Descripción del proyecto
Desentrañar la especialización del encéfalo
Distintas regiones encefálicas desempeñan funciones especializadas, pero el origen de esta especialización funcional sigue siendo incierto. El equipo del proyecto DEEPFUNC, financiado por el Consejo Europeo de Investigación, pretende investigar los misterios que rodean a la especialización funcional en el encéfalo humano, en particular dentro de la vía visual. Mediante un método multidisciplinario que incluye redes neuronales artificiales, los investigadores estudiarán las características que conducen a la especialización funcional y analizarán la repercusión de la experiencia visual en el desarrollo. El objetivo de la investigación es aportar nuevos conocimientos sobre la organización del encéfalo en relación con las complejas y dinámicas exigencias de procesamiento a las que se enfrenta al abordar actividades y vivencias cotidianas.
Objetivo
Over the last few decades, neuroscientists have identified multiple brain regions that perform distinct, often highly specialized functions such as processing faces, understanding language, and even thinking about what other people are thinking. Despite our increased understanding of the computations performed in these regions, the precise causes and origins of functional specialization in the brain are still a mystery and not accessible to direct experimental approaches.
Here, we propose to combine cutting-edge computational modelling, large-scale sampling of naturalistic behaviour and human neuroimaging to overcome these limitations. Focusing on visual perception, we will exploit the latest advances in artificial neural networks to probe three critical aspects of functional specialization in the ventral visual pathway: First, by training networks on natural and artificial visual categories and identifying which features result in functional specialization, we will characterize what it is about a visual category that leads to functional specialization. Second, we will leverage large-scale egocentric datasets of infant and adult visual input to test how visual experience and natural input statistics shape functional specialization during development. Third, we will ask why certain neural features become specialized for high-level visual categories in the human visual cortex in the first place. Critically, for each of these aspects, we will close the loop and directly test and validate its predictions in the human brain.
Our project will shed light on functional specialization from a new angle – by relating functional specialization to the computational constraints of performing tasks in the real world. Using this novel approach, our project tackles some of the most fundamental questions about the functional organization of the human mind and brain – the what, how and why of functional specialization.
Ámbito científico
Palabras clave
Programa(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Régimen de financiación
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsInstitución de acogida
35390 Giessen
Alemania