Initiative 3. Functional Connections
Led by CELEST Board member Helen Barbas
The brain is a vast communication network, linking areas associated with sensory perception, memory, cognition, emotion, and action. Intelligent goal-directed behavior requires exploring options, planning, remembering and taking action. In addition, decisions and actions taken in a behavioral setting are embedded within an emotional context. Understanding such interconnectivity in brain regions is vital to building neuromorphic technologies that incorporate multiple brain regions and functions to accomplish a given task. Better understanding of functional connections can be attained by answering the following question:
How do short- and long-range spatial and temporal interactions among numerous functionally-distinct regions of the brain give rise to our most complex cognitive functions, which cannot be reduced to the operation of any single region in isolation?