Projects in Human Neuroscience and Psychology Supervised by Vikranth Bejjanki
Professor Bejjanki will supervise one- and two-semester senior projects in human neuroscience and psychology. One-semester projects will involve a literature review and research proposal. Two-semester projects will involve a full empirical study and research manuscript. Senior project topics of particular interest to Professor Bejjanki are listed below.
Mechanisms Underlying Human Learning
We have an incredible ability to learn from our experiences. For example, we can improve our performance on nearly any task by extracting relevant information from the environment. What are the neural and computational mechanisms that make such learning possible? I have developed a theory that learning allows the brain to better process information relevant to the current task, while eliminating irrelevant noise. I’ve found that this theory accounts for several kinds of learning, and that such improved information processing may be neurally implemented by changing the connectivity between areas of the brain. Research in the lab will be concerned with further examining the extent to which this theory might account for the many kinds of learning that are observed in humans. I am also interested in understanding the relationship between the mechanisms underlying learning, and those underlying processes like attention and adaptation, which also allow the brain to better access relevant information.
Learning in Young Children
The greatest period of learning during the human lifespan occurs during early development. A key area of interest in the lab will be to study learning in young children, with the specific aim of understanding the influence of changing computational and neural constraints on their behavior. For example, children have much less exposure to the world, and so might be much more interested in exploring the world than in carrying out every task as well as possible. Similarly, because different regions in the brain mature at different times, does the neural basis of learning change as a function of age? Research in the lab will be concerned with comparing the behavior of young children with that of adults, in a number of tasks and domains, and with a particular emphasis on the time-course of their learning.