Salk neuroscientist Charles Stevens receives NSF grant under BRAIN Initiative

August 25, 2014

Salk neuroscientist Charles Stevens receives NSF grant under BRAIN Initiative

Two-year award will advance novel approach to understanding the brain

August 25, 2014

LA JOLLA–Charles Stevens, a professor in the Salk Institute’s 分子神经生物学实验室, will receive one of 36 Early Concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) from the 国家科学基金会 to further research on how complex behaviors emerge from the activity of the brain.

The EAGER program, part of President Obama’s $100 million BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) Initiative, aims to uncover how the brain works and potential ways to treat, prevent and cure brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, autism, epilepsy and traumatic injury. The $300,000 awards, announced on August 18, will support short-term, proof-of-concept projects.

“I’m really excited about the opportunity this grant presents because we are exploring a completely new way of looking at how the brain works,” Stevens says. “And if it’s correct, it will provide a critical piece of the puzzle.”

Stevens will use the funds to investigate the function of the olfactory cortex, hippocampus, cerebellum and basal ganglia, employing a cutting-edge mathematical theory called compressed sensing. He hypothesizes that in these four parts of the brain, which are especially focused on learning, a critical mass of cells is responsible for representing information. Much like a music or a photo file becomes compressed for storage, neural information is compressed in such a way that only a small portion of the data needs to be readily available for those regions of the brain to function effectively. Stevens speculates that the four regions of the brain he is targeting represent information in similar, but slightly different ways. At the end of the two-year grant period, he hopes to gain insight into how the brain uses compressed sensing and why.

The EAGER award will also allow Stevens to generate quantitative information, such as the number of cells involved in each area, and other knowledge critical for developing mathematical models of how brain circuits work. For example, he has already established that the mouse brain’s olfactory processing is contained in the output of 1,000 cells, but those cells then transfer the information to 100,000 additional cells, which allow an animal to learn the multitude of odors it will encounter.

关于索尔克生物研究所：
索尔克生物学研究所是世界上首屈一指的基础研究机构之一，其国际知名的教职员工在一个独特的、协作和创新的环境中，深入探索生命科学的基本问题。索尔克科学家既注重科学发现，也注重培养下一代研究人员，通过研究神经科学、遗传学、细胞生物学、植物生物学及相关学科，为我们理解癌症、衰老、阿尔茨海默病、糖尿病和传染病做出了开创性的贡献。.

教职员工的成就获得了无数荣誉，包括诺贝尔奖和美国国家科学院院士资格。该研究所由脊髓灰质炎疫苗先驱 Jonas Salk 医生于 1960 年创立，是一家独立的非营利组织和建筑地标。.