The Program Project employs a multidisciplinary approach focused on delineating the neural mechanisms supporting cognition in humans. Three key components of human cognition including executive control, memory and language will be studied. These three Projects interact extensively in an effort to bridge theoretical and experimental boundaries between research domains. The principle goals of the Program Project are to define discrete processes unique to particular cognitive operations and to elucidate common neural mechanisms enabling humans to fluidly perform a range of cognitive operations. To achieve this, we will utilize several powerful research methodologies in each project. The central component of the Program Project is an extensive neurological patient population with well-defined focal brain damage. This research population has been developed and maintained over the last 21 years at UC Berkeley, UC Davis and the VA Northern California Health Care System and forms a unique neuropsychological tool for studying human cognition. The Core of the Program Project provides detailed neuropsychological and neuroanatomical definition for all the neurological patients to be investigated in the specific projects. The Core also supports and extends state of the art human electrophysiological and functional brain imaging facilities available to all researchers in the Program Project. Project 1's focus is on executive control of cognition with a particular emphasis on the role of sub regions of prefrontal cortex in attention, working memory and task switching. The role of prefrontal cortex in executive control of memory and language is also examined. Project 2 addresses the role of medial temporal regions in memory storage and binding of new information. A prefrontal-medial temporal system has been implicated in the preferential detection and long-term storage of novel information. These processes will be explored in a series of experiments aimed at understanding the neuroanatomical and temporal relations of cortico-limbic interactions in memory processing. Project 3 addresses key questions on the neural organization and functional interplay of distributed cortical networks engaged in language processing. This project draws on an extensive aphasic population in combination with electrophysiological and fMR1 techniques in an effort to study key linguistic issues related to articulation, lexical-semantic storage and access, and executive control of language. The Program Project fuses cognitive neuroscientists with the behavioral and physiological tools critical for definition of the temporal and neuroanatomical substrates of the cognitive processes central to normal and disordered human cognition.
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