To date there is good understanding of the structural makeup of the brain. However, a full understanding about how the brain produces cognition and behavior still remains elusive. This is important because elucidating the functional connectivity of the brain serves to assist efforts in improving or maintaining brain function across the lifespan, which is critical for directing educational and rehabilitation approaches. This award to the University of South Dakota (USD) will allow the acquisition of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) equipment to clarify brain-behavior relationships. This is a safe, non-invasive method for applying a magnetic pulse to a specific brain region to either activate or decrease activity during experimental tasks or conditions. TMS can test causal structural-functional relationships that cannot be ascertained with any other technology within humans. This instrumentation will be utilized by researchers across four different Schools/Colleges at the USD, to solve outstanding problems in sensorimotor and cognitive/behavioral neuroscience. In addition to advancing understanding of brain function, the instrumentation will contribute to the training of the next generation of neuroscientists, particularly from diverse or underrepresented backgrounds such as Native Americans, rural and first generation students. Furthermore, the concepts of the technology and the findings gained from this instrumentation will form the basis of neuroscience education to the general public and K-12 students.
The research enabled by TMS at the USD will significantly advance the fields of neurophysiology, behavioral neuroscience and cognitive neuroscience in three major ways. Neurophysiological findings will have important implications for understanding of learning within the motor systems. This is because projects will determine the capacity for plasticity in the motor system, will identify the neural networks that enable this plasticity, and demonstrate the outcomes of this plasticity on sensorimotor and skilled motor function. Behavioral and cognitive neuroscience projects will provide new and potentially transformative information regarding the neurobiology underlying decision making that could be applied to consumer marketing, leadership studies and improving impulse control. Furthermore, research enabled by TMS instrumentation will challenge the traditional thought of separate language comprehension and production networks to better our understanding of language development and dysfunction, with direct educational applications. Thus, the proposed instrumentation will enable research that significantly furthers the understanding of brain function and how that can be employed in a variety of applications in health, marketing, psychology and educational sectors.
