The cerebellum is well known for its roles in motor functions. However, emerging evidence suggests that the cerebellum also plays an important role in non-motor functions such as cognition, emotion, and language. This project will evaluate roles of transcription factors Foxp1 and Foxp2 in cerebellar development, and behavioral changes in mice with cerebellum-specific deletion of Foxp1 and Foxp2.

Our team will use neuroimaging to test predictions from two theories of human speech recognition. One, "interactive activation", proposes that word knowledge guides speech perception by sending excitatory top-down feedback from neural regions specialized for words to regions specialized for phonemes. another, "predictive coding", proposes that word regions send inhibitory feedback to phoneme regions. The actual neural organization has implications for language processing in aging. Our results will support an external grant application on aging.

Firefighters face incredibly complex navigational challenges as they search for victims in low-light conditions, high ambient noise, and unforgiving time constraints. Firefighters generally work in pairs to balance the time pressure of finding victims with care for the firefighters' own safety: If a firefighter is injured, the search for victims must stop until that firefighter is rescued. Under such extreme situational pressures, how do these firefighter dyads become an effective "person-rescuing" system? Studying this important real-world setting provides a unique opportunity to improve firefighting practice and expand the science of interpersonal dynamics. Little is known about how dyads jointly navigate a complex space, especially when their “coupling” is constrained. In this project, we bring together a multidisciplinary team to study how interpersonal coupling shapes the dyad’s effectiveness and evolution as a new system over time by studying both undergraduate dyads and real firefighting teams.

Reading disorder (RD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that is challenging to remediate through behavioral intervention alone. This project will evaluate whether transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS)—a safe, non-invasive method of briefly altering brain activity—can increase the efficacy of behavioral reading training. Uniquely, we are using high density tDCS to precisely target reading pathways and test the specificity of tDCS for different aspects of reading.

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is pervasive in contact-sport athletes, military personnel, and accident victims. The genetic and cellular-level links between TBI and subsequent cognitive-behavioral changes such as elevated aggression and learning deficits is not clearly understood. We seek to elucidate these connections using a Drosophila model wherein we apply dietary interventions to improve behavioral abnormalities following TBI. In so doing, we expect further to understand how metabolism may affect neuronal survival and function, and thus, disease outcomes.

Perception of speech and other sound sequences depends on the dynamic interplay between a subject’s intrinsic brain oscillations and the time-varying nature of the sensory input. This project uses brain-computer-interface to determine the time-scales for synchronizing brain activity in order to augment perception and memory of dynamic vocalization sequences.