DOCSLIB.ORG

Neural Construction of Conscious Perception

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Neural Construction of Conscious Perception Neural construction of conscious perception Thesis by Janis Karan Hesse In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Pasadena, California 2020 (Defended May 28th, 2020) ii 2020 Janis Hesse ORCID: 0000-0003-0405-8632 iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I'd like to thank Doris Tsao for being an incredible advisor and undepletable source of ideas, advice and inspiration, for sharing her passion for science with me, and giving me the courage to ask big questions. I am very happy about the choice of my thesis committee. Markus Meister, Ueli Rutishauser, and Ralph Adolphs contributed substantially by providing useful ideas, discussions, and criticisms throughout this thesis. I want to thank current and past members of the Tsao lab, including Varun Wadia, Nicole Schweers, Audo Flores, Pinglei Bao, Liang She, Steven Le Chang, Xueqi Cheng Shay Ohayon, Tomo Sato, Joseph Wekselblatt, Francisco Luongo, Lu Liu, Anne Martin, Jessa Alexander, Erin Koch, Jialiang Lu, Yuelin Shi, Alex Farhang, Irene Caprara, Frank Lanfranchi, Lindsay Salay, Hongsun Guo, Abriana Sustaita, and Sebastian Moeller, who have all been very willing to offer me help whenever I needed, taught me the different techniques in the lab, and gave me great comments, ideas and discussions. I would also like to note that the work on human epilepsy patients described in Chapter VI is as much of Varun Wadia's work as it is mine. I am grateful to have started my PhD with such a lovely cohort. My PhD would not have been as fun without Mason McGill, Vineet Augustine, Gabriela Tavares, and Ryan Cho. I am very grateful for having met MACS, who strongly motivated me while writing this thesis. I want to thank Angela Hesse for gifting me this life and raising me in it in such a loving way. iv ABSTRACT Out of a myriad of sensory stimulations, our brain constructs a unified, self- consistent reality that we consciously experience. Little is known about how or where in the brain’s processing stream of physical input a conscious percept emerges into awareness. A remarkable property of conscious perception is that even though external input is often ambiguous, the perceptual interpretation of the world that our brain generates is consistent across multiple layers of representation, e.g., figure-ground segmentation and object identity. We thus set out to study how the interaction between different nodes in the brain generates and propagates new conscious percepts. Since the code of object identity is already well-understood, in particular for faces as reviewed in this thesis, we decided to get a handle on segmentation signals first. It turned out that consistent segmentation signals are hard to find, however, we found functionally defined modules in the brain that contained consistent cells from which figure-ground signals can be decoded. We next investigated whether face cells in object recognition areas actually encode the conscious percept of a face or are just passive filters of visual input. To distill conscious perception from other cognitive processes, such as decision making, introspection, and reporting of the percept, which often accompany new conscious percepts, we developed a no-report binocular rivalry paradigm that relies on an active fixation task rather than report, and therefore eliminates these confounding factors. We found that face patches in inferotemporal cortex indeed encode the conscious percept of a face. Using novel high-yield electrodes, we were able to decode what the animal was consciously perceiving at a given time. Preliminary and future experiments of population recordings from multiple nodes of the cortical hierarchy simultaneously promise to go beyond correlates of consciousness and reveal the mechanisms of how and where conscious percepts are constructed. v PUBLISHED CONTENT AND CONTRIBUTIONS Hesse, Janis K., and Tsao, Doris Y. (2016). "Consistency of border-ownership cells across artificial stimuli, natural stimuli, and stimuli with ambiguous contours." In: Journal of Neuroscience 36.44 (2016): 11338-11349. DOI:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1857-16.2016 J.K.H. conducted the experiments and analyzed the data. J.K.H. and D.Y.T. designed the experiments, interpreted the data, and wrote the paper. Hesse, Janis K. and Tsao, Doris Y. (2020). " Representation of conscious percept without report in the macaque face patch network". In : bioRxiv. DOI: 10.1101/2020.04.22.047522. Submitted to eLife. J.K.H. conducted the experiments and analyzed the data. J.K.H. and D.Y.T. designed the experiments, interpreted the data, and wrote the paper. Hesse, Janis K. and Tsao, Doris Y. (2020). " The macaque face patch system: a turtle’s underbelly for the brain". Submitted to: Nature Reviews Neuroscience. J.K.H. and D.Y.T. wrote the paper. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements………………………………………………………... iii Abstract ……………………………………………………………...………iv Published Content and Contributions…………………………….….........v Table of Contents………………………………………………….………. vi List of Illustrations and/or Tables………………………………….………vii Nomenclature………………………………………………………………..ix Chapter I: Introduction ............................................................................ 1 Motivation .......................................................................................... 1 Bistable phenomena ......................................................................... 3 Outline ............................................................................................... 5 Chapter II: The macaque face patch system .......................................... 8 Introduction ........................................................................................ 8 Face cell discovery ............................................................................ 9 Anatomical organization .................................................................. 14 Coding principles ............................................................................. 20 Causal role in behavior ................................................................... 35 Interaction with other brain areas .................................................... 40 Conclusion and boxes ..................................................................... 46 Chapter III: Figure-ground segmentation .............................................. 55 Consistency of border-ownership cells ........................................... 55 Segmentation patches .................................................................... 87 Chapter IV: Mooney faces .................................................................... 95 Chapter V: A philosophical treatise on consciousness....................... 103 Definitions of consciousness ......................................................... 103 Review of previous paradigms for specific consciousness ........... 106 Confounding factors ...................................................................... 109 No-report paradigms ..................................................................... 113 Conclusions ................................................................................... 116 Chapter VI: Binocular rivalry ............................................................... 117 Representation of conscious percept in macaque face patches .. 117 Recordings in human epilepsy patients ........................................ 146 Chapter VII: Future directions ............................................................. 151 Are conscious switches feedforward or feedback? ....................... 151 Future experiments on mechanisms of consciousness ................ 156 Summary of thesis main results .................................................... 158 Bibliography ........................................................................................ 159 vii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND/OR TABLES Number Page 1. Figure I-1: Frontal-profile illusion ................................................. 2 2. Figure I-2: Bistable phenomena .................................................. 5 3. Figure II-1. Face-selective patches in macaque cortex ............. 13 4. Figure II-2. Anatomical connectivity of face patches ................. 18 5. Figure II-3. Probing feature selectivity of face cells ................... 21 6. Figure II-4. Increasing view invariance across the face patch hierarchy .................................................................................... 26 7. Figure II-5. The neural code for facial identity ........................... 29 8. Figure II-6. The neural code for object identity in general ......... 32 9. Figure II-B1. The Thatcher illusion ............................................ 48 10. Figure II-B2. Face patches across different primate species .... 50 11. Figure III-1. Segmentation can be ambiguous based on low-level cues ........................................................................................... 58 12. Figure III-2. An example border-ownership cell ......................... 59 13. Table III-1. Consistency of cells for border-ownership stimuli ... 62 14. Figure III-3. Comparison of population analysis to Qiu and Von Der Heydt (2007). ................................................. 65 15. Figure III-4. Quantification of response consistency across artificial and natural stimuli ........................................................ 67 16. Figure III-5. Responses of border-ownership cells to simple and natural stimuli ............................................................................
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Physiology and Computation of Pyramidal Neurons
    The Physiology and Computation of Pyramidal Neurons Thesis by Adam Shai In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Bioengineering CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Pasadena, California 2016 (Defended December 8, 2015) ii © 2016 Adam Shai All Rights Reserved iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS “Sitting in the gaudy radiance of those windows hearing the organ play and the choir sing, his mind pleasantly intoxicated from exhaustion, Daniel experienced a faint echo of what it must be like, all the time, to be Isaac Newton: a permanent ongoing epiphany, an endless immersion in lurid radiance, a drowning in light, a ringing of cosmic harmonies in the ears.” Neal Stephenson in Quicksilver Sometimes it feels as if graduate school was designed specifically to keep a certain type of soul happy. Those of us whose obsessions tend to overtake polite conversation, betraying either a slight social ineptitude or quirky personality trait, depending on who you ask, tend to find a home in the academic life. That such a setting was afforded to me requires my unrelenting thanks. I cannot think of a more joyous situation than the last six years of my life, where I was expected and able to be thinking intensely about what I wanted to think about. I came to Caltech primarily as a result of an interesting conversation with Christof Koch, about consciousness, quantum mechanics, and art, when I first visited during the winter of 2009. That he became my advisor guaranteed that I would be cared for during my graduate studies. Christof takes the calling of Doktorvater seriously. The environment of K-lab, by Christof’s example and design, was one of intense intellectual playfulness.
    [Show full text]
  • Dynamics of Excitatory-Inhibitory Neuronal Networks With
    I (X;Y) = S(X) - S(X|Y) in c ≈ p + N r V(t) = V 0 + ∫ dτZ 1(τ)I(t-τ) P(N) = 1 V= R I N! λ N e -λ www.cosyne.org R j = R = P( Ψ, υ) + Mγ (Ψ, υ) σ n D +∑ j n k D k n MAIN MEETING Salt Lake City, UT Feb 27 - Mar 2 ................................................................................................................................................................................................................. Program Summary Thursday, 27 February 4:00 pm Registration opens 5:30 pm Welcome reception 6:20 pm Opening remarks 6:30 pm Session 1: Keynote Invited speaker: Thomas Jessell 7:30 pm Poster Session I Friday, 28 February 7:30 am Breakfast 8:30 am Session 2: Circuits I: From wiring to function Invited speaker: Thomas Mrsic-Flogel; 3 accepted talks 10:30 am Session 3: Circuits II: Population recording Invited speaker: Elad Schneidman; 3 accepted talks 12:00 pm Lunch break 2:00 pm Session 4: Circuits III: Network models 5 accepted talks 3:45 pm Session 5: Navigation: From phenomenon to mechanism Invited speakers: Nachum Ulanovsky, Jeffrey Magee; 1 accepted talk 5:30 pm Dinner break 7:30 pm Poster Session II Saturday, 1 March 7:30 am Breakfast 8:30 am Session 6: Behavior I: Dissecting innate movement Invited speaker: Hopi Hoekstra; 3 accepted talks 10:30 am Session 7: Behavior II: Motor learning Invited speaker: Rui Costa; 2 accepted talks 11:45 am Lunch break 2:00 pm Session 8: Behavior III: Motor performance Invited speaker: John Krakauer; 2 accepted talks 3:45 pm Session 9: Reward: Learning and prediction Invited speaker: Yael
    [Show full text]
  • Alumni Director Cover Page.Pub
    Harvard University Program in Neuroscience History of Enrollment in The Program in Neuroscience July 2018 Updated each July Nicholas Spitzer, M.D./Ph.D. B.A., Harvard College Entered 1966 * Defended May 14, 1969 Advisor: David Poer A Physiological and Histological Invesgaon of the Intercellular Transfer of Small Molecules _____________ Professor of Neurobiology University of California at San Diego Eric Frank, Ph.D. B.A., Reed College Entered 1967 * Defended January 17, 1972 Advisor: Edwin J. Furshpan The Control of Facilitaon at the Neuromuscular Juncon of the Lobster _______________ Professor Emeritus of Physiology Tus University School of Medicine Albert Hudspeth, M.D./Ph.D. B.A., Harvard College Entered 1967 * Defended April 30, 1973 Advisor: David Poer Intercellular Juncons in Epithelia _______________ Professor of Neuroscience The Rockefeller University David Van Essen, Ph.D. B.S., California Instute of Technology Entered 1967 * Defended October 22, 1971 Advisor: John Nicholls Effects of an Electronic Pump on Signaling by Leech Sensory Neurons ______________ Professor of Anatomy and Neurobiology Washington University David Van Essen, Eric Frank, and Albert Hudspeth At the 50th Anniversary celebraon for the creaon of the Harvard Department of Neurobiology October 7, 2016 Richard Mains, Ph.D. Sc.B., M.S., Brown University Entered 1968 * Defended April 24, 1973 Advisor: David Poer Tissue Culture of Dissociated Primary Rat Sympathec Neurons: Studies of Growth, Neurotransmier Metabolism, and Maturaon _______________ Professor of Neuroscience University of Conneccut Health Center Peter MacLeish, Ph.D. B.E.Sc., University of Western Ontario Entered 1969 * Defended December 29, 1976 Advisor: David Poer Synapse Formaon in Cultures of Dissociated Rat Sympathec Neurons Grown on Dissociated Rat Heart Cells _______________ Professor and Director of the Neuroscience Instute Morehouse School of Medicine Peter Sargent, Ph.D.
    [Show full text]
  • The Macaque Face Patch System: a Window Into Object Representation
    Downloaded from symposium.cshlp.org on August 3, 2015 - Published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press The Macaque Face Patch System: A Window into Object Representation DORIS TSAO Division of Biology and Biological Engineering and Computation and Neural Systems, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125 Correspondence: [email protected] The macaque brain contains a set of regions that show stronger fMRI activation to faces than other classes of object. This “face patch system” has provided a unique opportunity to gain insight into the organizing principles of IT cortex and to dissect the neural mechanisms underlying form perception, because the system is specialized to process one class of complex forms, and because its computational components are spatially segregated. Over the past 5 years, we have set out to exploit this system to clarify the nature of object representation in the brain through a multilevel approach combining electrophysiology, anatomy, and behavior. These experiments reveal (1) a remarkably precise connectivity of face patches to each other, (2) a functional hierarchy for representation of view-invariant identity comprising at least three distinct stages along the face patch system, and (3) the computational mechanisms used by cells in face patches to detect and recognize faces, including measurement of diagnostic local contrast features for detection and measurement of face feature values for recognition. How does the brain represent objects? This question nature of these steps remains a mystery. One major trans- had its beginnings in philosophy. Our fundamental intu- formation appears to be segmentation (i.e., organizing ition of the physical world consists of a space containing visual information into discrete pieces corresponding to objects, and philosophers starting from Plato wondered different objects) (Zhou et al.
    [Show full text]
  • Functional Neuroanatomy of Intuitive Physical Inference
    Functional neuroanatomy of intuitive physical inference Jason Fischera,b,c,d,1, John G. Mikhaela,b,c,e, Joshua B. Tenenbauma,b,c, and Nancy Kanwishera,b,c,1 aDepartment of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139; bMcGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139; cThe Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139; dDepartment of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21202; and eHarvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115 Contributed by Nancy Kanwisher, June 29, 2016 (sent for review May 24, 2016; reviewed by Susan J. Hespos and Doris Tsao) To engage with the world—to understand the scene in front of us, region or family of regions essentially engaged in physical in- plan actions, and predict what will happen next—we must have an ferences and recruited more for physical inference than for intuitive grasp of the world’s physical structure and dynamics. other similarly difficult prediction or perception tasks? How do the objects in front of us rest on and support each other, Although some studies have explored the neural representation how much force would be required to move them, and how will of objects’ surface and material properties (2–4) and weights (5–7) they behave when they fall, roll, or collide? Despite the centrality or investigated the brain areas involved in explicit, textbook-style of physical inferences in daily life, little is known about the brain physical reasoning (8, 9), little is known about the cortical ma- mechanisms recruited to interpret the physical structure of a scene chinery that supports the more implicit perceptual judgments about and predict how physical events will unfold.
    [Show full text]
  • Dissecting Neural Circuits for Vision in Non-Human Primates Using Fmri-Guided Electrophysiology and Optogenetics
    1 Dissecting neural circuits for vision in non-human primates using fMRI-guided electrophysiology and optogenetics Thesis by Shay Ohayon In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Pasadena, California 2014 (Defended 15th May 2014) ii 2014 Shay Ohayon All Rights Reserved iii This work is dedicated to my parents The distance between your dreams and reality is called action. - Unknown iv v Acknowledgements There are many people without whom this thesis would not exist. First and foremost, I would like to acknowledge my PhD advisor, Doris Tsao, for giving me the opportunity to perform research in her lab and the freedom to pursue my own research ideas. She provided continuous guidance and support throughout the years and trusted me in leading experiments and procedures from day one (“OK, now you drill…” will forever be remembered as the ultimate show of confidence to a young graduate student with zero surgical experience). Nicole Schweers, our lab manager, for always lending an ear and taking care of my animals as if they were her own children. I would like to thank Prof. Pietro Perona for a joyful collaboration throughout my years at Caltech. Many thanks also go to all the past members of the Tsao lab. Winrich Freiwald who was a close collaborator throughout the years and provided many important advices on electrophysiology. Sebastian Moeller, for many fruitful discussions and teaching me how to perform electrical microstimulation and fMRI data analysis. Piercesare Grimaldi, who I owe everything I know about histology and immunohistochemistry.
    [Show full text]
  • Michael Paul Stryker
    BK-SFN-NEUROSCIENCE_V11-200147-Stryker.indd 372 6/19/20 2:19 PM Michael Paul Stryker BORN: Savannah, Georgia June 16, 1947 EDUCATION: Deep Springs College, Deep Springs, CA (1964–1966) University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, BA (1968) Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, PhD (1975) Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, Postdoctoral (1975–1978) APPOINTMENTS: Assistant Professor of Physiology, University of California, San Francisco (1978–1983) Associate Professor of Physiology, UCSF (1983–1987) Professor of Physiology, UCSF (1987–present) Visiting Professor of Human Anatomy, University of Oxford, England (1987–1988) Co-Director, Neuroscience Graduate Program, UCSF (1988–1994) Chairman, Department of Physiology, UCSF (1994–2005) Director, Markey Program in Biological Sciences, UCSF (1994–1996) William Francis Ganong Endowed Chair of Physiology, UCSF (1995–present) HONORS AND AWARDS (SELECTED): W. Alden Spencer Award, Columbia University (1990) Cattedra Galileiana (Galileo Galilei Chair) Scuola Normale Superiore, Italy (1993) Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1999) Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2002) Member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (2009) Pepose Vision Sciences Award, Brandeis University (2012) RPB Stein Innovator Award, Research to Prevent Blindness (2016) Krieg Cortical Kudos Discoverer Award from the Cajal Club (2018) Disney Award for Amblyopia Research, Research to Prevent Blindness (2020) Michael Stryker’s laboratory demonstrated the role of spontaneous neural activity as distinguished from visual experience in the prenatal and postnatal development of the central visual system. He and his students created influential and biologically realistic theoretical mathematical models of cortical development. He pioneered the use of the ferret for studies of the central visual system and used this species to delineate the role of neural activity in the development of orientation selectivity and cortical columns.
    [Show full text]
  • Studying Conscious and Unconscious Vision with Fmri: the Bold Promise
    STUDYING CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS VISION WITH FMRI: THE BOLD PROMISE Thesis by Julien Dubois In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy California Institute of Technology Pasadena, California 2013 (Defended May 29, 2013) ii © 2013 Julien Dubois All Rights Reserved iii To my wife Christine, whose face I consciously perceive every morning when I open my eyes, and it makes me so happy. iv v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Every single day I wake up and I am grateful. Yes, even on those days while I was writing this thesis, an infamously grueling experience. I have always been free to pursue my dream, even if it has been in constant evolution. When I was in high school, my dream was to study and save the tigers with an organization like the World Wildlife Fund. Then, as my studies went on, my dream evolved into wanting to solve the puzzle of how our planet got to be what it is (I got a bachelor’s and master’s degree in earth and atmospheric sciences). My dream evolved further into wanting to understand how life started (I got a master’s degree in biochemistry, focused on the origins of life). But my dream was not done maturing yet. I gave it a little more time to do so, and went traveling around the world with my favorite person on this planet. During my travels, I came across Christof Koch’s 2004 book, The Quest for Consciousness, and my dream finally entered puberty. I needed to understand the brain! I needed to understand what made us do everything that we did, know everything that we knew, feel everything that we felt, discover everything that we discovered.
    [Show full text]
  • Brain's Face Detector Lights up Questions About Autism’
    Spectrum | Autism Research News https://www.spectrumnews.org NEWS Brain’s face detector lights up questions about autism's origins BY SARAH DEWEERDT 15 OCTOBER 2015 The brain’s face detector is not hard to find. To see to it, simply put someone in a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner and show them a series of images: a house, a face, a landscape, a face, a bicycle, another face. An irregular patch on the surface of the brain, just behind the ear, glows brighter in response to faces than it does for any other object or scene. This fusiform face area (FFA) occupies a spot on the cerebral cortex — the outer shell of the brain that is responsible for complex cognitive functions — and is larger in the right hemisphere than in the left. The area “is overwhelmingly reliable in its activation and in our ability to identify it in individual people time and time and time again,” says Suzy Scherf, assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at Penn State University in University Park, Pennsylvania. Abnormalities in the FFA in people with autism are as easy to identify as the area itself: It tends to glow less brightly in people with autism when they look at faces than it does in controls1. “It’s not that you can’t find it,” Scherf says. “It just is a very weak signal.” The meaning of this difference, however, is harder to pinpoint. Most scientists agree that difficulties in understanding human faces and their expressions are tied to social deficits in autism. And yet weak activation of the FFA is not at the root of the disorder.
    [Show full text]
  • 2015.01-2015.12)
    Colloquia and Symposia Sponsored by ION (2015.01-2015.12) Date Name Affiliations Title Why is the brain's resting state relevant University of Ottawa, 2015.01.07 Georg Northoff for mental features and their alterations Canada in neuropsychiatric disorders? Center for Cognition and Thalamocortical circuits in control of 2015-01-08 Hee-Sup Shi Sociality, Institute for Basic consciousness and cognition Science, Korea Michael M. 2015-01-14 Brain Plasticity Institute, U.S.A. Brain plasticity-based medicine Merzenich UT Southwestern Medical Biochemical Reconstitution of the 2015-02-05 Qinghua Liu Center, U.S.A. Catalytic Engine of RNA Interference Department of Precision Instrument, Center for Brain-like Computing – Development of 2015-03-16 Luping Shi Brain-like Computing, Computer Inspired by Brain Science Tsinghua University Neural Circuit Mechanisms of Icahn School of Medicine at 2015-03-26 Minghu Han Susceptibility and Resilience to Social Mount Sinai U.S.A. Stress Duke University Medical Secreted miRNAs as novel 2015-03-31 Ru-Rong Ji Center, U.S.A. neuromodulators and pain mediators Developmental Biology Organizing the Cerebral Cortex-The Program, Memorial Sloan 2015-04-09 Hua-Tai Xu Role of Lineage Relationship in the Kettering Cancer Center, Hippocampus U.S.A. Research Associate, Department of We can see it in your eyes: What do eye 2015-04-16 Yan Yang Neurobiology, Duke movements tell us about the brain University School of Medicine, U.S.A. California Institute of The macaque face patch system: A 2015-05-08 Doris Tsao Technology, U.S.A. window into object representation A new sensory motor loop interfacing the Institut du Cerveau et de la 2015-05-08 Claire Wyart cerebrospinal fuid with the central Moelle épinière, France pattern generator in vertebrates Janelia Research Campus, Imaging molecules and cells at high 2015-05-19 Kai Wang Howard Hughes Medical spatiotemporal resolution throughout Institute, USA whole living organisms Neural mechanisms for cross-brain Yale School of Medicine, 2015-05-20 Joy Hirsch human communication: A functional near U.S.A.
    [Show full text]
  • Open Letter to Francis Collins and Michael Lauer
    To: Francis Collins, MD, PhD Director National Institutes of Health CC: Michael Lauer, MD Deputy Director for Extramural Research National Institutes of Health 26 September 2017 Dear Dr. Collins, We, the 62 undersigned awardees of the NIH High-Risk, High-Reward Research Program, are writing to express our concern about the NIH’s policy that broadens the definition of a clinical trial to include a great deal of basic discovery science. We join others in asking you to delay the implementation of any rule change until its implications have been entirely fleshed out, with input from the basic science community. We are not alone in our concern. Over 3500 scientists have signed an open letter addressed to you [http://ipetitions.com/petition/open-letter-nih-collins], requesting that the NIH delays implementation of this policy. The requested delay would give the NIH more time to work with basic scientists to update its clinical trials policy so as to ensure that it does not have adverse effects on basic research communities. Those 3500 scientists believe that the clinical trials policy should ensure that research is conducted in an open, transparent, and reproducible fashion, without handcuffing discovery science. We agree with them. In its current form, unfortunately, the policy will have a chilling effect. It will reduce the number of funding opportunities available to basic scientists, severely complicate review of discovery science proposals, and reduce access to research experience for undergrads and graduate students. Plainly, the policy hurts discovery science and the people who do it. We agree with the analyses presented in a recent Neuron article, which noted that NIH’s case studies, which are intended to clarify the types of research newly classified as clinical trials, are, in fact, rife with contradictions [http://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(17)30789-4].
    [Show full text]
  • Curriculum Vitae November, 2007
    Curriculum Vitae November, 2007 PING LI Contact and Personal Information: Program Director Perception, Action and Cognition National Science Foundation 4201 Wilson Boulevard Arlington, VA 22230, USA Tel: (703) 292-8643 Email: [email protected] On-leave from: Professor of Psychology Department of Psychology University of Richmond Richmond, VA 23173, USA Tel: (804) 289-8125 (office) (804) 287-1236 (lab) Fax: (804) 287-1905 E-mail: [email protected] http://cogsci.richmond.edu/ Date of birth: Dec. 22, 1962 Citizenship: USA Education and Professional Preparation 1992 Post-doctoral fellow (mentor: Jeff Elman) McDonnell-Pew Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, San Diego, USA 1990-1992 Post-doctoral fellow (mentor: Liz Bates) Center for Research in Language, University of California, San Diego, USA 1990 Ph.D. in Psycholinguistics, University of Leiden, The Netherlands (graduate training at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics; mentor: Melissa Bowerman) 1986 M.A. in Theoretical Linguistics, Peking University, China 1983 B.A. in Chinese Linguistics, Peking University, China 1 Employment History 2007-present Program Director, Perception, Action and Cognition, National Science Foundation, USA 2006-present Professor (with tenure) Dept. of Psychology, University of Richmond, Virginia, USA 2000-2006 Associate Professor (with tenure) Dept. of Psychology, University of Richmond, Virginia, USA 2003 Visiting Associate Professor, Joint Laboratories for Language and Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong 2002-2003 Visiting Associate Professor, Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong (supported by the Distinguished Visitor’s Scheme) 2000-present Adjunct Foreign Researcher, Center for the Teaching of Chinese as Second Language, Beijing Language and Culture University, Beijing, China 1996-2000 Assistant Professor Dept.
    [Show full text]