University and Medical Education and Research Collaboration
The
Expanding Scope of Cognitive Neuroscience, Neurocognition,, and Its Medical
Institutional Training Resource
The advance of every science is dependent on the technology resources available to test its models. Advances in the last 15 years, such as neural network models, are based on knowledge of the basic structure of the cerebral cortex, and a limited number of subcortical structures, such as the hippocampal system. Further advances will be increasingly dependent of more detailed knowledge of the functional architecture of the brain. The enormous contribution of brain information to cognitive theory, has transformed cognitive psychology into cognitive neuroscience, or neurocognitive science, where the goal is to create a unified neural information processing, brain-mind, model.
Labs in the Cognitive Neuroscience Subprogram employ digital, multi-channel brain recording equipment for waking Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) experiments, and for sleep brain state studies. In collaboration with the Physics Dept., the Sleep Lab is also pioneering the use near infra-red brain hemoglobin recordings. But while these devices have powerful temporal resolution, they lack the spatial resolution of such brain imaging devices as PET, MRI and fMRI.
Because these devices can be found only in large research-oriented medical institutions, universities that wish to participate in these development must find a way of collaborating with those institutions. Fortunately, there are a number of neuropsychologists in the New York region research hospitals – Columbia Presbyterian, Nathan Klein Institute in Rockland County, New York University (NYU) Hospital, Methodist, Einstein and the Institute of Behavioral Research at Staten Island, who not only mentor many of our students, but lecture in our Applied Cognition Seminar and teach advanced seminars. All of the advanced sleep diagnosis and treatment practica are given by Prof. Speilman and his staff at Methodist Hospital. Adjunct Prof. Foxe plans to give a fMRI brain scan seminar at CCNY in Fall 2003, and is currently giving technical training on fMRI to some of our students at Nathan Klein.
Medical Institutions not only provide access to specialized equipment, but they often have special patient populations that make it possible to test the contribution of specific brain regions. Prof. Antrobus, and Chaim Tarshish, his student, are collaborating in the test of a cognitive model that includes several interacting, cortical-hippocampal processes. CUNY and NYU plan to collaborate on this project because the Psychiatry Department at NYU Hospital just happens to have a well studied cohort of patients with hippocampal damage, as well as a matched control sample.
We mention these collaborative relations between the Cognitive Neuroscience Subprogram, and our colleagues in medical institutions, because we have frequently been asked to defend our policy of including so many adjunct faculty from medical institutions. The study of cognition, neurocognition and cognitive neuroscience is no longer the exclusive domain psychology departments within universities, but it is shared by research institutions outside of universities. Cognitive psychology started with the study of performance of factory workers, and moved on to study military and space personnel. As these institutions have hired university-trained cognitive and cognitive neuroscientists to carry out research in these applied settings, including hospitals, the domain of expertise and research has spread well beyond psychology departments.
One measure of the merit of maintaining collaborative relationships with the medical research institutes in the New City area is that they hire our graduates. Many, if not most, medical research institutes of course, do not hire their scientists. They simply provide them with the opportunity to obtain research funding from Federal and other agencies. Here again, the advanced training that graduate students can obtain these institutions makes them more competitive in the grant market, than graduates who obtain all their training within a university setting. Indeed, one part of the Second Doctoral examination in Cognitive Neuroscience, is the option to write a complete grant request for a Federal agency.