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Frontal cortical contributions to ventral stream visual processing

Award Number: F32EY035147
ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL EYE INSTITUTE
OPDIV: NIH
AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY
AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: FELLOWSHIP/SCHOLARSHIP/STUDENT LOANS
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 04/14/2024
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 04/13/2027

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Frontal cortical contributions to ventral stream visual processing - Project Summary Vision must transform patterns of light hitting the retina into an understanding of objects, their spatial relationships, and the surrounding scene context. This process of high-level information extraction is thought to occur in the ventral visual stream, a cortical pathway whose disruption is associated with face and object agnosias and visual memory loss. Both experimental neuroscience and theoretical work suggest that the traditional, purely feedforward model of the ventral stream fails to account for high-level vision in real-world scenarios. I hypothesize that visual cognitive information sent from the frontal cortex (FC) back to the ventral stream is critical for the remarkable robustness of primate vision to complex or ambiguous sensory inputs. The work proposed here examines interactions between the inferotemporal cortex (IT), the final station of the ventral stream, and two neighboring visually-responsive regions of FC: the frontal eye field (FEF), which controls eye movements and plays a role in visual spatial selection, and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC), which encodes abstract semantic object categories. This research plan leverages advantages of the marmoset, a small monkey with advanced visual behaviors and a lissencephalic brain allowing for application of experimental techniques that are intractable in the macaque. Aim 1 will use high-density electrophysiology probes and naturalistic stimuli to systematically characterize coding properties of visual FC. Aim 2 will use widefield calcium imaging, electrophysiological recordings, and electrical microsimulation to produce both a coarse map and a detailed cellular- and population-level account of how FC signals influence IT encoding. Finally, Aim 3 will use deep neural networks to model the influence of FEF and vlPFC on IT as a means for generating new hypotheses about biological vision. This project will expand understanding of the computational and cortical circuit bases of high-level vision, providing foundational knowledge of visual brain regions that are disrupted in neurological disorders such as frontotemporal dementia and autism. The training plan laid out in this proposal helps me acquire new experimental skills in optical imaging and multi- area recordings, theoretical skills in deep learning models, and scientific fluency in high-level vision. My sponsor, Dr. Elias Issa, will provide expertise in computational modeling and experimental work with the marmoset. My training will benefit from my co-sponsor, Dr. Michael Shadlen, who has decades of experience studying high-level associative cortex in the primate, and my collaborator on optical imaging, Dr. Aniruddha Das, an expert in mesoscale functional mapping. This work will be conducted at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute, a world-class neuroscience research and training institution whose faculty specialize in approaches ranging from molecular to systems to theoretical.


Issue Date FY	Funding FY	Legal Entity Name	Legal Entity Address	Legal Entity City	Legal Entity State	Legal Entity Zip Code	Legal Entity COUNTY	Legal Entity COUNTRY	Assistance Listing	Award Code	Budget Year	Action Date	Action Type	Action Amount

Issue Date FY: 2026 ( Subtotal = $81,580 )
2026	2026	ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY	1230 YORK AVE	NEW YORK	NY	10065	NEW YORK	USA	Vision Research	000	4	4/2/2026	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$81,580
														Subtotal = $81,580

Issue Date FY: 2025 ( Subtotal = $78,040 )
2025	2025	ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY	1230 YORK AVE	NEW YORK	NY	10065	NEW YORK	USA	Vision Research	000	3	3/21/2025	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$76,756
2025	2025	ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY	1230 YORK AVE	NEW YORK	NY	10065	NEW YORK	USA	Vision Research	001	3	7/31/2025	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$1,284
														Subtotal = $78,040

Issue Date FY: 2024 ( Subtotal = -$993 )
2024	2023	ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY	1230 YORK AVE	NEW YORK	NY	10065	NEW YORK	USA	Vision Research	001	2	3/15/2024	CHANGE OF GRANTEE / TRAINING INSTITUTION / AWARDING INSTITUTION	$69,500
2024	2023	ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY	1230 YORK AVE	NEW YORK	NY	10065	NEW YORK	USA	Vision Research	002	2	3/15/2024	CHANGE OF GRANTEE / TRAINING INSTITUTION / AWARDING INSTITUTION	$0
2024	2023	THE TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK	630 W 168TH ST FL 4	NEW YORK	NY	10032	NEW YORK	USA	Vision Research	000	1	3/15/2024	NEW	-$70,493
														Subtotal = -$993

Issue Date FY: 2023 ( Subtotal = $70,493 )
2023	2023	TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK, THE	630 W 168TH ST FL 4	NEW YORK	NY	10032	NEW YORK	USA	Vision Research	000	1	6/14/2023	NEW	$70,493
														Subtotal = $70,493

Grand Total All Awards = $229,120

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Frontal cortical contributions to ventral stream visual processing

Award Number: F32EY035147

ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL EYE INSTITUTE

OPDIV: NIH

AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY

AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: FELLOWSHIP/SCHOLARSHIP/STUDENT LOANS

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 04/14/2024

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 04/13/2027

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