New Paradigms for Interpretable Metrics of Human Brain Function: From Low-Level Sensations to High-Level Decisions
Yale University Department of Biomedical Engineering
Seminar Series
When: Thursday, March 27th, 2014
Place: Becton Seminar Room
Time: 4pm
“New Paradigms for Interpretable Metrics of Human Brain Function:
From Low-Level Sensations to High-Level Decisions”
Simon Kelly
Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering
City College of New York
Abstract: Noninvasive neurophysiology and neuroimaging techniques have long held great promise in revealing details of healthy and dysfunctional human brain mechanisms that are otherwise obscured in behavioral assays alone. In practice, however, gaining such insights is a huge challenge due to severely limited resolution. In my talk I will describe a number of new human electrophysiological paradigms that have been developed to provide direct experimental access to low-level and high-level brain processes of considerable fundamental and clinical interest, namely, the cortical balancing of neural excitation and inhibition, the signals governing perceptual and value-based decision formation, and the signatures of lapsing attention. The crucial common feature among these paradigms is their simplicity; sensory stimulation and task requirements are stripped-down to a degree that naturally exposes the core computational elements involved in the brain processes under study. I will describe recent basic research findings and follow-up clinical investigations that exploit this approach.