This Research Infrastructure Improvement Track-2 Focused EPSCoR Collaboration (RII Track-2 FEC) proposal is a collaboration between three institutions in Delaware, Nevada, and Nebraska, namely the University of Delaware, the University of Nevada, Reno, and the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. The project will focus on better understanding the complex relationship between existing knowledge and information obtained through sensory perception, a central question in cognitive neuroscience. To help coordinate the research and provide training for participants, the project will set up three distributed ?methods cores?. Members of each methods core will be available for day-to-day consultations on their respective methodologies, and also conduct training workshops to achieve transfer of expertise across institutions and thus develop human infrastructure in each jurisdiction. These cores will provide support and establish standards in the implementation, analysis, and interpretation of all experiments. Another goal of the project is to promote the entry of undergraduates into graduate programs in neuroscience. To this end, the project will host summer ?brain camps? in cognitive neuroscience. Special efforts will be made to attract undergraduate and graduate students from groups traditionally under-represented in neuroscience by providing full financial support to such students and recruiting at a variety of appropriate venues.
The research efforts will address the interplay between knowledge and perception in a complementary manner. The first research module will investigate the formation of new knowledge via Statistical Learning, the learning of associations among sensory stimuli that tend to co-occur in temporal or spatial patterns. The second module will investigate the interactions between spatial representations of perceived objects, prior knowledge of object use, and body position, as well as the effects of these inputs into perception. The third module will examine the impact of knowledge on attention and working memory. Orthogonal to the organization of the research modules, the project will set up three ?methods cores?, focused on Neuroimaging, Neuropsychology, and Neurostimulation, that will provide support, training, and advice to members of all research modules:. The cores will host three week-long, intensive summer workshops, open to faculty and trainees from all three sites. The resources of the methods cores will also be available to new faculty at each institution, as part of planned recruitment of neuroscience faculty.
