One of the most fundamental questions in neuroscience is how the 86 billion neurons in the human brain can coordinate their activity to give rise to our amazing cognitive abilities. With support from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Voytek and his research team at UC San Diego will examine the role that rhythmic fluctuations in the brain's electrical activity, namely neural oscillations or 'brain waves', play in shaping how the brain processes information and how groups of neurons communicate with one another. Using a sophisticated blend of human electrophysiology and innovative brain-state-dependent stimulus presentation, these projects will test how neural oscillations route the flow of information influence the brain's activity and, therefore, impact learning and memory. The results of these projects have broad implications ranging from age-related cognitive decline to cognitive enhancement. Additionally, this award will provide the resources for building open source methods and tutorials for analyzing complex, non-linear neural data, as well as support Dr. Voytek's extensive work in science communication and outreach. These open science, science communication, and diversity outreach initiatives will be distributed freely online with code and other materials and, ultimately, may be expanded into a Summer School focused on training students how to analyze oscillatory neural data and how to communicate their research to the public.
These projects will extend our understanding of oscillatory phase as a neural communication mechanism. This is critical, as oscillations have been implicated in healthy cognitive functioning by allowing for efficient information transmission, top-down attentional control, cognitive control, and working memory maintenance, among many other functions. By extension, dysfunctional phase dynamics may underlie a variety of cognitive disruptions such as those seen in normal aging, as well as in psychiatric and neurological disease. These projects will significantly advance our understanding of network phase dynamics in human cognition specifically, and as a general a computational mechanism in general. This award will also support the development of a suite of computational tools, open source methods, and code for analyzing oscillatory phase networks and their computational capacity. Additionally, it will support continued development of a system for real-time, phase-triggered stimulus presentation, which will open entirely new avenues of cognitive research.
