UC San Diego Receives $7 Million from DOD for Innovative Neural Research

By Kim McDonald | May 24, 2012

See article here...

An interdisciplinary team of scientists at UC San Diego composed of physicists, biologists, chemists, bioengineers and psychologists has received a five-year, $7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to investigate the dynamic principles of collective brain activity.

The innovative research effort, which is being funded by the Office of Naval Research under the Defense Department's MultiUniversity Research Initiative, or MURI, will also involve scientists at UC Berkeley and the University of Chicago.

The team plans to conduct basic research on how collective action in the brain learns, modulates and produces coherent functional neural activity for coordinated behavior of complex systems.

"This research will tie together theoretical ideas, hardware implementation of structural models and experimental investigations of human and animal behavior to develop a quantitative understanding and a predictive language for discussing complex physical and biological systems," said Henry Abarbanel, a physics professor at UC San Diego who is heading the collaboration.

The grant will pay for the costs of new laboratory facilities at UC San Diego and the University Chicago, create powerful parallel computing capabilities for the three universities involved and employ 10 or more postdoctoral research fellows. Key UC San Diego researchers participating in the effort are Katja Lindenberg, professor of chemistry and biochemistry; Tim Gentner, associate professor of psychology; Gert Cauwenberghs, professor of bioengineering; Misha Rabinovich, research physicist in the BioCircuits Institute; and Terry Sejnowski, professor of biology.

This is the fourth MURI award led by Abarbanel. The first focused on theory and experiment in complex fluid flows and was funded by the Defense Advanced Research and Projects Agency from 1988 to 1993. The second investigated chaotic communications strategies from 1998 to 2003 under sponsorship by the Army Research Office. The third developed advanced chemical sensing methodologies using animal olfactory dynamics and was funded by the Office of Naval Research from 2007 to 2012.

Media Contact
Kim McDonald, 858-534-7572, kmcdonald@ucsd.edu

UC San Diego researchers to receive a $1.9M EFRI grant from NSF during 2011

Media Contacts:
Joshua A. Chamot, NSF (703) 292-7730 jchamot@nsf.gov

Program Contacts:
Sohi Rastegar, NSF (703) 292-8305 srastega@nsf.gov
Cecile J. Gonzalez, NSF (703) 292-8538 cjgonzal@nsf.gov
See original article here...

Interdisciplinary teams to explore quietly powerful biological signals and the intersection between minds and machines

September 28, 2011

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Office of Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation (EFRI) has announced 14 grants for the 2011 fiscal year, awarding nearly $28 million to 60 investigators at 23 institutions.

During the next four years, teams of researchers will pursue transformative, fundamental research in two emerging areas: technologies that build on understanding of biological signaling and machines that can interact and cooperate with humans.

Results from this research promise to impact human health, the environment, energy, robotics and manufacturing.

Simulating the brain to improve motor control
The project "Distributed Brain Dynamics in Human Motor Control" (1137279) will be led by Gert Cauwenberghs, with colleagues Kenneth Kreutz-Delgado, Scott Makeig, Howard Poizner, and Terrence Sejnowski, all from the University of California at San Diego.

The researchers aim to create an innovative, non-invasive approach for rehabilitation of Parkinson's disease patients. In studies of both healthy individuals and those with the disease, the team will use new wireless sensors and a novel imaging method to monitor and record body and brain activity during real-world tasks. This data will be used to develop detailed, large-scale models of activity in the brain's basal ganglia-cortical networks, where Parkinson's disease takes its toll, with the help of newly developed brain-like hardware. Building on recent advances in control theory, the team will take into account both the perceptual and cognitive factors involved in complex, realistic movements. Ultimately, they will create a system that offers realistic sensory feedback to stimulate beneficial neurological changes.

Summaries of the eight EFRI projects on Engineering New Technologies Based on Multicellular and Inter-kingdom Signaling (MIKS) are found on the award announcement Web page.

Summaries of the six EFRI projects on Mind, Machines, and Motor Control (M3C) are found on the award announcement Web page.

-NSF-

UC Research features SCCN's work on Brain Computer Interface

UC San Diego scientists are developing technology that links thoughts and commands from the brain to computers. In addition to neat gadgets like mind-dialed cell phones, devices to assist the severely disabled and a cap to alert nodding-off air traffic controllers, new technology could reshape medicine.

Last spring, Tzyy-Ping Jung was all over the news. MIT Tech Review, the Huffington Post and a dozen other outlets and blogs were buzzing about his new headband, capable of reading your thoughts and transferring them to a cell phone.

Imagine, a cell phone you could dial with your mind. One outlet called it "the end of dialing"; another said, "The bar for hands-free technology has officially been raised." Jung, however, just sighs and says they missed the point.

"It's a demonstration of a [brain interface] system that could be applied to daily life. It's not really the end goal," says Jung. "Who needs a phone that dials using brain waves if they can actually dial with their hands?"

Jung is associate director at the Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience at UC San Diego, where researchers lead a new field called Brain Computer Interface, or BCI. The emerging area is littered with impressive toys and dazzling gadgets, like robots that move with a thought and artificial arms that respond at will, almost like real ones.

	Tzyy-Ping (left) and a group at the National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan have developed headgear and software that monitors brainwaves, collects data and transfers a thought process to a mobile device.

But while high-tech wizardry makes for fun headlines, UC scientists are poised to make a subtler yet fundamental change to the face of medicine. Using a technology somewhat overlooked for more than a decade, scientists are building a two-way conversation between your brain and the many computers that surround it every day.

Scott Makeig works with Jung as the director of the Swartz Center. For more than 20 years he has studied electroencephalogram (EEG) technology. EEGs, recognizable by their funny skullcaps dotted with electrode sensors, measure the electrical signals emitted by a subject's scalp from the brain beneath. While fast and relatively mobile, over the past decade EEG research has been eclipsed by giant fMRI machines, which use huge magnets to track blood movement within the brain. It's a slower, less direct measure of brain activity, but unlike EEG, which mainly focuses on the outer layers of the brain, it can pierce all the way through.

"EEG has dwindled to a low point in its use in medicine after MRI came out," Makeig says. "And it was more or less ignored in neurophysiology."

But hold your pity for poor EEG. In the meantime, scientists have been refining the bulky caps to the point where some take up less room than a pair of headphones. Jung has partnered with his alma mater, National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan, to develop headpieces that collect phenomenal amounts of data in a fraction of a second and broadcast it to a laptop or cell phone. Whereas previous EEG caps required gels to be smeared on a user's scalp, today's sleeker "dry" electrodes are so advanced that several companies have even created brain-operated children's toys.

But the skullcap is just half of the brain-sensing equation; you also need to know what all that data means.

"If someone records data from the scalp they immediately realize how messy it is," Jung says. "It's very noisy."

This is the so-called "cocktail party problem" — EEG brain recordings are like noisy gatherings, where dozens of conversations blend with background noises into confusing slurry. Separating which signals are related to a given thought process is daunting.

In the mid-'90s, Makeig and Jung, plus Terry Sejnowski and Anthony Bell at the Salk Institute, pushed through this problem by teasing apart the EEG signals using a clever analysis borrowed from French theoreticians. Before long, they were able to discriminate specific brain area sources within the crowded and overlapping brainwave and EEG signals coming from working brains.

This, along with a great deal of other work around the world, has opened the way for scientists to now link computers directly to commands from the brain. Although EEGs cannot pierce deep into the brain, the outermost layers — the brain's cortex — generally are where what we call higher reasoning occurs, making it ideal for operating machines.

Naturally, scientists are aiming to build devices to help people with disabilities who are unable to operate wheelchair, computers and phones. But Makeig says brain interfaces have a much broader potential if used the other way — eavesdropping rather than taking commands. For instance, Makeig and Jung have done research into alertness monitoring for the military. He says soon we may be able to give simple headbands to air traffic controllers to alert them when they are nodding off.

Valuable for patient care

William Mobley, a UC San Diego neurologist who has worked on degenerative neurological disorders and Down syndrome, goes even further. He and Jung head up the Center for Advanced Neurological Engineering, which aspires to create a suit that could relay all kinds of information about a patient.

"We envision a time very soon in which a patient's vital signs, EEG, EKG and movements can be recorded 24/7 and sent wirelessly to a remote location for review by a physician," said Mobley. "The suit might well be deployed to allow neurologists a much more complete assessment of patients with a variety of disorders, in the process collecting many thousands of times as much data as is currently the case."

This is not science fiction. The most sophisticated EEG devices (which cover the head with a bulky cap) can parse out underlying brain signals from the admixture of data recorded from up to 256 places on the scalp. However, with today's gadgets you don't need that kind of precision. With just a dozen channels or so Jung and Makeig can easily detect something as simple as a drowsy air traffic controller.

Tuning in on emotions

With more channels, Makeig also can get a pretty good sense of emotion. He says that a simple EEG device could someday become another tool for psychiatrists to give them a clue into the inner world of their patients. To demonstrate the technology, Makeig and graduate student Tim Mullen last year put on an unusual quartet. Makeig was on the violin and two other researchers took the cello and clarinet while Mullen played, well, his brain. (See photo at the top.) He began before the concert, playing musical notes and carefully cultivating the emotions they inspired in his own mind.

"On the night of the performance, I can sit down and reimagine that state — the state that was evoked by a particular note," Mullen says. "And when I imagine that particular emotion my brain dynamics will be recreated again and the machine detects it and it plays that note that originally evoked that emotion in me."

The resulting call and response performance, like the brain dialing, is a stunning demonstration of the underlying potential of EEG-related brain interface. Can we expect a first chair EEG-ist next year at the Metropolitan Opera? No, probably not, but Makeig and Jung say that the important lesson is that scientists can now reliably track specific emotions as well as thoughts.

This, the researchers agree, is how BCI will actually integrate into our lives, as it still lags behind fingers for dialing numbers and surfing the Internet. By using the interface to listen in on the mind, scientists can make tools to reshape medicine, along with the clever toys and fodder for the occasional headline.

ABC News, KPBS and UCSD-TV Feature UCSD Researcher's Brain Monitoring Technology

April 28th, 2011

by Rhonda McCoy

ABC News, KPBS, and UCSD-TV have all recently featured new brain-computer interface (BCI) technology developed by Dr. Tzyy-Ping Jung and associates Yu-Te Wang and Yijun Wang of the Institute for Neural Computation. This technology represents a unique and fast-advancing generation of mobile, wireless brain activity monitoring systems. An immediately promising application, whose feasibility was first demonstrated by UCSD researchers Jung and Makeig in the 1990's, is to monitor the alertness of workers in a variety of occupations that require around the clock alertness, such as air traffic controllers, drivers and pilots, and nuclear power plant monitors.

Jung and collaborators Chin-Teng Lin, Jin-Chern Chiou, and associates at National Chiao-Tung University in Hinschu, Taiwan have developed a mobile, wireless, and wearable electroencephalographic (EEG) headband system that contains dry scalp sensors that monitor the wearer's brain waves via signals transmitted through a Bluetooth link that can be read by many cell phones and other mobile devices.  The system can continuously monitor the wearer's level of alertness and cue appropriate feedback (for example, audible warning signals or other system alerts) to assist a drowsy worker in maintaining system performance.

Jung, a biomedical engineer, research scientist and Associate Director of the Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience (SCCN) in the Institute for Neural Computation, UCSD, says that the technology is almost production ready.  "We're trying to translate the technology from laboratory experiments to the real world, step by step."

The same dry electrode technology has also been used to detect brain activity in response to visual stimuli flickering at specific frequencies,  enabling hands-free dialing of a cell phone. Using such a system, a severely handicapped person could summon emergency aid simply by focusing on the numbers of a keypad.  This and similar "smart" prosthetics that respond to direct brain-signal commands may soon offer many new opportunities to disabled persons.

As former UCSD Vice Chancellor for Research Art Ellis stated, "Universities are finding that interdisciplinary research and international teamwork significantly increase our ability to translate the discoveries in our laboratories into results that benefit society."

The Swartz Center for Neural Computation, directed by Scott Makeig, was founded in 2001 by a generous gift from founding donor Dr. Jerome Swartz of The Swartz Foundation (Old Field, New York). The center is currently also funded by grants from the Office of Naval Research, the Army Research Laboratory, The Army Research Office, DARPA, and the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Jung's research is also supported in part  by a gift from Abraxis Bioscience Inc.

Media Contact:  Paul K. Mueller, 858.534.8564

See article by KI MAE HEUSSNER here...

Air Traffic Controllers: Brain Monitoring to Keep Them Awake?

Brain-Computer Interfaces Can Dial Phones With Thoughts, Detect Fatigue as Well

A new class of brain-computer interface technology could not only let you control devices and play games with your thoughts, but also help detect fatigue in air traffic controllers and other workers in high-stakes positions.

Researchers at the Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience at the University of California, San Diego, have made it possible to place a cellphone call by just thinking about the number. They say the technology could also tell whether a person is actively thinking, or nodding off.

Tzzy-Ping Jung, a neuroscience researcher and associate director of the center, said the system uses brainwave sensors (or Electroencephalogram (EEG) electrodes) attached to a headband to measure a person's brain activity. The brain signals are then transferred to a cellphone through a Bluetooth device connected to the headband.

Applications Could Provide Hands-Free Dialing, Help for People with Disabilities

In the lab, he said, test subjects sit in front of a screen displaying 10 digits, each flashing at a different rate. The number 1, for example, may flash nine times per second, while the number 2 flashes at a slightly higher frequency.

As participants view each number, the corresponding frequency is reflected in the visual cortex in their brains, he said. That activity is picked up by the sensors, relayed through the wireless Bluetooth device and then used to dial numbers on the cell phone.

Assuming all goes according to plan, if you place the headband on your head, sit at the screen, and then view the digits 1-2-0-2-4-5-6-1-4-1-4, your thoughts alone should lead you to the White House switchboard.

Jung said that results vary from person to person, but many people can reach 90 or even 100 percent accuracy.

"Probably I was the worst subject. I think I reached 85 percent," he said.

For now, the technology is just in the developmental phase. But Jung, who has been studying neurological engineering since 1993, said, "We're trying to move from the lab to the real world, step by step."

In time, applications could potentially give consumers a hands-free way to use their cell phones or people with disabilities a new way to interact with the world. But, Jung said, more passive uses of the technology could already be used to detect fatigue or lapses in attention in people who work in fields where concentration is essential.

Brain-Computer Tech Could Alert Workers When Attention Drops

"In the past, all these brain-computer interfaces have targeted a very small fraction of the patient population," he said. "But [people in] the general, healthy population actually suffer, from time to time, from mental fatigue. …Attention deficit can lead to catastrophic consequences."

Those consequences have been especially visible in recent months, as air traffic controllers have been found sleeping on the job at airports across the country. This week, an FAA official resigned the day after reports of yet another drowsy air traffic controller.

Jung said the same brainwave sensors that enable thought-controlled dialing could be used for cognitive monitoring.

Air traffic controllers, truck drivers, members of the military and anyone else whose lapse in concentration could put lives at risk could strap on a headband (or helmet) and be alerted when their brain activity indicates a drop in attention or alertness. They might hear a warning signal, or get a tactile alert, Jung said.

Technology More Ready Than Consumers

But he said that while the technology is almost ready, people might not be ready to accept it.

"One of the difficulties is people don't want to be watched," he said. "It's sort of like Big Brother watching you all the time."

He also said that he and his team are continuing to refine their technology to tease apart various internal and external factors, like a person's medication or outside power lines, that can generate electronic "noise" and make it more difficult to discern important signals.

Still, given the positive implications, he said, major organizations are interested in the research. His university has contracts with the Army, Navy and DARPA to study how brain-computer interfaces could help soldiers, he said.

And Jung and his team are not the only ones interested in blending the worlds of computing and neuroscience.

NeuroSky, a San Jose, Calif.-based company, already sells a wireless EEG headset that it says can be used for education and gaming.

The MindWave headset measures brainwave impulses from a person's forehead and can be used to gauge student attention levels during lessons, monitor daily mediation and play games that depend on a user's emotional control.

Tansy Brook, the head of communications for the company, said applications for people who work in hazardous work environments, such as air traffic controllers or construction workers, could be realized in the next five years.

"There's a general awareness you want people to have in those situations, they need to be paying attention every single second," she said. "There is amazing potential."

See actual article by BY PEGGY PICO here...

KPBS: New wireless technology uses brain waves to dial up a friend on a cell phone.

Above: A student tests a new brain-wave cell phone app.
Credit: UCSD Photo
Listen to the audio of the interview...

In very simple terms, it works like this:

First, the user puts on a wireless headband or hat embedded with electrodes that read brain activity.

Next, the caller looks at a series of numbers that flicker at different rates on a computer screen. When focused upon, each number causes a slightly different brain wave pattern

The cell phone decodes the brain waves associated with those numbers and places the call.

Neuroscience researcher Tzyy-Ping Jung, Ph.D. and his colleagues at the Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience at the University of San Diego developed the system.

"It can bypass conventional motor output path and provide a direct path ofcommunication from the brain to an external device," said Jung.

The cell program is a type of Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) system which is a rapidly expanding scientific field where researchers are finding ways to use thought patterns to command computers and mechanical devices like artificial limbs.

The cell-phone technology could be beneficial to quadriplegics, or those with other severe physical disabilities.

Jung said because the cell-phone based BCI use dry electrodes, miniature electronic circuits and wireless telemetry, it is easier and more comfortable to use than most BCI systems.

“In less than a minute you’re connected and you can do a lot, like experiments, or you can control things, or do video games with just your brain activity,” explained Jung.

In various trial groups, the cell-phone users were about 95 percent accurate in dialing a 10-digit phone number.

Jung said the cell-phone application could be on the market within the next few years.

Additional coverage:

1. Technology Review
http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/37357/?mod=chfeatured&a=f

2. Asian American
http://goldsea.com/Text/index.php?id=10751

3. Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/12/mental-dialing_n_848134.html

4. ABCNews
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/air-traffic-controllers-brain-monitoring-awake/story?id=13377787

The UCSD TV series on UCSD's 50th Anniversary year put together an episode on brain-computer interface research at SCCN and INC.

View the video here...

INC Co-Director and Salk Institute professor Terrence J. Sejnowski, Ph.D., has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering. This places him in a remarkably elite group of only ten living scientists to have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine as well as the National Academy of Engineering. UCSD and INC congratulate Dr. Sejnowski on this prestigious appontment and exceptional achievement.

Lost in thoughts: Neural markers of low alertness during mind wandering.

The February issue of Neuro Image: A Journal of Brain Function will feature an article by INC researcher Arnaud Delorme and his student Claire Braboszcz.

Citation:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20946963

Gert Cauwenberghs takes on leadership roles in biomedical circuits and systems for IEEE

Gert Cauwenberghs, Co-Director of INC, takes on multiple leadership roles for IEEE in 2011. Gert is the newly named Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems. In addition to his role in primary publications in the field, he will Chair two upcoming conferences, General Chair of the IEEE Biomedical Circuits and Systems Conference in San Diego in 2011, and Technical Chair of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Conference in 2012.

Gert Cauwenberghs and Te-Won Lee selected as IEEE Fellows for 2011

INC Co-Director Gert Cauwenberghs and affiliated researcher Te-Won Lee have been selected by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) as fellows for 2011. Te-Won has perfected independent component analysis algorithms and systems for auditory scene analysis and acoustic source separation, for hands-free telecommunication in cars and mobile environments.

Gert's development of biosensors with student Mike Chi is being recognized by IEEE as well as being featured in MIT Technology Reviews. The biosensor allows longterm monitoring with greater ease of use and increased comfort. The low cost sensor can be mass produced and used outside the hospital environment greatly expanding the potential for conditions which may not manifest in the time period of normal hospital observations. The capacitave sensor is particularly distinctive for making the use of existing technology cost effective through the use of widelt available components and novel circuitry.

Read the MIT Technology Review

NSF funds "An International Social Network for Early Childhood Education"

INC researcher Javier Movellan has been awarded a grant of $749,998 by the National Science Foundation to support development of RubiNet, a social network for early childhood education. The project will develop resources for early childhood education at national and international levels , bringing children, teachers, parents, and researchers together. A unique feature of the project is the use of low-cost, sociable robots as network interfaces. In addition to supporting education and data gathering, the robots will allow children to exchange objects across international boundaries using the robots as intermediaries. This significant difference from other computer interfaces will also allow children in the United States to look around a classroom in Japan, find their friends, and initiate a hug using the robot's child-safe arms.

Dr. Sejnowski discusses TDLC with PNAS.

Read the interview here.

i-RICE brings Taiwanese scholars to INC

In collaobration with the Institute for Engineering Medicine, INC will host students and post docs to to work wth INC and IEM researcher. Txxy-Ping Jung, of the Center for Advanced Neural Engineering (CANE) participated in the development of the proposal recently approved by Taiwan's National Science council. The students and researchers visiting from Taiwan will be participation in an International Center in Advanced Bioengineering Research.

Gallery: Let Your Children Play With Robots
By Tim Carmody October 26, 2010 | Categories: R&D and Inventions

See article here...

See local copy here...

Machine Perception Laboratory

Salk neuropsychologist Inna Fishman explains some of her current work to Psychology Today.

The Brain's Language Processing in Williams Syndrome and Autism

See article here:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brain-sense/201008/the-brains-language-processing-in-williams-syndrome-and-autism

Howard Poizner (PI, UCSD), and co-PI's Gary Lunch (UC Irvine) and Terry Sejnowski (Salk and UCSD), together with team leaders Hal Pashler, Sergei Gepshtein, Deborah Harrington, Tom Liu, Eric Hlagren, and Ralph Greenspan were recently awarded a $4.5M ONR MURI grant, with a $3M option period, to study the brain bases of unsupervised learning and training. (October 1, 2009)

The study, “How Unsupervised Learning Impacts Training: From Brain to Behavior”, involves the following:

Principal Investigator: Howard Poizner

Co-PI’s: Gary Lunch (UC Irvine) and Terry Sejnowski (Salk and UCSD)

Agency: ONR (Office of Naval Research)

Funding: $4.5M (3yr base period) [started Oct 1, 2009]; $3.0M (2yr option period); $7.5M (5 year total period)

The goal of this multidisciplinary grant is to examine the neurobiological, genetic, brain dynamic, and neural circuit correlates of unsupervised learning and training. The proposed studies utilize the new capabilities for creating 3D immersive environments and simultaneous EEG-fMRI recordings recently established through ONR-DURIP grant # N000140811114 (H. Poizner, PI).

Additional Information
The cerebral cortex is able to create rich representations of the world that are much more than just reinforcement learning and reflexes. Learning is often self-supervised without feedback, a type of learning referred to as unsupervised learning. Such learning, and memory, is (i) commonplace in naturalistic settings, (ii) critical to humans, (iii) encoded by LTP-type mechanisms, and (iv) of direct relevance to computational theories of learning. Using unsupervised learning, an individual builds up internal hierarchical structures and categorizations that model the statistical properties of the environment. These internal representations can be used flexibly and powerfully to acquire new information thereby creating situational awareness and readiness to act in novel as well as in familiar environments. Yet, unsupervised learning and its neurobiological mechanisms are poorly understood. Our proposed projects will provide new understanding of the neurobiological, genetic, brain dynamic, and neural circuit correlates of this potentially powerful form of learning and training. We propose seven tasks that attack different aspects of the problem making use of parallel paradigms in rodents, flies, and humans. Task 1 maps memory during spatial learning in rats, seeking to uncover the neural engram of memory. Task 2 uses computational modeling to illuminate cortical processes of unsupervised learning in humans. Task 3 conducts studies of training, contrasting the rate and efficiency of both unsupervised and supervised learning. Task 4 explores the brain dynamics of unsupervised learning, using motion capture and virtual environments while recording cortical EEG. Tasks 5 and 6 investigate neuroimaging and genetic correlates of unsupervised learning bringing to bear the new methodology of simultaneous EEG-fMRI recording and using intracranial recordings. Finally, Task 7 exploits the genetic cellular, and behavioral homologies of the fruit fly with humans to study the dopaminergic and genetic regulation of inter-regional coherence associated with learning.

These studies should provide insight into design of the best training environments for our modern military, and increase our understanding of the underlying neurobiological, genetic, brain dynamic, and neural circuit correlates of those environments. Moreover, the studies will open the way to asking if memory enhancing drugs such as ampakines or if particular learning regimens (e.g., extensive experience with diverse environments, short vs. long sessions) change the number and/or distribution of learning-related synaptic modifications and/or the nature of the neural networks and brain dynamics that underlie unsupervised learning. This issue is fundamental to development of mechanism-based strategies for improving learning and performance in complex environments. Finally, the genetic studies will pave the way for development of individualized training techniques that optimize learning environments.

Powering CANE will be the synergism unleashed by bringing together scientists, engineers, and clinicians in the UCSD Health Sciences, Jacobs School of Engineering, Division of Biological Sciences, and other Units in UCSD, as well as the Salk Institute, other neighboring research institutes, and industrial partners. These scientists already have a strong track record of interdisciplinary collaboration in neuroscience, engineering, computation, and clinical translation, and CANE will encourage further research and development collaborations.

The Center will develop and utilize a wide spectrum of innovative methods in brain and body imaging and will apply powerful mathematical and data mining approaches to the resultant information -- a combination to pave the way for translating advances in neuroscience into enhancements in health care environments, whether clinical, workplace or home-based. 

Of importance as well will be CANE’s training of next-generation scientists, engineers, and physicians. Early-stage researchers will get assistance in entry into the research environment and affiliated laboratories will get help in recruiting researchers.

More CANE info ...

A research team of neuroscientists, cognitive scientists and engineers at the University of California, San Diego will play a leading role in a five-year, $25-million Army Research Laboratory (ARL) project to better understand human-systems interactions.

Links:

• The Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience
• The U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL)

See article here: http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/awards/07-07Human-Systems.asp

"Students, Meet Your New Teacher, Mr. Robot"

See article here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/science/11robots.html

‘Curiosity:The Questions of Life,’

Yu Mike Chi, graduate student in the Cauwenberghs laboratory in the Department of Bioengineering and the Institute for Neural Computation, led a team of eight students in the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, UC San Diego Rady School of Business, and the Salk Institute, to win the top prize in the UC San Diego $80K Entrepreneurship Challenge.

See article here:

http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/news/news_releases/release.sfe?id=955

This retreat is sponsored by the NIH Cognitive Neuroscience Training Program of the Institute for Neural Computation and follows in the tradition of the retreats sponsored by the McDonnell-Pew Center for Cognitive Neuroscience

See details here:

http://inc.ucsd.edu/2010retreat/index.html

La Jolla, CA - Salk Institute professor Terrence J. Sejnowski, Ph.D., whose work on neural networks helped spark the neural networks revolution in computing in the 1980s, has been elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences. The Academy made the announcement today during its 147th annual meeting in Washington, DC. Election to the Academy recognizes distinguished and continuing achievements in original research, and is considered one of the highest honors accorded a U.S. scientist.

See details here:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-04/si-sst042710.php

Promoting multi-level approaches to the neural bases of cognition.

See details here:

http://inc.ucsd.edu/devel/training_grant.html

See Videos here:

http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/inc-sccn-open-house

Hi Lite Reel:

http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/inc-sccn-open-house/inc-sccn-open-house-hi-lite-reel

A brief publication listing news and current INC events.

Link to pdf file here:

http://inc.ucsd.edu/newsletter/spring_2009.pdf