CAREER: The Mechanisms of Cognitive Development

California Institute Of Technology, Pasadena CA

Investigators

Abstract

Steven Quartz BCS:0093757 The Mechanisms of Cognitive Development This integrated research and education CAREER development program centers on a basic question: How do human cognitive skills emerge from the developing brain? In recent years, developmental cognitive neuroscience has begun to construct integrative frameworks that bring together neurobiology and psychology to begin to address this basic question. The addition of computational modeling has facilitated this integrative framework by offering promising tools to characterize the dynamics of development. This career development program will build on these advances in developmental cognitive neuroscience. Over five-years, it will integrate psychology, neurobiology, computational modeling, and robotics to create a neurocomputational framework for investigating human cognitive development. Specifically, this project has two major research components: Constructive learning: An Investigation of the interplay between learning and neural development: Human cognitive development rests on a complex interaction between biological mechanisms and processes of learning. This research component will construct a computational framework to investigate how learning guides the construction of the brain circuits underlying human cognitive function. With this framework, it will be possible to address such critical questions as: What are the neural substrates of cognitive development, what processes regulate their development, and how does change at the neural level correspond to change at the cognitive and behavioral level? To investigate these issues, this framework will be applied to a variety of cognitive developmental phenomena, including Piagetian developmental tasks, the development of executive function, and outstanding issues in developmental plasticity. Active development: A computational investigation of midbrain dopamine systems in the development of executive function: Converging evidence suggests that midbrain dopamine systems constitute a behavioral system that fuels the child's active exploration, a critical but poorly understood component of development. This research will apply a computational model of midbrain dopamine projections to the development of human executive function, which underlies flexible behavior. Specifically, this project will construct a computational framework to investigate the crucial but poorly understood developmental links between dopaminergic systems and prefrontal cortex in the emergence of working memory, behavioral inhibition, and executive function. This research will develop alongside both an undergraduate and graduate educational program that will include the creation of a new graduate program in Cognition in the Computational and Neural Systems Program at the California Institute of Technology. Caltech has recently made a strong commitment to fostering interdisciplinary research and education in the cognitive and behavioral sciences, making it an ideal environment in which to pursue this career development plan.