How is temporal information about the world learned and how do the
temporal dynamics of the world influence learning?
(Initiative Coordinators: Dan Feldman and Paula Tallal)

Organisms explicitly learn many aspects of the temporal dynamics of the world, from temporal sequences of basic sensory stimuli (e.g., speech sounds), to dynamics of complex events that must be recognized (e.g., gestures, or dynamic features on computer displays). Other temporal features of our world, such as the relative timing of actions and rewards, can have a significant influence on learning, even though they are not explicitly learned. Our current understanding of how temporal information is learned is quite limited. By increasing our understanding of these processes, we hope to provide insights that will improve teaching and learning of dynamic stimuli. In addition, following a successful example with speech learning, we hope to develop teaching/training tools that manipulate the temporal dynamics of the world to facilitate or improve many forms of learning.

Strand 1.1: Learning of Temporal Patterns: How do organisms recognize, learn, and remember temporal patterns of sensory stimuli, including sequences? How are these represented in the brain, and how do they guide perception and behavior?

Strand 1.2: Cross-modal learning: how does timing of multi-modal sensory stimuli contribute to learning to integrate across modalities? 
 
Strand 1.3: How does the relative timing of action, outcome, and reward influence the effectiveness of learning and duration of memory?

 

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