The University will create a new center devoted to brain and behavioral research after receiving a five-year $11 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, the University announced in a press release Sept. 4.
The center, called the Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence Center for Central Nervous System Function at Brown, will be an umbrella for five research projects led by junior faculty members.
Such centers, known as COBRE programs, “support thematic, multidisciplinary centers that augment and strengthen institutional biomedical research capacity,” according to the NIH website.
Jerome Sanes, professor of neuroscience and director of the new center, said he and other researchers applied for this grant previously before being approved this summer. Sanes wrote an overview of the project and each of the five junior faculty members wrote research proposals for their individual projects, he added.
The five projects aim “to understand the brain mechanisms that contribute to understanding of attention and decision making,” Sanes said. Each junior faculty member will have a senior mentor, he added, which is part of the COBRE design.
The project is important for the junior participants, Sanes said, “because it provides additional support for the beginning of their careers.”
“Funds are the lifeblood of doing research,” he added.
The Brown Institute for Brain Science helped establish the center, Sanes said.
Michael Worden, research assistant professor of neuroscience and one of the junior faculty researchers, said all five projects are purposed to understand different forms of executive brain functions. “Understanding very complicated issues can really only be done by examining lots of different perspectives, and that’s what this project does,” he said.
In addition to Worden, junior faculty members include Wael Asaad, assistant professor of neurosurgery, Eric Morrow, assistant professor of molecular biology, cell biology and biochemistry, and Joo-Hyun Song and Dima Amso, assistant professors of cognitive, linguistic and psychological sciences.
Worden said his research examines “stimuli that are strongly associated with a particular behavioral response.” For example, stimuli such as traffic lights correspond with particular actions, such as pressing the acceleration or brake pedal, he said.
The “work is particularly interested in the concept of the stimulus response conflict,” he said, which occurs when two or more simultaneous stimuli prompt different reactions.
After such a conflict occurs, the brain makes an adjustment to be less affected by the conflict in the future, he said, adding that his research focuses on where and how the brain makes this adjustment.
Research has shown this adjustment is made in higher-level brain processing, Worden said, but a “considerable amount of research” suggests this may also occur in lower-level processing.
Song said her research focuses on the motor system, more specifically on “decision making for visual actions.” Her research focuses on whether the prefrontal cortex is the only part of the brain involved in motor decision making or whether there is more overlap in lower level processing, Song said.
“In a hierarchical system, there is only information (about decision making) in the prefrontal cortex, but I am testing if there are high-level signals in the motor areas,” she said.
Both Song and Worden said they felt the project has large implications for the future.
Song said her work with motor control could be used to aid paraplegics with movement through the use of human-computer interactions. For example, if someone did not have an arm, a robot arm could be programmed to read brain signals and produce the desired movement, she said.
Worden said his work could apply to the design of products used in everyday life.
“All kinds of things we interact with are often designed by people with knowledge of how people process information. The better we understand how people actually process information and adjust the process, the more useful the design will be,” he said.
The new center’s research could lead to insight about decision-making disorders, Sanes said. “It can contribute to national health,” he said, adding that he thinks the project is important for the University as a whole.
“Brown wants its junior faculty and senior faculty to succeed,” Sanes added, saying the project is important because he thinks it will attract both undergraduate and graduate students to the University.
Research of this scope can also be “an amazing opportunity for undergraduate students,” Sanes said. “The notion that research is geared only toward graduate students is not true. There is enough opportunity for everyone.”
Because COBRE is a national program, Sanes said there is potential to collaborate with other COBRE centers. Though Brown’s COBRE Center is not currently interacting with other counterpart centers, he said he looks “forward to exploring opportunities.”
Worden said he first found out he and the other researchers received the grant in August, about two weeks before the grant was awarded, and that he is now involved in “preliminary set-up work.”
“(We) are hitting the ground running” he said.
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