Adaptive perceptual-motor feedback for the analysis of complex scenes

Professor Cynthia Moss (Psych/ISR) is the principal investigator and Associate Professor Timothy Horiuchi (ECE/ISR) is the co-PI for a new National Science Foundation Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience grant, "Adaptive perceptual-motor feedback for the analysis of complex scenes." The five-year, $1.5 million grant will fund research to understand the processes that support perception and action in complex settings. The research will focus on spatial perception and navigation in the echolocating bat, an auditory specialist that produces high frequency sonar calls and listens to echo returns to determine the location of objects in its environment. The echolocating bat modifies its sonar calls in response to echo information from targets (insect prey) and obstacles. Quantitative analyses of this animal's adaptive vocal behavior will be used to infer its perception of a changing environment.