ERC Consolidator grant for dr. Ryszard Auksztulewicz
Dr. Ryszard Auksztulewicz, assistant professor at the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience (FPN), has been awarded the ERC Consolidator grant for his research proposal entitled MemPred - Mnemonic and predictive influences on sensory processing: mapping the neural computations.
Our brains predict
Auksztulewicz joined department of Neuropsychology and Psychopharmacology at FPN to continue his research in the predictions our brains make. “A popular theory, but a controversial one at times, is that our brain is constantly making predictions. If you open a window, you expect to see the sky; if you throw a ball, you expect it to land in a certain spot”. For different situations, the brain uses diverse processes to make predictions in varying contexts. “For these predictions the brain needs to incorporate a lot of factors. When you’re throwing that ball, it must account for wind, weight of the ball, the strength of the throw etc.”.
Unexpected results
Auksztulewicz made use of technique called decoding that translates brain activity into readable data. This method can be used to decode what a person is remembering (based on brain activity during memory maintenance). “We had used decoding in humans, and when we translated the research to rats, we discovered that we could not only read the memories, but also current observations and predictions being made”.
Seeing that these processes happen simultaneously, sparked a new question for Auksztulewicz. “How does our brain disentangle past from present, from future? We don’t actively have to think about this, in daily life it’s obvious. But in our brain, it seems to be happening in the same neural population, the same brain regions are involved. It seems like an obvious question, but almost nobody has looked into it”.
The proposal
“I wrote the first grant proposal when I was still working in Berlin. I did not receive the funding then, but when I joined FPN, I edited the idea with some new perspectives – also thanks to exchanges with my new colleagues - and now my application was successful”. With this funding, Auksztulewicz is going to start his research to find out how our brain makes sense of what is past, present and future.
“This research will be only in humans, and we’ll use different types of neuroimaging, from seeing what regions are activated to investigating how different neurochemicals are expressed in these regions. I think that predictions are about inhibiting brain activity, while memory is about exciting that regions. This will affect the neurochemistry differently”.
The work
“We will study different contexts as well, motor predictions, sensory prediction for example in music-like sequences. You can have general predictions like: when I open the window I will see the sky. But also predictions based on more specific memories: when I last opened the window I saw a construction crane. We’ll try to incorporate as many situations as we can”.
Understanding these functions in the brain can lead to new applied discoveries. “In my work, I can lend my expertise with computational techniques and apply it to clinical questions in the context of neuropsychology. This particular project is fundamental, but a new way of understanding both memory and predictions can help in the treatment of disorders where these functions are disrupted, like different forms of dementia”.
Auksztulewicz will use his funding to hire a team of researchers and dive into these questions over the next five years.
“This project wouldn't be possible without my colleagues at FPN and beyond who helped me improve the proposal at various stages. My special thanks go to Federico De Martino, Marcel Giezen, Sonja Kotz, and Michelle Moerel”.
Below you will find the official abstract of the research proposal.
MemPred - Mnemonic and predictive influences on sensory processing: mapping the neural computations.
Processing the present (perception) is shaped by past experiences (memory) and current expectations of future events(prediction). The Bayesian brain hypothesis formalizes thisidea, positing that living agents maintain a model of the world, built upon memories and entailing predictions of likely causes of sensations. Prediction is mediated by multiple brain regions such as sensory neocortex and the hippocampus, and my research has pinpointed several neural mechanisms of prediction across task contexts. Brain networks mediating prediction are also crucial for memory, suggesting they are closely related. However, emerging evidence indicatesthat predictive processing may disrupt memory encoding, raising the unresolved question: How does the brain differentiate between mnemonic and predictive processing? Understanding this distinction will not only clarify how memories inform predictions but also why they sometimes interfere.
To address this, MemPred will pursue three interconnected objectives: (1) dissecting the neural mechanisms that distinguish memory and prediction across brain networks, circuits, and functions; (2) investigating how task context modulates memory/prediction signaling; and (3) deriving a unified neurobehavioral model of how memory and prediction interact to shape neural activity and behavior. By combining cutting-edge techniques in electrophysiology and neuroimaging with novel developments in computational modeling, MemPred will offer fundamentally new insights into the dissociable effects of memory and prediction on processing the present.
This research will not only advance cognitive neuroscience by elucidating the neural underpinnings of memory and prediction but will also lead to methodological breakthroughs in generative models for behavioral and neural data. MemPred's findings will extend to fields such as artificial learning and computational psychiatry, offering a novel framework for understanding the interplay between memory and prediction.
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