NEC Seminar: Friday, January 16th, 9:00 AM
Speaker: Emily Conlan
Advisor: Dr. Bolu Ajiboye
Title: Modulation of the Anterior Intraparietal Area to Grasp-Object and Audio Cues
Abstract: The anterior intraparietal area (AIP) has been associated with grasping function in non-human primates by acting as sensory-motor integration center. This area has been found to modulate to object properties such as shape, size, and orientation but has also been used to decode grasp-object pairings for Brain Machine Interfaces (BMI). Initial work in this area with our current participant, RP1, has focused on the relative impact of object and grasp on the variance of AIP data. While these results did not follow trends found in literature, it was found that this area modulates to auditory cues. Two additional studies have been conducted to further classify AIP’s response to both beeps and words. An additional finding in BMI literature demonstrated the importance of utilizing the auditory cue to guide task performance. Therefore, after basic characterization of this area, we propose a paradigm that will explore whether modulation to the audio cue differs if the task is relevant for motor action and speech versus only for attending to the audio cue. This will provide a further understanding of the role AIP plays in integrating sensory information. In addition, this will allow us to determine if audio cues in general can be used to guide motor actions for the purposes of BCI decoding, or if they need to have functional relevance to the task.