Horiuchi, Moss Receive $1.5M NSF Grant

Associate Professor Timothy Horiuchi (co-PI; ECE/ISR) and Professor Cynthia Moss (PI; psychology/ISR) have won a $1.5 million National Science Foundation Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience grant, "Adaptive perceptual-motor feedback for the analysis of complex scenes."

The five-year grant will fund research to understand the processes that support perception and action in complex settings. The research will focus on spatial perception and navigation in the echolocating bat, an auditory specialist that produces high frequency sonar calls and listens to echo returns to determine the location of objects in its environment. The echolocating bat modifies its sonar calls in response to echo information from targets (insect prey) and obstacles.

Quantitative analyses of this animal's adaptive vocal behavior will be used to infer its perception of a changing environment. The biological component of this research combines behavioral and neurophysiological experiments to gain insight to how sensory information from complex scenes is coded and used to guide behaviors. Analysis of behavioral and neural data will be coordinated with modeling efforts and the development of a robotic spatial navigation system. Together, the biological and engineering arms of this research project will generate new knowledge that contributes to a deeper understanding of perception and action in complex, natural environments.

The project will translate knowledge and methodologies across biology and engineering, ranging from ethology and neurobiology to computational modeling and robotic demonstrations. The research has wide-ranging impact for neurobiology, interdisciplinary research training, neuroscience techniques, robotics, and the design of assistive devices.

Published September 30, 2010