Author: Clark, Emily

Seed Grant Recipients 2021-2022

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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.

2021-2022 Recipients

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

Michael O'Neill, Molecular and Cell Biology

Title of Project: Transgenerational Epigenetic Effects on Neurodevelopment and Behavior

In collaboration with Dr. Holly Fitch and the Murine Behavioral Neurogenetics Facility we are investigating the transgenerational epigenetic effects on mouse behavior brought on by mutations in the Xlr family of genes on the X chromosome. Abnormal expression of these genes during spermatogenesis alters epigenetic signatures on DNA in sperm that appear to affect neurodevelopment of offspring. This research is relevant to our understanding the male bias in the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder.

James Dixon, Psychological Sciences 

Title of Project: Semantic of Collective Behavior

Humans are very good at perceiving the meaning of a group's behavior (e.g., an interested class, a volatile crowd). In team sports, such as soccer, the meaning of group behavior is clear to experienced observers and changes dynamically with the game. This project investigates how social information is carried in human collective behavior by combining state-of-the-art learning algorithms with physical models that rule the dynamics and kinematics of bodies in the domain of soccer.

Caroline Larson, Psychological Sciences 

Title of Project: Language-related brain activity project

The goal of this project is to better understand brain activity during language processing in individuals with language impairment. We will examine brain activity via functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in young adults with language impairment who have versus do not have co-occurring Autism Spectrum Disorder. This work will identify patterns of language-related brain activity associated with language impairment that may be present regardless of co-occurring conditions. 

Whit Tabor, Psychological Sciences 

Title of Project: Transformative Compromise: How Social Groups Transcend Limiting Frames

When a community finds itself in conflict about an important choice, compromise may be needed.  Despite its necessity, compromise has a bad name---people generally prefer not to compromise if they can avoid it.  Nevertheless, sometimes the right amount of compromise can lead to transformation---the group may reach a new dynamic that is universally preferred.  We are exploring the conditions under which this does and does not happen via coordination-game experiments and computational modeling.

Haim Bar, Statistics

Title of Project: Modeling and visualizing the formation of brain cavities covering from stem cells

We will develop and analyze statistical models for brain cavities (ventricles) covering formation, a process occurring during infancy, in which stem-cells divide and form lining cells. Abnormal ventricle enlargement may be harmful to normal development of the infant’s brain. We will develop software which will show 3D animations of the ventricle’s evolution over time and will be used by neuroscientists and pediatric neurosurgeons to detect abnormal expansion of the forebrain ventricles in a non-invasive manner.

Summer Graduate Fellows 2022

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IBACS Summer Graduate Fellowships provide three months of research funding to graduate students working on topics with relevance to the brain and cognitive sciences.

2022 Fellowship Recipients

Christopher Babigian, Pharmaceutical Science

Current Research: Studies strongly support the involvement of BET proteins in drug-seeking behaviors but fail to address functional roles of individual BET proteins and BD-selective BET mechanisms (BD1 vs. BD2) involved in drug-seeking behaviors. Given the potential side effects linked to pan-BET inhibitors, (i.e., cognitive effects such as memory impairment) new approaches with a high degree of selectively and mechanistic insight are needed to advance BET therapeutics as a viable treatment option for SUD. My current studies build on promising data from our lab (mentioned in the previous section) by using selective, clinically relevant tools to interrogate domain-selective mechanisms of BET proteins in advanced animal models of cocaine use disorder (CUD). My hypothesis is that domain-selective BET inhibition will attenuate drug-seeking behaviors in advanced models of CUD without causing side effects commonly seen with non-selective approaches. Results from these experiments will uncover safer more selective therapeutic options for the treatment of CUD. Data collected from these experiments will be used as preliminary data for my NIH F31 application.

Specifically, I am investigating the impact of domain-selective BET inhibition on cocaine-seeking behaviors. For translational purposes I am testing RVX-208 in more advanced and clinically relevant animal models of CUD disorder (economic demand and extinction/reinstatement following short- and intermittent-access cocaine self-administration).

Cynthia Boo, Psychological Sciences

Current Research: As a part of Dr. Letitia Naigles and Dr. Deborah Fein’s Longitudinal Study of Early Language (Naigles & Fein, 2017), my current research has continued to compare language sampling contexts in children with ASD’s language abilities. I am investigating the production of stative language in teenagers with ASD across two different narrative contexts (storybook versus personal narratives). Studies have found that children with ASD are less likely to produce stative language (e.g., happy, think, confused) compared to their TD peers (Tager-Flusberg, 1992; Siller et al., 2014). However, most of these studies have been conducted solely in the context of storybook narratives, which may not be appropriate for adolescents with ASD. Additionally, Losh & Capps (2003) found differences in volume and complexity between storybook and personal narratives, suggesting that different prompts may afford different language use.

Preliminary findings from these analyses support the idea that language production varies by context. Overall, children from both groups produced fewer stative language terms in the context of storybook narratives than personal narratives. In other words, tapping into personal experiences, especially those with emotional associations, elicited more stative language regardless of diagnostic status. Thus, when assessing stative language production, researchers should consider the ability of the narrative prompt to elicit these terms.

Hayes Brenner, Psychological Sciences

Current Research: I am currently working with Dr. Edward Large in his music dynamics lab. I am contributing to the development, coding, and implementation of nonlinear oscillation networks within MATLAB. These networks seek to model the neurobiological process of rhythmic entrainment (i.e. syncing up to an external oscillating pattern) by mimicking the synchronous neuronal activity within the auditory and motor networks that occurs when one is listening to, and then entrains to, a rhythmic pulse. We hope to expand the scope of this model to encompass entertainment for both Western rhythms (i.e. 4/4 standard time signature) and non-Western rhythms (specifically, nonisochronus Balkan rhythms, typically in 7/4 time signature).

Next semester, I am planning on developing a MATLAB model to represent the dynamic turn-taking process of conversation in neurotypical populations, applying what I have learned with the aforementioned rhythmic networks. This will involve reading up on the literature surrounding the topic and expanding my knowledge of nonlinear dynamics and MATLAB.

Collectively, all of this research rests at the intersection of psychology, neuroscience, physics, mathematics, computer science, linguistics, social psychology, and music cognition.

Shawn Cummings, Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences

Current Research: My current research at UConn reconsiders classic ideas in speech communication, specifically through the lens of the lexically guided perceptual recalibration paradigm. ~200 published manuscripts have used this paradigm or a variation since its conception by Norris et al. in 2003, and conventions have naturally developed in theoretical assumptions as well as experimental design. These have allowed for ease of access to important questions, but after two decades of research it is now worth specifically (1) re-examining the role of specific acoustic stimulus properties, especially tied to their method of creation, (2) questioning paradigmatic assumptions such as measuring learning as a between-subject effect, and (3) re- evaluating theoretical characterizations such as perceptual learning being ‘talker specific’.

This line of research is itself interdisciplinary: the paradigm of interest (how cognitive mechanisms deal with variation in sound to meaning mapping in speech) is relevant to and used by linguists, psychologists, speech scientists, cognitive scientists, and others. Understanding, describing, and evaluating the effects as we do –through marrying human behavioral data with an ‘ideal observer’ distributional learning model of incremental adaptation (Kleinschmidt & Jaeger 2015)—additionally connects artificial and biological systems.

Lee Drown, Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences

Current Research: Our work will continue to examine the interplay between voice and phonetic processing by investigating the clinical implications of the individual differences associated with talker adaptation, especially in individuals with lower reading ability. Examining the interaction between voice and phonetic processing will (1) contribute to a theoretical understanding of talker adaptation in speech perception and (2) pave the way for identifying evidence-based practices that may play a role in remediating dyslexia. It is established that individuals with lower reading ability, such as individuals with dyslexia, show impairment in voice identification (Perrachione, Del Tufo & Gabrielli, 2011). It is also known that poor readers, while showing a typical sensitivity to transitional probabilities inherent in language structure, demonstrate deficits in procedural learning (Gabay, Thiessen & Holt, 2015). It remains unknown if impaired voice identification in individuals with poorer reading ability reflects poor associative learning, or merely points towards a reduced sensitivity to the statistical probabilities in the speech signal as prior findings suggest (Perrachione, Del Tufo & Gabrielli, 2011). If poor readers do indeed have augmented difficulty identifying voices compared to typical readers, a subsequent benefit to talker adaptation is also present.

Wesley Leong, Psychological Sciences

Current Research: I am continuing to analyze the Alice EEG datasets to better explain our results, and to rule out potential confounds. The next step is to see if these effects generalize to other linguistic stimuli. To do this, I will use existing EEG data collected by two students in the L&C division – Yanina Prystauka and Zac Ekves – that was recorded while participants read multiple two- sentence pairs. Each pair involved some agent interacting with an object, and so we can build a similarity profile of the agent across both sentences and see if the effect persists after averaging across trials. I will also analyze other publicly-available EEG data, such as the upcoming Le Petit Prince corpus (Stehwien et al 2020), which will feature data from 26 different languages. In the spirit of my previous research, this upcoming work will involve some combination of engineering, neuroscience, psychology, and linguistics.

Prianka Murthy, Psychological Sciences

Current Research:

Up to this point, we have collected some pilot EEG data examining magnocellular (M) pathway functioning in both healthy controls and schizophrenia patients. The EEG data was collected to study visual integration deficits using the Jitter Orientation Visual Integration Task. This task was designed to measure M pathway functioning, which has been indicated to be the primary pathway connected to visual integration deficits (Keane et. al, 2016). We collected data from about 35 healthy participants and 35 schizophrenia patients and will be analyzing the collected EEG data to gain a better understanding M pathway functioning in these populations. Among the healthy populations, we had each participant take the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire in order to organize the healthy participants into a spectrum of low to high schizotypal traits. This was to understand whether there is a relationship between schizotypal traits and visual integration deficits, and whether this relationship could serve as an indicator of larger functioning issues. Being able to compare the healthy and patient population data will enable us to gain a better understanding of differential M pathway functioning, as well as how schizotypal traits may create certain deficit patterns similar to schizophrenia patients. This research is interdisciplinary in its comparison of neural pathway data and behavioral data, and our next step is to understand how this affects functional outcomes in patient populations.

Aliyar Ozercan, Philosophy

Current Research:

The problem I want to tackle can be found in many psychology papers and presentations: ‘can X be a predictor of Theory of Mind,’ or ‘do X have false belief understanding?’ I believe that the majority of these questions are raised due to the fact that psychology defines Theory of Mind coarsely. I plan to approach it as a philosopher and develop a more total model. Thus, in my dissertation, I would like to first argue against the generally accepted idea that Theory of Mind is the ability to understand that others can have false beliefs. Instead of associating ToM only with false-belief tasks, I propose a fine grained account with some essential ‘Sub-Theories of Mind.’ These Sub-Theories include, in the order of their emergence: Theory of Vita, Theory of Emotion, Theory of Intention/Desire, Theory of Knowledge, and finally Theory of Belief.

Additionally, I was an IBRAIN student for the last two years. Currently, I am designing an experiment to offer a solution to a century old question in philosophy of language: what is the semantic contribution of proper names to a sentence?

Moreover, I have just submitted a paper on a linguistic concept, evidentiality, and how it challenges the traditional propositional theories that we have in philosophy of language. It seems that while traditional propositional theories can predict how the nature of languages with lexical evidentiality behave, they fail to explain the weak assertion concept in languages with grammatical evidentiality.

Kristin Simmers, Educational Psychology

Current Research: I plan to study how and to what extent knowledge of the interdisciplinary field of Mind, Brain & Education (MBE) research impacts novice and/or pre-service teachers beliefs, attitudes and practices in the classroom. My hope is that these foundational studies can inform future studies exploring effective MBE teacher education programs as well as the impact these may have on teacher efficacy and student outcomes. The first stage of this proposed work would be to create a measure of MBE knowledge and application, which could be administered to UCONN students in the Neag Teacher Education program and/or to early career educators who are recent graduates from UCONN. This measure would also gauge existing beliefs, attitudes and practices and determine correlation between variables. Once we have established a baseline in all measures, we can use the data to design targeted MBE research integration into existing teacher education or professional development to directly address demonstrated areas of need. This could initially take the form of creating modules and may eventually lead to a graduate certificate program, and would involve the collaboration of faculty across neuroscience, psychology and education departments.

Gray Freeman Thomas, Psychological Sciences

Current Research: Current research plans include collecting survey data about perspectives on contentious topics. The purpose of this research is twofold: (1) it will provide us with rich survey data about the perspectives that University of Connecticut students have on contentious topics, and (2) it will serve as a pre-screening opportunity for future studies conducted in the lab.

This is motivated by recent research on polarization and discussion that serves to persuade others of a particular viewpoint. America has seen an increase in ideological polarization over recent years (i.e., Pew Research Center, 2014), which naturally motivates researchers to investigate how these ideals are communicated with others. It is also important to examine how one communicates and persuades others about these ideas both within and across group ideologies.

This survey will serve as a gauge of general opinion of students at the university on controversial topics, and it will also serve as the foundation for future work inviting participants to come into the lab and discuss these contentious topics with others. This survey may also run for an extended period of time, which will allow rich patterns in the longevity of the data collected.

Emma Wing, Psychological Sciences

Current Research:

I am currently working on a project which asks whether humans’ representations of characters in a story become more integrated when these characters interact. Recent computational modeling shows that an RNN analyzes two characters who interacted in a story as more similar to each other than e.g., two characters who did not interact. We will determine if this is the case in humans by manipulating which character interacts with a key object that recurs throughout a complex, 5-clause story – e.g., 'The aunt told her nephew she/he had punctured the ball. Suddenly, a dog nudged the ball and rolled it under the couch. The ball deflated’. Using the Visual World Paradigm, we will monitor eye movements to appropriate scenes while participants listen to these stories. We predict that at the final “ball” in the example, there will be more looks back to whichever protagonist (referenced with the “she” or the “he” in the first sentence) interacted with the ball. We will also correlate the probability of fixating the protagonist, throughout the sequence, with the equivalent similarity profile generated by the RNNs (described recently in Davis & Altmann, Cognition, 2021).

Like my work earlier this year, and the work proposed, this project explores how object reference is processed during real-time language comprehension. It will provide evidence of specific conceptual representational components of events and will add to our knowledge of human sentence processing.

Tingting Zhao, Nursing

Current Research:

I am going to conduct a secondary analysis using infant data and samples during NICU stay and at 8-12 months corrected age (CA) from a large prospective longitudinal study (NR016928, PI: Cong). I will examine the relationships between levels of pain/stress and expression levels of PGC-1 family, AMPK, SIRT-1 and GCN5 genes/protein related to mitochondrial function/dysfunction during NICU stay and 8-12 months CA in preterm infants. The applicant will randomly select 25 preterm infants from each sex subgroup from the parents R01 study (total n=50). Primary measures include: daily pain/stress; Bayley Scale of Infant Development III test at 8-12 months CA; gene expression of PGC-1 family (PGC-1α, PGC-1β and PGC-1- related coactivator [PRC]), AMPK, SIRT-1 and GCN5 and PGC-1 family phosphorylation, acetylation and O-GlcNAcylation at 36-38 weeks CA and 8 -12 months CA. This is a multi-disciplinary research which require the cooperation and expertise from UConn Proteomics & Metabolomics Facility (PMF), Center for Genome Innovation (CGI), Biochemistry and Biophysics lab, School of Nursing, and Connecticut Children's Medical Center.

Like my work earlier this year, and the work proposed, this project explores how object reference is processed during real-time language comprehension. It will provide evidence of specific conceptual representational components of events and will add to our knowledge of human sentence processing.

Undergraduate Research Award Recipients 2021-2022

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The Undergraduate Research Supply Award provides students with funds that they can use toward supplies and other expenses associated with an ongoing independent research project. The Undergraduate Summer Research Award provides funds for students to conduct independent research during the summer session.

Fall 2021 and Spring 2022

Research Supply Award Recipients

  • Mandira Gowda – Advisor: Etan Markus
  • Mahit Gupta – Advisor: Ephraim Trakhtenberg
  • Alison Guy – Advisor: Etan Markus
  • Amisha Paul – Advisor: Joanne Conover
  • Anika Veeraraghav – Advisor: Gerry Altmann

Summer 2021

Summer Research Award Recipients

  • Margaux Acorda – Advisor: Inge-Marie Eigsti
  • Olivia Arciero – Advisor: Letty Naigles
  • Tristan Evans – Advisor: Michael O’Neill
  • Jamie Masthay – Advisor: John Salamone
  • Xinming Zhou – Advisor: Emily Myers

Seed Grant Recipients 2020-2021

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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.

2020-2021 Recipients

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

David Martinelli, Neuroscience

Title of Project: Creation of a novel mouse allele to investigate the role of the C1QL protein in the brain

Our research focuses on the brain-specific protein C1q-like (C1QL) and its involvement in the creation of myelin – a substance required for proper cognition. Loss of myelin, such as what occurs in multiple sclerosis (MS), causes neurodegeneration and cognitive defects. We now also appreciate that adaptive changes in myelin can modulate cognition in healthy brains. Myelin is made by oligodendrocyte cells in the brain, and C1QL is selectively expressed in the oligodendrocyte lineage. We have evidence that C1QL drives oligodendrocyte maturation. Therefore, we hypothesize that modulating the signaling activity of C1QL will cause oligodendrocytes to increase myelin production. This could potentially enhance cognition and perhaps be a novel treatment for MS and other diseases. We hope to initiate a collaborative research program combining the molecular genetics of C1QL, a biophysical analysis, and a behavioral analysis using a mouse model for MS to assay for cognitive decline. We need to determine the subcellular location of the C1QL protein. Grant reviewers have repeatedly insisted on this information as required preliminary data. Thus, we hope to acquire funds to generate a novel mouse allele in which the endogenous C1ql gene locus has been modified to include a small epitope tag. With the creation of this new tool, determination of the subcellular location of the protein is expected to be straightforward, and will fuel two co-PI R01 grant applications. The first with Dr. Stephen Crocker will focus on cellular and behavioral consequences of C1QL activity promoting myelin creation, and the second with Dr. Susanne Ressl will focus on the biophysics and biochemistry of C1QL and its receptors. The allele will be created at UConn’s Center for Mouse Genome Modification.

Kevin Manning, Psychiatry

Title of Project: Testing Adaptive Interoception in Aging using Bladder Sensations and Simulated Driving

Social bladder control is predicated on interoceptive knowledge of bladder content.  Cognitive processes interpret and potentially modulate the sensory neural data stream about bladder volume to optimize homeostasis by resolving external experience with internal expectations1,2.  Thus cognitive aging could be one major contributor to disordered urinary perceptions, one that is relatively independent of the actual afferent data stream generated by bladder volumes3.  Yet existing research has not directly explored this possibility. Demonstrating the effect of cognitive aging on the ability to maintain normal urinary perceptions would offer a strong translational link to the laboratory-supported hypothesis that the aging bladder must be understood as reflecting a strained but resilient adaptive system that is subject to the influences of cognitive aging.  A necessary first step in this line of research is the development of an allostatic cognitive challenge which will be sufficiently sensitive to bladder changes and testable in a safe clinical environment. We will use driving simulation as a cognitive stressor and will manipulate the degree of driving difficulty encountered while recording subject reports of bladder fullness through cystometry.  PI Manning has expertise with the use of this driving simulation as a cognitive / allostatic challenge and will supervise this aspect of the testing.  PI Smith has expertise with cystometry (both in the laboratory and as director of the clinical UConn Urodynamics Unit). CO-PI Costello has expertise in cognitive aging and statistical analyses. The project will enable us to measure the impact of cognitive aging on perceptual and driving performance resilience, and directly contribute to pilot data for a NIA R-level grant involving the departments of Geriatrics, Psychiatry, and Urology.

Nicole Landi, Psychological Sciences

Title of Project: Decoding dyslexia: decoding the human mind

Misconceptions about dyslexia are common among laypeople. These misconceptions matter because they could potentially prevent individuals from recognizing the early warning signs of dyslexia, engender mistrust in behavioral diagnostic tests, and promote skepticism about the efficacy of interventions.  Recent findings from our team suggest that these misconceptions arise from intuitive psychology, specifically from Dualism and Essentialism.  In this IBACS grant we explore whether these misconceptions about dyslexia are also present in parents and teachers of children with dyslexia. By unveiling the source of these beliefs, we hope to help elucidate the reason for these lingering misconceptions and, by extension, improve understanding surrounding the diagnosis and treatment for children in need.

Dimitris Xygalatas & Alexandra Paxton, Anthropology & Psychological Sciences 

Title of Project: Psychosocial effects of virtual social gatherings

The current pandemic has both disrupted and highlighted the importance of human connection. Although virtual forms of interaction have stepped in to fill the gap, the degree to which these interactions are sufficiently good substitutes for in-person interaction remains unknown. This project explores the psychosocial dynamics of participation in virtual gatherings through a combination of psychometric surveys and wearable technology. We will use these tools to study on-line and in-person group yoga sessions by investigating group synchrony and how it relates to outcomes pertaining to social connection and mental health. In addition, the project will serve to develop a paradigm that can be used in other real-life social settings. 

Undergraduate Research Award Recipients 2020-2021

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The Undergraduate Research Supply Award provides students with funds that they can use toward supplies and other expenses associated with an ongoing independent research project. The Undergraduate Summer Research Award provides funds for students to conduct independent research during the summer session.

Fall 2020 and Spring 2021

Research Supply Award Recipients

  • Audra Logan – Advisor: Umay Suanda
  • Julia Levin – Advisor: Etan Markus
  • Siddhe Patel – Advisor: Etan Markus
  • Murphy Kenny – Advisor: Linnaea Ostroff

Summer 2020

Summer Research Award Recipients

  • Kerry Morgan – Advisor: James Li
  • Veronica Eskander – Advisor: Anastasios Tzingounis
  • Matthew Phillips – Advisor: Emily Myers

Seed Grant Recipients 2019-2020

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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.

 

Undergraduate Research Award Recipients 2019-2020

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The Undergraduate Research Supply Award provides students with funds that they can use toward supplies and other expenses associated with an ongoing independent research project. The Undergraduate Summer Research Award provides funds for students to conduct independent research during the summer session.

Fall 2019 and Spring 2020

Research Supply Award Recipients

  • Cheyenne Harris-Starling – Advisor: Eiling Yee
  • Caroline Hebert – Advisor: Marie Coppola
  • Qingli Hu – Advisor: Etan Markus
  • Joel Lopez – Advisor: Gregory Sartor
  • Akriti Mishra – Advisor: Marie Coppola
  • Murphy Kenny – Advisor: Linnaea Ostroff
  • Natalie Nanez – Advisor: Geoff Tanner
  • Areej Sayeed – Advisor: Robert Astur
  • Aditi Anam – Advisor: Etan Markus
  • Alexis Cleri – Advisor: Marie Coppola
  • Samantha Grubb – Advisor: James Magnuson
  • Derek Pan – Advisor: Joanne Conover/li>
  • Grace Roy – Advisor: Gerry Altmann
  • Aditi Sirsikar – Advisor: Inge-Marie Eigsti

Summer 2019

Summer Research Award Recipients

  • Maxime Braun – Advisor: John Salamone
  • Kirantheja Daggula – Advisor: Holly Fitch
  • Jairo Orea – Advisor: Linnaea Ostroff

Seed Grant Recipients 2018-2019

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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.

2018-2019 Recipients

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

James Dixon, Psychological Sciences

Title of Project: Artificial neural network controller for the postural balance of a compliant simulated bot

Postural balance in humans is essentially unstable, thus requiring active and anticipatory compensation from the nervous system that depends on reliable perception. This project presents an artificial neural network that anticipates and controls the state of a simulated bot made of rods and springs by sensing and adjusting the length of the springs. The network can adapt up to a certain point to intrinsic noise and degradation in the quality of the available information.

James Li, Genetics & Genome Sciences

Title of Project: Roles of Foxp1 and Foxp2 in the development and function of the cerebellum

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.

 

James Magnuson, Psychological Sciences 

Title of Project: Interactive activation and the neural basis of spoken language processing

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.

Alexandra Paxton, Psychological Sciences 

Title of Project:  Dyadic coupling in simulated firefighter search-and-rescue tasks

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.

Devin Kearns, Educational Psychology 

Title of Project: Neuromodulation for Reading Improvement (NeuRI)

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.

Geoffrey Tanner, Physiology & Neurobiology

Title of Project:  Understanding the molecular and cellular underpinnings of elevated aggression following traumatic brain injury (TBI).

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.

James Chrobak, Psychological Sciences

Title of Project: Audio synchronization of intrinsic brain oscillations to augment perception and memory.

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.

Corina Goodwin, Linguistics

Title of Project: Developing Alternative Language Assessments for Children with Diverse Language Backgrounds

Children with cochlear implants often hear no language during the first several months or years of their lives. Existing standardized language tests were designed for hearing children exposed to language from birth. Therefore, these tests cannot identify language disorders in children with delayed language exposure. We are adapting assessments originally created by cognitive and developmental psychologists to identify the most appropriate interventions for children with cochlear implants, depending on the presence of a language disorder.   

Undergraduate Research Award Recipients 2018-2019

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The Undergraduate Research Supply Award provides students with funds that they can use toward supplies and other expenses associated with an ongoing independent research project. The Undergraduate Summer Research Award provides funds for students to conduct independent research during the summer session.

Fall 2018 and Spring 2019

Research Supply Award Recipients

  • Kirantheja Daggula – Advisor: Holly Fitch
  • Jason Gallo – Advisor: John Salamone
  • Amar Kalaria – Advisor: Joanne Conover
  • Timothy O’Toole – Advisor: Geoffrey Tanner
  • Lily Zhong – Advisor: Alexander Jackson
  • Christina Deoss – Advisor: Marie Coppola
  • Corine Sylvain – Advisor: Marie Coppola
  • James Frageau – Advisor: Geoffrey Tanner
  • Caroline Hebert – Advisor: Marie Coppola
  • Elliott Willion – Advisor: James Li
  • Arsal Shah – Advisor: John Salamone
  • Olivia Dimarco – Advisor: John Salamone

Summer 2018

Summer Research Award Recipients

  • Rohit Makol – Advisor: David Martinelli
  • Skylar Sklenarik – Advisor: Robert Astur
  • Krishna Vali – Advisor: Geoffrey Tanner

Seed Grant Recipients 2017-2018

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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.

2017-2018 Recipients

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

Stephen Crocker, Neuroscience

Title of Project: Aging and the Effect of Senolytic Treatments on the Aged Central Nervous System

Aging represents the biggest risk factor for developing a neurological disease. Chronological aging is associated with alterations in stress response pathways, cell cycle gene expression and pro-inflammatory factors collectively called cellular senescence. Experimental evidence has demonstrated that elimination of senescent cells (senolysis) promotes tissue rejuvenation in peripheral organs such as the pancreas and heart. Degenerative diseases of the central nervous system (CNS), such as Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis, have implicated cellular senescence to neuroinflammation, diminished neurological functions and reduced regenerative capacity. However, our preliminary data indicate that senolytics may have a profoundly negative effect on the CNS. Overall the impact of senolytics on the CNS are not known. Funding from this project will determine the optimal markers of cellular senescence in the aged CNS, and evaluate the impact of senolytics on cellular senescence and pathology in the aged CNS. Results from this pilot study are expected to identify and validate senescence biomarkers and the impact of senolytic treatment on CNS pathology and the use of senolytics to target cellular senescence to treat neurological diseases.​

Dimitris Xygalatas, Neuroscience

Title of Project: Dynamics of fan’s experience during sports games: A study of Brazilian soccer fans

Sports elicit strong emotions and powerful identities that unite and divide people, but little is known about the psychophysiological dynamics of the interaction between fans, and even less about that between fans and players. This project will explore these dynamics in a real-life setting, using physiological measurements and motion capture technology to study the experience and behavior of Brazilian soccer fans and their relationship to the performance of the game itself.

 Eiling Yee, Psychological Sciences 

Title of Project: Using electrical stimulation of the brain to explore how we activate knowledge about concepts.

When searching for a lemon in a fruit basket, its yellowness is more important than its sourness. How do we inhibit this task-irrelevant information? We will apply electrical stimulation to the scalp, over frontal areas of the brain, to explore the claim that such stimulation facilitates neural processing and the ability to inhibit irrelevant information. This project will provide insights into the dynamics of conceptual activation and into how humans adapt to their changing environments.

 

Christopher Heffner, Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences

Title of Project: A Working Brain and Cognitive Science Lab in a Science Museum

Most research in the brain and cognitive sciences uses participants who are located near the researcher. However, there is a lot to be gained by going off-campus to conduct research. The present project provides funding for lab space at the Connecticut Science Center. Running participants in a science museum serves two objectives: allowing for the quick recruitment of a diverse group of people and allowing IBACS researchers to share our field with a broad audience.

 

Holly Fitch, Psychological Sciences 

Title of Project: Serum biomarkers and caffeine treatment: prediction and enhancement of long-term cognitive outcomes in a preterm brain-injury model

This IBACS seed-funded study will study an induced neonatal brain injury model in rat pups. This model simulates brain injuries typically seen in premature infants. Serum biomarkers will be obtained from rat pups 48 hrs. after induced injury, and these biomarker levels will be correlated to long-term cognitive and behavioral outcomes on a battery of tasks, as well as post mortem neuropathology measures. Results will be used to assess the predictive value of early biomarkers as a translational screening tool. Serum measures will be assessed and correlated with outcomes in both sham rat pups, hypoxic-ischemic brain injured rat pups, and injured pups treated with caffeine as a putative neuroprotectant. Overall findings will provide the basis for an expanded research plan to study a predictive role for chronic inflammatory factors measured 48 hours after preterm-like injury, as well as a possible mechanistic role for these markers that could provide a target for novel therapies. Data from injured pups treated with caffeine is expected to confirm beneficial long-term effects, and could support future clinical studies of caffeine in preterm infants.

 

Letitia Naigles, Psychological Sciences 

Title of Project: Language and Object Play in Early Childhood in TD children and children with ASD

Our research analyzes a longitudinal dataset of children’s language development (LSEL; Naigles & Fein, 2017), including both neurotypical toddlers and toddlers with Autism Spectrum Disorder, to investigate how object play and language support each other throughout development. To this end, we are developing a moment-to-moment coding scheme that captures the ways in which children's interactions with objects continuously adapt to adult behaviors and investigates the degree to which such interactions predict lexical knowledge and organization.

 

Roeland Hancock, Psychological Sciences 

Title of Project: Modeling auditory perception in the individual brain

When you hear a sound, some populations of neurons fire in synchrony, producing an oscillation that we can measure using electroencephalography. This process depends on the chemistry of your brain, which can be measured using an MRI. We are building a computer model of this process in order to predict how individuals respond to certain sounds, based on their neurochemistry. We will also alter neurochemistry using a magnetic stimulator to test the model predictions.

 

David Martinelli, Neuroscience

Title of Project: Discovery of a novel neural mechanism to protect the sensory cells of the cochlea from death caused by intense noise

Normal hearing requires sensory cells in the cochlea, called outer hair cells. They are particularly susceptible to death as a result of intense noise exposure. They cannot regenerate, and their death results in permanent hearing loss. This proposal aims to identify a novel nervous system mechanism that protects outer hair cells from intense sound. This could lead to future experiments that enhance this mechanism to protect the hearing of those susceptible to hearing loss.

 

Roeland Hancock, Psychological Sciences

Title of Project: Genetic and Environmental Bases of Language Processing

The overall goal of this research is to determine how the relationship between language and reading-related skills and neurobiology (i.e. brain structure and function) is differentially mediated by genetic and environmental factors in different regions of the brain. We collect data in a novel genetically informed study design from families who have had children through assisted reproductive technology to address this question.