This grant supports the Collaborative Rhythms Collaborative (CRC), a group of scientists in the Boston area who have begun to work together to advance our understanding of the brain dynamics underlying cognitive functions such as attention, sensation, motor planning, and memory. There is a growing consensus that dynamics are central to understanding how the brain works, but major gaps exist in what we know and in how we seek to understand more. The CRC has focused on the dynamical regime most strongly associated with cognition, rhythmic activity in the frequency range 1 - 200 Hz. Its central aims are to characterize the physiological origins and functions of such rhythms and to understand how pathologies in rhythmic dynamics are related to symptoms and mechanisms of neurological disease. Mathematical modeling, cutting-edge statistical techniques, and their implementation as computer algorithms will be critical to carrying out its scientific program. The grant will support the CRC, concentrating on the application of the mathematical sciences to the investigation of brain dynamics and the potential for new mathematical, statistical and computational techniques driven by challenging scientific problems. This will include support of a technology core that will create new hardware/software platforms to support such techniques. The CRC will also provide mentoring and teaching to a large community of students and post-doctoral fellows.
The Cognitive Rhythms Collaborative, involving multiple institutions in the Boston area, offers a unique chance to develop a network of researchers from the mathematical, biological, and cognitive sciences to explore fascinating questions in the area of neuroscience. This is a different mechanism of interaction than is traditionally seen and has the potential to transform the way such interdisciplinary problems are addressed. The CRC seeks to provide new ways of doing science by fostering broader and deeper collaboration in addressing scientific questions. This work will involve tight collaborations among scientists with a multitude of backgrounds, and will emphasize the role of mathematics in the investigation of neuroscience questions. The CRC will also train a cohort of postdoctoral fellows in a way that will lead to a deep understanding of the intellectual context of their work. The technology core of the project will produce both hardware and software that will be available within and beyond the CRC, and enable computations that are now almost impossible.
