Five years of renewed support are requested for three Core modules in the Department of Brain and cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Ours is a growing department which at are sent has ten NEI-supported investigators who carry out research on vision, the visual system and the oculomotor system. Due to major support from the McGovern family and the Picower Foundation, two major new centers have been formed at MIT (the McGovern Institute for Brain Research and the Picower Center for Learning and Memory) in which numerous new appointments will be made the next five years, with several of them in vision and oculomotor control. Some of these appointments have already been made. Presently we have 19 grants from the National Eye Institute. The research carried out by the ten investigators of the Core Group includes the following areas of research: (1) neurophysiological studies of the visual and oculomotor systems, (2) anatomical studies of the visual and oculomotor systems, (3) developmental studies of the vision and visuomotor function, (4) psychophysical studies of visual functions in non-human primates, (5) psychophysical studies of visual functions in normal human and patient populations, (6) computational analyses of vision and eye movement, and (7) imaging studies to elucidate the roles various visual areas play in image processing Two of the modules supported by this Core Grant, the Instrument Shop and the Electronics Shop, are in extensive use by the Core Group. During the past four years these investigators have been very productive and have published extensively as documented in this application. The Core Modules have made significant contributions to the overall research efforts of this group and have fostered interaction among investigators involved in vision and visuomotor research. Continued support of these two Core Facilities will be of great benefit to our future investigations. Additionally, we are requesting support for a new module to support ongoing and planned imaging studies conducted by eye researchers at MIT. If funded, this module will provide a central support facility for functional brain imaging by NEI-supported investigators in the BCS department.
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