Research Areas
Cognitive control can be defined as flexible, “top-down” behavioral management. It is the process by which evolutionarily advanced organisms orchestrate their own behavioral output to meet long- and short-term adaptive needs. In a complex, ever-changing, and noisy environment, survival depends on one’s ability to appropriately initiate and direct motor activity (action initiation/motor control), detect and mitigate conflicting behavioral responses (conflict monitoring), override reflexive or autonomous actions (response inhibition/action modification), monitor performance, and update behavioral strategies in real time (error detection/performance monitoring).
While frontal brain regions have long been implicated in each of these facets of cognitive control, the specific microcircuitry involved, and the behaviorally relevant electrophysiology, remains poorly understood. In particular, little is known about these processes at the human single-neuron level, and even less is known about how they evolve during brain maturation.
Cognitive Control Dynamics and Development
Our lab seeks to better understand these phenomena using theoretical and computational approaches to causally understand neuronal dynamics in pediatric patients undergoing invasive seizure monitoring. Patients engage in customized behavioral tasks designed to elicit cognitive control and spontaneous volitional movement. By integrating this high-dimensional dataset across patients and with structural and functional neuroimaging, we can also begin to understand how these processes evolve over the course of childhood and adolescent development.
Software Tools
Our lab utilizes and provides the following:
- OSort – spike sorting software package
- StimOMatic – closed-looped stimulus control
- NlxToMat – import of neurophysiology data into Matlab
- NWB – formatted single-neuron dataset during cognitive control tasks
Contact the Bonda Lab
Advanced Health Sciences Pavillion
127 South San Vicente Blvd, 6th Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90048