News Story

Team of Researchers Awarded Four-Year Grant under the Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience (CRCNS) Program

A team of researchers from the Clark School and two other colleges on campus has been awarded a four-year grant under the Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience (CRCNS) program, run jointly by NSF and NIH.

Professor Cynthia Moss (Psychology/ISR) is the principal investigator for the new four-year, $1.3 million grant, "Innovative Technologies Inspired by Biosonar." Co-PIs for this grant are Assistant Professor Timothy Horiuchi (ECE/ISR), Professor P.S. Krishnaprasad (ECE/ISR), Professor Shihab Shamma (ECE/ISR) and and ISR-affiliated Assistant Professor Jonathan Simon (ECE/Biology). The project aims to advance understanding of the transformation of sensory information to motor commands for adaptive behaviors such as tracking, reaching, grasping and steering around obstacles in the natural environment.

A more complete understanding of the computations supporting these vital functions of the nervous system will facilitate treatment and rehabilitation when they fail to develop normally or break down through disease. The echolocating bat will be used as a model system because it exhibits rich but well-defined adaptive motor patterns that indicate changing behavioral states. This interdisiplinary project brings together biology, neural recording telemetry, and control systems in novel and important ways.

This grant in the NSF/NIH Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience (CRCNS) program is funded by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering.

August 15, 2004