Seed Grant Recipients 2019-2020

Posted on by and

IBACS Seed Grants provide funding for collaborative research projects across the brain and cognitive sciences. Seed Grants also support applications for equipment, research workshops, events, and other activities compatible with the mission of the Institute.

2019-2020 Recipients

Learn about the PIs and projects that received IBACS Seed Grants this year.

Ed Large, Psychological Sciences

Title of Project: Teaching a neural network to dance

Performing and responding to music involves remarkable feats of coordination. In contexts ranging from rock concerts to classical ballet, musicians, dancers, and listeners synchronize in time, matching their actions with high accuracy. We have developed a system of wearable sensors will provide a new means of collecting detailed measurements of the timing of dance and music in a variety of performance contexts. We will measure Bulgarian folk dance and music because they are especially complex.
In this project, we will teach a neural network to associate dance movements with musical rhythms. The model will be trained with data collected from Bulgarian dancers, and will be used to make predictions about coordination of complex sounds and complex movements.

 Marie Coppola, Inge-Marie Eigsti & Kristin Walker, Psychological Sciences

Title of Project: Adapting the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS-2) to assess Deaf individuals who use American Sign Language (ASL)

The Autism Diagnosis Observation Schedule (ADOS-2) is the gold standard for identifying autism. No such instrument currently exists for deaf people who use American Sign Language (ASL). Our team, composed of Deaf and hearing researchers and clinicians, will adapt and translate the ADOS-2 to be used with Deaf ASL users. Our results will support an external grant application to validate this instrument and to better understand the impact of language deprivation on autism diagnosis.

Sandra Villata, Psychological Sciences & Linguistics 

Title of Project: An empirical investigation of non-categorical, gradient effects in language

Theories of grammar are categorical — sentences are grammatical or ungrammatical. There is a converging set of results, however, revealing that ungrammatical sentences exhibit gradient acceptability. At the empirical level, this project aims to expand the data types to probe gradience; at the theoretical level, it probes fundamental questions concerning the nature of the mind (categorical or gradient?) through the angle of one of the most tractable high-level cognition systems, natural language.

 Eric Levine, Neuroscience

Title of Project: Effects of a common BDNF gene variant in mouse and human neurons

Significant differences in cognitive abilities among humans exist, partly due to genetic variations that may modulate aspects of synaptic plasticity. Of particular interest is a relatively common variant in the gene for BDNF, a brain growth factor that plays a key role in learning and memory. We will explore the effects of this BDNF variant on synaptic signaling in both mouse and human neurons and explore its contribution to the cognitive impairment in Alzheimer's disease.

Adrian Garcia-Sierra, Speech, Language & Hearing Sciences

Title of Project: Interaction between sentence context and bilingualism in sentence processing

We want to know if knowing two languages, and therefore two grammars, facilitates the processing of grammatical errors with respect to the preceding sentence context. By measuring brain activity to study this interaction between languages, we aim to uncover language processing patterns that are unique to bilinguals that can be used to distinguish from those patterns unique to language disorders.

Sharon Casavant, Nursing

Title of Project: Predicting Neurodevelopmental Outcomes of Preterm Infants Using Genetic Measures

Preterm infants undergo numerous stressful/painful procedures while hospitalized in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) as part of routine lifesaving care. This study examines the genetic changes that occur as a result of these procedures and whether it influences neurodevelopmental outcomes.