Cognitive Axon (CoAx) Research Areas
Brain Network Architecture and Cognition
Form and function are intimately linked in the brain: the computation of a neural circuit is constrained by its architecture. How does the organization of cortical and subcortical networks implement algorithms that drive behavior?
Exploration
Humans and other mammals exhibit a high degree of control when selecting actions in noisy contexts, quickly adapting to unexpected outcomes in order to better exploit opportunities arising in the future. What are the algorithms of exploration? How are they implemented in the brain?
Skill Learning
The ability to perform complex skills usually requires learning to bind many individual actions into a single, unified movement. How does the brain learn this action binding? What are the timescales at which this binding occurs?
Health Neuroscience
In many ways how we make decisions can impact our physical health. Our physical health can also impact the brain and cognition. Are there neural phenotypes for health behaviors and health risks? How do changes in physical health impact neural decision making systems?
Publication Highlights
NeuroImage 2018
Population-averaged atlas of the macroscale human structural connectome and its network topology
F-C Yeh, S. Panesar, D. Fernandes, A. Meola, M. Yoshino, J. C. Fernandez-Miranda, J. Vettel, T. Verstynen.
J. Neuro 2019
Binding during sequence learning does not alter cortical representations of individual actions.
P. Beukema, J. Diedrichsen, & T. Verstynen
PLoS Comp Bio 2019
Reward-driven changes in striatal pathway competition shape evidence evaluation in decision-making.
K. Dunovan, C. Vich, M. Clapp, T. Verstynen, & J. Rubin
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Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA
Phone:(412) 268‐2781
Email: coaxlab [@] gmail.com
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