Active Research Grants

This project explores how fish might use vibrations, rather than just sound, as a way to sense and communicate in their environment. By studying how these vibrations travel through underwater surfaces, researchers aim to reveal a hidden layer of marine life interaction called the “vibroscape.”

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This award supports creating an open-source platform for ACT-R, a leading cognitive architecture, so more researchers and developers can use it to model human thinking. The goal is to build a sustainable community that expands its use in fields like AI, robotics, and neuroscience.

Social media is central to the lives of adolescents and plays an important role in their mental health. The proposed research seeks to characterize positive and negative online experiences as sources of risk and resilience for loneliness and psychopathology, studying early and mid adolescents, key developmental points of transformation of peer interactions The work will employ short- and long-term longitudinal approaches to assess the relationships between social media and psychopathology, with an emphasis on heterogeneity in developmental trajectories. The overarching goals of the project are to better understand how positive and negative online experiences on social media change in the pivotal transitions of early and mid-adolescence and gain critical insights into how they can shape opportunities and risk for adolescent wellbeing. Our project is guided by three principles: 1) We need a better, nuanced understanding of social media as a salient developmental context and a source of both positive and negative interpersonal experiences 2) Adolescence as a period of profound transformation of peer and friendship interactions, which might provide developmental protection/vulnerability to the impacts of social media on psychopathology 3) Methodological improvements that allow to capture interactions of social media and psychopathology at different time scales, to test a) day-to-day fluctuations in positive and negative online experiences, b) developmental change, and c) whether small effects compound over time given the intense exposure to social media. We will take a person-centered approach to account for and understand heterogeneity

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The study explores the potential for using self-knowledge training to improve learning and problem-solving performance. It deploys the PIs expertise in the biological and experiential factors that drive individual differences in cognition and social learning theory.

This project investigates how different framings of racism influence Asian Americans’ intraminority solidarity with Black Americans. It explores whether framing racism against Black Americans as the result of anti-Blackness increases Asian Americans’ sense of solidarity with Black Americans, compared to framing racism as the result of White supremacy.

This project continues research on survival of an endangered species, including artificial incubation and hand rearing, native foraging and pre-release antipredator training, sampling to monitor for disease in hand-reared birds, and investigation of factors leading to nesting failure of wild and captive-reared birds using nest monitoring cameras.

Psychotherapies for PTSD and depression help many but often have high dropout rates, leave some with persistent symptoms, and rarely build resilience. PATH is a brief six-session treatment targeting shared maladaptive processes (unproductive processing, avoidance, reward deficits) while teaching adaptive skills, aiming to improve engagement, outcomes, and reduce stressor-related psychopathology.

This project seeks to characterize positive and negative online experiences as sources of risk and resilience for loneliness and psychopathology, studying in early and mid adolescents, key developmental points of transformation of peer interactions.

This project tests the hypothesis that spatial- and feature-based attention is more narrowly focused and that rapidoscillations of attention occur at a slower rate in people with autism spectrum disorder ASD.

This study measures brain organization/connectivity. It is an early Phase II randomized controlled trial to obtainpreliminary data on mechanisms and efficacy of a hearing aid-based intervention to prevent cognitive decline in those atrisk for Alzheimer’s Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease Related Dementias.

This project builds upon our existing infrastructure for large-scale studies of adult serious mental illnesses serious mental illness SMI in the region to establish a new cohort of 3,000 children and early adolescents at elevated or low risk for SMI. Study findings will clarify the associations between genomic risk profile and premorbid clinical markers of psychopathology; clarify the relative power of genetic versus clinical, neurobehavioral, and environmental factors for predicting clinical outcomes; and establish a unique resource for the scientific community for rich longitudinal investigation for years to come, and quantify the relative power of genetic versus clinical and neurobehavioral characteristics for predicting clinical outcomes.

The Auditory Neuroscience Training Program, established in 2002, helps train basic neuroscience researchers in clinical disciplines. Trainees participate in research programs in neuroanatomy, development, genetics, cell and molecular biology, neuropharmacology, and electrophysiology of the peripheral and central auditory system as well as psychoacoustics, language perception and processing, and communication behavior. They have the opportunity to combine research through collaborative efforts.

This project will provide new insights into the development of spatial skills and their relation to STEM achievement in order to best set students up for success. Alongside this research is a plan to provide intensive research experience for undergraduate students and a plan to create a bidirectional relation between community participation in research and scientific outreach activities.

Within a decade, many blind individuals are likely to be offered a wide range of options for sight restoration - including electronic prostheses, gene therapy and optogenetics. However the vision provided by almost all of these technologies will differ substantially from normal sight. The question of this proposal is – What role can cortical plasticity play in helping patients make use of the artificial visual input provided by sight recovery technology?

The Mariana Crow Recovery Team has identified determining sources of juvenile and adult mortality as a critical need. Population modeling indicates that low juvenile and adult survival are likely the primary drivers in the current population decline and a major obstacle to overcome for recovery (Ha et al., 2008). We are currently monitoring sources of mortality, habitat use and home range size, and dispersal in juveniles. Other tasks such as nest searching, capture and banding, bird surveys, and education and outreach are also required.We are also involved in tracking recovered and released individuals back into the wild population. We are working with the local and federal government, as well as San Diego Zoo on a rear and release program. In summary, we have now shifted our immediate research emphasis towards monitoring the status of the wild population and using science and technology to intervene to save the species.

The BRAINS (Broadening the Representation of Academic Investigators in NeuroScience) Program, established in 2011, explicitly addresses the inclusion, retention, and advancement of early career (post Ph.D. to pre-tenure) neuroscientists from historically underrepresented and marginalized groups (URMGs: individuals from marginalized racial and ethnic identities and persons with disabilities). BRAINS has pioneered a unique cohort-based professional development approach that positively impacts participants’ career trajectories, especially in academic neuroscience, by building a community of neuroscience peers, enabling mentoring networks, activating participants’ cultural capital, and increasing participants’ career self-efficacy. The success of BRAINS is evident by our findings that 90% of the 144 participants continue to remain in neuroscience careers. Moreover, 50% are currently in tenure track positions, compared to 24% at time of joining BRAINS. With this renewal project, Aim 1 builds on the successes of BRAINS by expanding our program through an increase in the number of the BRAINS community participants, as well as deepening the engagement of all participants with core BRAINS skills and concepts. When compared to other national professional development programs, the BRAINS program stands out in terms of the extent to which BRAINS participants continue to engage deeply with the community long after their first year in the program. In its first decade, evaluation data show that BRAINS programming is a consistent transformational and foundational resource for its participants. Thus, the BRAINS program is uniquely positioned to explore and identify the essential factors that increase retention of neuroscientists from URMGs in academic and nonacademic science careers. Therefore, in Aim 2, we will introduce a new 10-year evaluation instrument to help us to better understand why the program is impactful and what sticks with participants as they progress through their careers. In summary, these Aims will allow BRAINS to expand in terms of participant numbers and in terms of continuing to empower over 200 neuroscientists from URMGs to thrive and advance in their careers. Further, this work will shed new light on the important factors that can improve the long term retention of neuroscientists from URMGs in science careers, which in turn can inform the development of future programs and institutional policies aimed at increasing the retention of URM scientists in biomedical careers.