communication between different brain areas is fundamentally important to a wide range of cognitive processes but very little is known about how brain areas talk to each other to guide our behavior. The experiments carried out under this project investigate how the coupling between coordinated eye-hand behaviors depends on cooperation and inhibition between visual saccade and reach representations. In one set of experiments, Dr. Pesaran is examining how cooperation between reaches and saccades leads to a common stage of target selection before coordinated movements. In a second set of experiments, Dr. Pesaran is examining how during reaching, the selection of new eye movements is inhibited by reaching. Inhibition slows down new eye movements, so that they occur after the reach movement is finished.
Eye-hand coordination involves high-level cognitive processes, and understanding coordination can serve as an important model for understanding how brain systems interact to carry out cognitive processes in general. The interdisciplinary research program also inspires an integrated educational plan to increase awareness of neuroscience amongst students and increase the use of quantitative tools in neuroscience research. An increase in the level of quantitative and statistical sophistication is a hallmark of the next generation of brain scientists. This increase is needed to successfully tackle challenging research questions about how brain areas cooperate to guide behavior. Outreach to increase awareness of neuroscience is extending beyond the university curriculum into K-12 programs. Dr. Pesaran is demonstrating neuroscience concepts in a school outreach program in public schools. The educational outreach program aims to improve awareness of neuroscience amongst school children and encourage them to explore neuroscience educational opportunities in the future.
