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In the first reallocations exercise four years ago, the work of GSC12 researchers was proven to be outstanding both in terms of quality and quantity. We were gratified by our resulting first-place finish. In preparing the present report, the Steering Committee of GSC12 took as its goal the task of building upon the demonstrated strength of the discipline. In addition, we also wished to identify more clearly to the NSERC community the nature of the research that is conducted by scientists who are funded by GSC12. Following our introduction to Psychology as a discipline, we therefore have devoted the next part of our report to a description of the nature of Brain, Behaviour and Cognitive Science. We then turn to our Vision Statement and Future Focus.
1. PSYCHOLOGY AS A DISCIPLINE
Our abilities to perceive the world, to reason, to learn from experience, and to communicate with others are often taken for granted. The magnificent cerebral machinery that makes these abilities possible does its job so well as to draw little attention to itself. Although reflections on the nature of these processes figured heavily in the writings of the great philosophers, an independent scientific discipline did not emerge to study the mind until the middle of the nineteenth century. This discipline has developed into what we now know as psychology, the scientific analysis of behaviour and cognitive processes.
Modern psychology approaches the analysis of behaviour in several ways. One focuses upon an analysis of the fundamental processes of perception, cognition, movement, learning, and motivation as well as the application of this knowledge to fundamental problems facing individuals and society. This work is supported by NSERC. A second approach emphasizes the study of abnormalities of behaviour, such as neurological and psychiatric disorders, and the potential treatments of such disorders. This work is supported by MRC. A third approach focuses upon the social nature of human behaviour and the study of factors affecting the processes involved in human social behaviour. This is supported by SSHRC.
The distinction between NSERC, MRC, and SSHRC-funded research in psychology reflects the diverse nature of Psychology departments in Canada. This diversity is not unique among the life science departments but Psychology is unique in that it is the only department that houses people who apply to all three granting councils. Any statistical analyses on the NSERC-related scientists in psychology departments must recognize that only about one-third of the faculty in most departments are doing NSERC-related research. It is partly for this reason that we recommended changing the name of GSC12 to Brain, Behaviour, and Cognitive Science (BBCS). This will also help to recognize that, in addition to members of psychology departments, GSC12 supports researchers in departments of anatomy, biology, optometry, ophthalmology, neurology and neurosurgery, nutrition, physiology, and psychiatry, among others.
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2. BBCS AS AN NSERC COMMUNITY
NSERC-funded psychologists investigate a range of problems that can be broadly divided into subdisciplines of behavioural neuroscience and cognitive science. We begin by characterizing each of these.
The topics of study in behavioural neuroscience include: (1) brain and behavioural development, (2) drug actions on brain and behaviour; (3) animal behaviour; (4) sensory systems; (5) basic processes of learning and memory, (6) motivational systems; (7) brain and behavioural plasticity; and, (8) neuropsychology. The techniques of behavioural neuroscience are multi-disciplinary and include: (1) methods of behavioural analysis including those of ethology and kinematics (computer-assisted measures of movement), as well as more traditional psychological approaches involving defined tasks to assess learning, perception and motor performance; (2) neurophysiological techniques (brain stimulation, recording of neural activity); (3) neuroanatomical techniques (e.g., neurohistological procedures, immunohistochemistry, neuroimaging, electron microscopy); (4) neurochemical analyses (e.g., high performance liquid chromatography, voltametry, neurodialysis); and (5) other molecular biological and biochemical techniques (e.g., in situ hybridization, gene sequencing, transgenics). The molecular techniques are revolutionizing the approach to the study of brain function and are having a major impact upon the costs of this research.
Cognitive science is the investigation of information processing and includes within its topics of study: (1) sensation and perception; (2) attention; (3) memory; (4) reasoning, problem solving, and decision making; (5) language production and comprehension; and (6) artificial intelligence and computer simulation (including neural nets). Most of this work involves computerized laboratories equipped with sophisticated I/O requiring the acquisition and development of specialized software. Many laboratories in Cognitive Science use advanced instrumentation, such as apparatus to track eye-movements. The study of cognitive processes with newly developed neuroimaging techniques " functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), Magnetoencephalography (MEG), Positron Emission Tomography (PET), and multi-electrode Event Related Potentials (EPS) " is revolutionizing many aspects of cognitive science and will have a significant impact not only on the nature of the work in cognitive science but also on the costs of that research.
The research of NSERC-funded psychologists emphasizes basic processes, but the knowledge generated is clearly of fundamental importance to the solution of practical problems as well. Indeed, the study of learning, perception, and cognition will play an increasingly important role in industrial development as we move from a resource-based economy to one based on the development and harnessing of knowledge. NSERC-funded psychology has made, and increasingly will make, significant contributions to the revolutionary changes under way in computing and communications, as well as to the continuing education and training that a knowledge-based economy demands. Research on perception, cognition and psycholinguistics continues to have impact on the development of artificial intelligence systems, robotics and man-machine interfaces, in addition to guiding improvements in human cognitive performance across a variety of domains. Research on learning and performance will play an increasingly important role in our rapidly changing society where a highly educated work force is so crucial, and where there exists a need for effective job retraining at all career stages.
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3. THE NATURE OF RESEARCH IN BRAIN, BEHAVIOUR, AND COGNITIVE SCIENCE: AREAS OF CURRENT FOCUS
Psychological research play an important role in the solution of social and medical problems as well as certain engineering problems. For this section, therefore, the steering committee selected illustrative topics from the many significant lines of work in each major area. This sample is intended to convey the nature of the important scientific questions as well as the applications of research currently being carried out by investigators funded by GSC12. An understanding of how this research contributes is directly relevant to understanding our Vision for the Discipline.
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3.1 Perception, attention, learning, and memory
Intelligent behaviour requires that we acquire and use knowledge about the world. Cognitive scientists study how we perceive and selectively attend to our environment, how we learn, and how we remember the past and think about the future. They are also concerned with problem solving, decision making, and how we use written and spoken language to communicate and represent ideas. An understanding of these cognitive processes is central to understanding the nature of what it means to be human. Moreover, such an understanding is crucial to the design of advanced communication systems and robotics. An understanding of cognitive processes also forms the foundation for educational programs designed to train expertise in many different fields, including in the growing high-technology sector. Consider just a few examples.
Vision is amazing. Given an impoverished two-dimensional array of light and dark patches on our retina, the visual system creates a vivid, detailed representation of the world. From this representation, we can identify shapes, track and make accurate movements to unstable targets, and retain an immense memory for visual information. Huge inroads have been made into elucidating the processes underlying this everyday miracle, and Canada has been a leader in research into the nature of visual processing and visual memory. Moreover, this research is being employed in a variety of applied contexts.
Canadian Aircraft Electronics (CAE) provides a particularly clear example of the industrial importance of the man-machine interface and the visual system. This firm currently holds the lion's share of the world market in aircraft flight simulators. Despite the rapidly increasing power of modern computers, no machine offers sufficient bandwidth to simulate all aspects of a pilot's visual environment. Thus, simulator design depends on knowledge about the visual information that is and is not used by pilots as well as a deep understanding of the functional architecture of the human visual system. Modern research shows that the visual system is composed of a limited number of independent channels. To design a visual interface between a machine and a human brain, it is necessary to know the capabilities and limitations of each channel. An example of such work concerns the channel specialized to detect looming objects, objects whose images are rapidly expanding in the visual field. This channel supports the computation of "time-to-collision," certainly a key piece of information for pilots and drivers. Understanding how the sensitivity of this channel and others vary as a function of contrast (i.e., good weather versus bad) and illumination (i.e., daytime versus night) is crucial not only to the design of simulators but to the design of airports and roads.
A related application of cognitive research is found at the Canadian government,s Communication Research Center (CRC) in collaboration with researchers at Carleton University. Researchers trained in University laboratories funded by GSC12 are evaluating the coding schemes for devices such as high definition television systems (HDTV). One problem with HDTV is that there is relatively limited space to transmit the massive amount of information that is required for a complete HDTV signal. Engineering efforts have failed to correct this limitation. Cognitive research has shown, however, that people attend to only a small portion of the visual array, so it is possible to use a degraded (and hence smaller) signal for the remainder of the screen. Behavioural researchers have identified which regions of the screen can be degraded without a perceptible change in the image. This research is having an impact beyond the multi billion dollar entertainment industry: Cognitive researchers are collaborating with Engineers and users to develop high-definition systems (including 3-dimensional HDTV) for domains ranging from video conferencing to medical imaging.
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3.2 Brain and Behaviour
The most complex computer we have is the one between our ears. In examining the relation between brain and behaviour, researchers are guided by far-reaching questions about how neural activity produces thought and conscious awareness. The path to answering these questions is strewn with fundamental issues concerning the way in which the brain produces sensory perceptions, controls movements, stores information, solves problems, and so on. By studying these fundamental issues, researchers are able to better understand the behaviour of the healthy, intact brain, as well as behaviour caused by disturbances to the brain.
Disturbance of brain function presents a major health problem. Stroke is a leading cause of death and behavioural dysfunction in Canada. Closed head injury is a silent epidemic with somewhere on the order of 100,000 Canadians suffering head injuries annually. It is estimated that one-fifth of all adults in Canada suffer from mental disorders in any given year. Although for most people the disorders are relatively mild, treatments with brain-altering drugs like Prozac or Valium are extremely common. Upwards of 3% of the population suffer from severe disorders such as schizophrenia, depression, anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and dementia. Taken together, these disorders account for close to 20% of direct health care costs in Canada.
Research in the area of mental health must be built on a sound scientific foundation of knowledge about psychology and brain-behaviour relations. Accordingly, research examining the basic principles of brain and behaviour underlying these mental disorders is funded by NSERC (whereas direct studies of these disorders fall under the purview of MRC). This NSERC funded research ranges from the development of instruments to measure specific cognitive and motor functions to the development of animal models to study brain function and drug action, all of which are under the purview of GSC12.
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3.3 Cognitive Neuroscience
How the mind operates is the central biological problem that researchers funded by GSC12 must solve. Two major developments of the 1990s have been the maturation of cognitive science as a discipline and the emergence of sophisticated scanning techniques to study brain function. Cognitive scientists fully recognize that an understanding of the brain (the hardware) is critically important to understanding the constraints on mental activity (the software), and that the converse is equally true. The development of machines to measure electrical and metabolic activity of the brain including PET, fMRI, MEG and EPS provides a new and exciting approach to add to their existing tools. Cognitive scientists and behavioural neuroscientists are now working together to determine which parts of the brain are active during different types of mental activity. The result has been the emergence of a new field: cognitive neuroscience. Canada is at the forefront in this endeavour, especially with centres in Montreal, Toronto, London, and Winnipeg. Initiation of a major collaboration between cognitive neuroscientists in Japan and Canada is just one new project that will require the infusion of new money on the Canadian side.
Cognitive neuroscientists have largely emphasized the study of the activity of normal adult brains, but are increasingly extending their applications to other populations as well. As just one example, a large group of researchers at the University of Toronto and the Rotman Center at Baycrest Hospital is investigating the aging brain and how cognition changes with age. As our population ages, and given the enormous implications both socially and medically, we must understand the psychological consequences of aging on brain and behaviour.
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3.4 Motivation
One of the fundamental questions about human behaviour is: Why do people engage in particular behaviours? Nested within this seemingly straight forward question are many others. For example: How much of our behaviour is biologically programmed to aid survival? To what extent can and do we control our basic biological urges? How does emotion affect behaviour? How do behavioural disorders arise from disruptions of motivational and emotional processes? Consider the following examples of psychological research on motivation.
An important subfield of motivational research is devoted to the nature of drug actions on the brain and behaviour. Drug abuse, including alcoholism, is a major social problem that affects a great many families in Canada. The costs, both financial and in terms of personal tragedy, are staggering. In the case of alcoholism, 30% of all traffic fatalities, 33% of all drowning deaths and 3% of total deaths are alcohol related. In North America, the total cost of alcohol and drug abuse approaches $150 billion, making it one of society,s costliest problems Psychological research has demonstrated that learning and environmental factors play a significant role in the development and maintenance of addictions. NSERC-funded psychological studies play a central role in the understanding of these problems through investigations such as those focusing on the mechanisms underlying the development of drug tolerance and dependence in laboratory animals.
Canadian scientists are world leaders in the study of motivational systems of the brain and their relation to learning and reinforcement, and to reward and pleasure. Their interests in the basic functioning of these systems in controlling natural behaviours such as feeding, drinking and sex have led them to study these systems in relation to artificial rewards such those arising from electrical and chemical brain stimulation and from drugs of abuse. A common denominator of all drugs of abuse is their profound effects on the brain.Drugs such as cocaine, heroin, and alcohol appear to usurp the brain systems that are stimulated naturally by food and sex objects. Through the neurochemical study of these systems, NSERC-funded scientists are discovering how and why drugs of abuse work and how they gain such control over behaviour. They are also examining the long lasting effects of repeated exposure to such drugs on behaviour and brain and with the way in which environmental stimuli associated with drug intake alter the effects of drugs and control behaviour in relation to drugs.
In sum, GSC 12-funded research has an important and multifaceted role to play in moving our society further toward a knowledge-based economy, in guiding improvements in human cognitive performance upon which Canada,s success is so vital, and in providing solutions to the concomitant growing urgency of social and health-related challenges (drug addiction and substance abuse, neurological and psychiatric disorders, cognitive changes with aging).
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4. CHANGES IN DISCIPLINE DYNAMICS
One key issue in any reallocation exercise is how the dynamics of each discipline/field are to be measured and what comparative data are being used to frame the eventual analysis. This issue is of special concern to GSC 12 because in the first exercise, though we ranked first in the quality of our science, we did less well than we might have as a result of our "scores" on discipline dynamics and training of HQP. In part, our problem then and possibly in this round revolves around the differences between Psychology as a discipline, and the scientific community represented by GSC-12. We believe the available 1997 statistics on Highly Qualified Personnel and Discipline Dynamics to be as flawed now as they were in the 1994 documents. Here, we identify a major source of error. We enjoin the Reallocation Committee not to use these statistics to determine an award to GSC12 incommensurate with scientific excellence.
Key in this issue is the definition of "Psychology" as a scientific discipline. As defined in our Universities, "Psychology" includes disciplines that are not NSERC-funded. Yet, those disciplines are lumped with BBCS in the NSERC statistics. This is stated explicitly on Page 4 of the NSERC document entitled "Highly Qualified Personnel", where Psychology is defined as including "all psychology fields and not only those funded by NSERC". Since the dynamics are not equivalent across all areas of the discipline, statistics based on this definition are not representative of BBCS. But there is a further, far
more serious, flaw: The definition of psychology is not used consistently in all statistical computations. In some instances, statistics are compiled only for the BBCS disciplines, and then compared with statistics for the whole of Psychology. This can have devastating consequences for the overall picture, as we show in the following example.
Consider the Tables on pages 52 and 58 of the HQP document. These tables speak to the employment opportunities. The "employability scores" were created by counting the academic job openings advertised in 1996 (page 52) and divided by number of people in graduate schools. For Psychology, the Stats Can figures are misleading. More than half of most psychology graduate student enrollees are clinical students and many others are working in the fields of social and developmental psychology with their supervisors' research are being supported by SSHRC. Our estimate of GSC 12-related graduate students is that they represent no more that 35% of the total graduate student cited by Stats Can for psychology. To make matters worse, whereas the broad definition of our field was employed to count students being trained, a very restrictive definition (only cognitive science,and not behavioural science) was used to count job openings. There were, in fact, 58 not 9 job opening in psychology advertised in 1996. The compelling, and entirely misleading, conclusion is that Psychology has an oversupply of personnel for the few available positions.
The 1997 documents imply that there will be no hiring in psychology. This is an illusion of definition and size. As noted, the dynamics in BBCS are not like those in clinical psychology. Clinical programs grew in the last decade and will not be hiring soon. BBCS had major hiring in the 1970s and there will now be hiring to replace retirements. Indeed, this is reflected in the Tables that show that psychology has a large number of grantees in their 50s (Table 20 of the Oct 97 DD document). This replacement will occur because of the vigor or the field and the maintenance of enrollments. Graduates of undergraduate programs in the basic science of psychology enter into programs in many areas of neuroscience and medicine as well as into graduate programs in psychology itself.
We have identified several corresponding instances in which matters of critical importance, such as the growth of Psychology in the coming years and the research "participation rate" within the discipline, have been impugned in the statistical documents. These flawed statistics prevented us from receiving the increased support to which the excellence of our scientific work would have entitled us in the 1994 competition. Our appeal to the Allocation Committee is not to penalize us again in the present competition.
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5. COST OF RESEARCH
As a general principle, the greatest cost of research in experimental psychology is for highly-trained personnel. In cognitive science this involves the need for increasingly sophisticated programming assistance as well as help in behavioural testing. In contrast to NSERC-funded research of 20 years ago, in which group testing was common, cognitive and perceptual work more commonly involves the intensive study of individual subjects. In behavioural neuroscience the personnel needed tend to be involved either in chronic behavioural testing and/or physiological recording or in more molecular biological or biochemical analyses. Although students play a major role in the research endeavour in both neuroscience and cognition, much of the personnel support can only realistically be provided by technicians dedicated to specific tasks. Given the present levels of NSERC funding, which average about $26,500 per annum, adequate technician support can only be achieved by combining funds from several sources or on a part-time basis.
One additional difficulty, especially for behavioural neuroscience, is that cutting-edge research increasingly involves molecular biology and biochemistry, leading to a dramatic rise in the cost of materials that has little to do with inflation. In addition, there are new capital costs, both for sophisticated computers as well as instruments such as confocal microscopes, the latter costing in the order of $250,000, with continuing maintenance costs. Furthermore, the development of imaging technology has led to increased interest in fMRI and PET, which have significant operating costs. Both MRC and NSERC now receive many grants for behavioural work requesting sums in the order of $100,000 annually. Finally, there are increasing animal care costs. Increases in animal costs are driven both by the CCAC regulations for lower density housing, the central control of animal facilities with increasing per diem rates, and increasing costs of animal purchase and shipping. A survey of psychology departments (25 respondents) showed a median cost of $0.14 per day per rat, with an upper boundary of $0.32. At the high end, this approaches $10,000 per annum for animal care costs alone.
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6. A VISION FOR THE BBCS DISCIPLINE IN CANADA
It is estimated that 80-90% of what is known about both the brain and cognitive sciences has been discovered in the last 15 years. These fields will continue to be at the focus of GSC12 funded research in the foreseeable future. Canadians have been at the forefront in this research in large part because of the groundwork laid by Donald Hebb and his colleagues at McGill in the 1950s and 1960s. Hebb,s legacy was the establishment of a psychology department in which there was emphasis on the idea that behaviour and cognition were a property of neural activity and that brain activity could be modified by thought, experience, and behaviour. This was a novel emphasis that was uniquely Canadian at that time. Hebb,s book, The Organization of Behaviour, shaped the thinking and training of his students who subsequently spread across Canada (and abroad) to develop a strong tradition of behavioural neuroscience. Cognitive science in Canada owes its strong roots to the cohort of cognitive psychologists that formed around Endel Tulving and several other key figures at Toronto and McMaster in the 1960's, and which has consistently produced leading work in the domain of human learning and memory.
6.1 Identification of emerging areas
Below are outlined several exciting developments in brain, behaviour, and cognitive science in Canada. Owing to space limitations, we have made no attempt to be inclusive, but rather have tried to identify some of the domains into which the field is likely to be headed over the next decade.
6.1.1 Cognitive neuroscience. At some point in the future, cognitive neuroscience will be able to describe the algorithms that drive structural neural elements into the physiological activity that results in perception, cognition, and perhaps even consciousness. To reach this goal the field is departing from the more limited aims of behavioural neuroscience and neuropsychology to incorporate modern cognitive psychology. The future of this field will be in the development of a science that truly relates brain and cognition. The importance of these developments are being recognized by Psychology departments across the country. Perhaps the best example is the University of Alberta, which has decided to focus on this field; they have made 4 appointments and anticipate making 3 others in cognitive neuroscience over the next two years.
One of the most exciting developments in understanding the neural bases of cognitive processes has come from imaging studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET). fMRI and PET can detect local activity-dependent changes in the human brain during visual, somatosensory, motor and auditory tasks in the primary cortices, and also during higher level cognitive tasks such as language and mental imagery. GSC12-funded researchers have played, and will continue to play, a major role in this research. Research in this domain will grow rapidly as new techniques are developed that increase spatial and temporal resolution of fMRI and PET. For example, the spatial resolution of fMRI (on the order of a millimeter) has recently been used to image ocular dominance columns in the human brain.
Psychologists have investigated mental chronometry, defined as the study of the temporal sequencing of information processing in the human brain, for over 100 years. Mental chronometric tasks have been used extensively in cognitive psychology and behavioural neuroscience to elucidate mechanisms underlying cognitive processing. The new fMRI temporal sequencing techniques, now on the order of 20-millisecond resolution, will result in a major new capability for evaluating mental chronometry at high spatial resolution. Because of their extensive training in the development and use of mental chronometric tasks, cognitive psychologists will play a central role in using fMRI to identify not only the component areas involved in the performance of perceptual/cognitive tasks, but also the sequence of activation among these component areas.
The development of functional imaging in the past decade can be tracked by the dramatic increase in the number of presentations at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience: In 1990 there were 13 abstracts; in 1994, the number had grown to 98; in 1997 the number had reached 216. GSC12 has seen a parallel growth in applications requesting funds for such studies. These are expensive, and GSC12 cannot possibly fund such studies at a level that is practical. Yet, the areas of current focus identified earlier are likely to remain areas of sustained focus over the next decade as well.
Although imaging studies are identifying "hot spots for mental activities, there is little understanding of what this means functionally. Thus, animal studies will be required to pursue the clues about brain-behaviour relations that are surfacing in imaging work. Much of this work will involve using larger-brained animals such as monkeys, with the associated costs. Currently, GSC12 funds only a single researcher (Petrides at McGill) to do monkey work. This has largely been a problem of economics. It is virtually impossible to do such studies on GSC12's mean budget of $26,500.
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6.1.2 Brain plasticity. One fundamental property of the brain is that it changes with experience. Indeed, it is because the brain can change that we are able to learn new information. This property of the brain is known as brain plasticity. Not only does an understanding of plasticity allow us to examine the nature of learning and memory, but it also provides a way of understanding how the brain changes with development and aging, with the consumption of addictive substances or the production of gonadal and other hormones, and it provides insights into the nature of recovery from brain injury. Thus, it is now recognized that the brain is mutable and flexible. The molecular and cellular determinants of plasticity constitute the basic building block mechanisms upon which perception, memory, motivation, and cognition are based. Environmental change alters the nervous system in fundamental ways ranging from changing gene action to influencing the very survival of neurons.
The importance of brain plasticity as an emerging field in Canadian science was recognized by the National Centres of Excellence program as the NeuroScience Network was formed 8 years ago, with focus on brain plasticity and recovery from brain injury. (The Network was recently terminated, leaving a shortfall of about $3 million per year for this research.) Canadian researchers funded by GSC12 continue to play a central role in this emerging field. Both graduate and undergraduate programs in neuroscience have sprung up across the country, reflecting increasing interest in issues related to brain plasticity. The role of psychologists in the rapidly growing field of neuroscience cannot be underestimated. Amongst the members of the Society for Neuroscience there are more members and more student members whose primary affiliation is with a psychology department than any other single discipline. (The Society has approximately 25,000 members.)
One subfield of plasticity is emerging in response to the explosion of knowledge in genetics. As geneticists have turned their attention to the brain, to which about 50% of the genome is devoted, there has been an increasing emphasis on the development of mice that either have a gene deleted (knockout mice) or added (transgenic mice). Such animals provide a new way to study the basic relations between brain and behaviour and in addition provide models for understanding brain pathologies.
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6.1.3 Robotics and Intelligent Systems. Research related to robotics and artificial intelligence has grown rapidly in recent years. In simple terms, much of this research is an attempt to endow machines with human capabilities. A major focus of this work centres on robot vision, which in turn depends heavily on information derived from basic psychological research on visual perception and indeed on higher cognition that supports perception. Much of the national research effort is coordinated by the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Systems: over half of this research is related directly to basic research in experimental psychology. The area of intelligent computation deals with reasoning systems, neural networks, and knowledge bases. Research on human-machine interfaces involves human factors, visual, sound, language, and tactile interfaces. Experimental psychology is inextricably linked to these fields, which are correctly viewed as among the most exciting and dynamic areas of applied engineering research.
6.2 Strengths of Existing People and Facilities
The quality of Canadian researchers funded by GSC12 can be inferred from the quality of the published work. In the 1994 Allocations report, GSC12 generated statistics to demonstrate that the quality of Canadian research in psychology can only be described as outstanding. In comparison to other G7 countries, citation analyses (from the SCI data base) showed that from 1988-92 Canadian psychologists had an impact factor (mean citations per paper) of 1.78, which was the highest and considerably above the G7 average of 1.22.
The strength of psychology relative to other disciplines within Canada was evaluated by computing the `revealed comparative citation advantage' (RCCA). The RCCA is the share for a particular country of all the citations in a given field (in this case, the Canadian share of all citations in psychology) relative to the share for that country of all citations in all fields (the Canadian share of all citations across all fields). This statistic reflects the impact of the publications of a given country in a given field relative to the impact of publications in all fields in that country. We expect a value of 1.0 for a discipline that has an international impact factor comparable with of all other disciplines in that country. Values greater than 1.0 indicate that a particular discipline attracts more citations to its publications than other disciplines in that country. Canadian Psychology had an RCCA of 2.16 compared to a G7 mean of 0.93. Thus the RCCA value for Canadian Psychology is exceptionally high. Moreover, it is not the case that psychology is relatively strong in every country: only for Canada and the United States (1.45) was the RCCA > 1. It is noteworthy that this superiority has not changed in 4 years.
The quality of research also can be inferred from the state of the art facilities now available across the country. For example, there are at least 4 world class imaging facilities (Montreal Neurological Institute; Robarts Research Institute at U. Western Ont., NRC in Winnipeg). All of these are involved in cutting edge research using both fMRI and PET. In addition, there are first class PET facilities at McMaster and Toronto (Rotman Research Facility) and UBC. Similarly, in behavioural neuroscience there are new neuroscience programmes that have built, or are building, excellent facilities. Examples can be found across the country in both large and small departments, and include UBC, Western Ontario, McMaster, Concordia, and Lethbridge.
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6.3 Overlap and collaborations with other research communities
By its very nature, research in BBCS is collaborative. This is perhaps clearest in the emerging field of imaging. These studies require specialists in the engineering aspects of imaging as well as cognitive scientists and often neurologists and/or psychiatrists. It is therefore not uncommon for researchers funded by MRC and NSERC to be collaborating. Similarly, researchers in behavioural neuroscience collaborate with researchers funded by agencies funding biomedical research including the Heart and Stroke Foundation, the Alzheimer,s Society, and MRC. Finally, within NSERC, there is considerable collaboration between investigators funded by animal biology or cell biology.
6.4 A Vision of the future
Over the past decade, research in brain, behaviour, and cognitive science has begun to coalesce around three emerging themes: cognitive neuroscience, brain plasticity, and applied engineering research. More traditional research areas, such as studies of object perception or language development are rapidly encompassing ideas and techniques from the emerging areas. The work funded by GSC 12 will be increasingly removed from the traditional mold of "experimental psychology, which is why we believe GSC12 is now best described as Brain, behaviour, and Cognitive Science.
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7. PROPOSALS
The BBCS community believes that the primary need should be through an increase in the regular GSC peer-reviewed funding envelope. This is essential. Once this is in place then attention should be given to our proposal for special funds for the purchase of time for PET, fMRI, or MEG studies.
7.1 Funding proposals
7.1.2 Regular GSC funding. One of the principal difficulties in funding research in BBCS is that the average grant size is far too small. In cognitive science, the primary costs are for technical help, especially research technicians and computer programmers. This is not cheap, but the training generalizes so it is a worthwhile investment. In behavioural neuroscience the primary costs are for technical help and for materials required to carry out more molecular experiments. Whereas standard histological procedures may have cost only a few hundred dollars per experiment, new molecular histochemical procedures (e.g., in situ hybridization, immunohistochemistry) often costs thousands per experiment. These changes are compounded by increasing animal care costs, which are being driven both by the CCAC regulations for lower density housing, the central control of animal facilities with increasing per diem rates, and increasing costs of animal purchase and shipping.
Like the other Life Sciences committees, GSC12 has tried to cope with the increasing costs by intentionally becoming more selective in its success rate, which has averaged around 64% over the past decade. About 10% below the NSERC average, this definitely is not a reflection of poorer quality research. Rather, it reflects a conscious effort by the committee to shift funds to the best performers. This was done at the expense of the rest of the research community. With the absence of targeted money for new applicants we are now in a position that we must shift funds from productive senior researchers and even discontinue good performers in order to fund new applicants. The only solution to this impossible situation is the infusion of new money.
The current average grant given by GSC 12 is about $26,500 with the total number of grants being about 350. For many, and perhaps the majority, of these researchers this amount does not cover the real costs of ongoing research. We are proposing that a more realistic mean level of support would be in the order of $30,000, which would amount to a $1.75 million increase in funding to GSC 12. We do not propose an across the board increase but rather believe that the increased funding should be allocated where warranted to offset the increased costs such as increased animal care costs and the increased costs of the application of molecular techniques. We recognize that for the most productive and innovative researchers NSERC is not going to be able to provide sufficient funding and that it is necessary to supplement the operating grants with funds from other sources. NSERC's investment in these researchers clearly provides leverage for additional funds, allowing NSERC, in many cases, to double or triple its research investment. For example, most behavioural and cognitive neuroscientists would be unable to compete internationally with less than $50,000 per annum. An increase in the GSC funds would allow the committee to fund at level that is at least closer to such a figure, where warranted. In addition, an increase in funding would allow the committee to fund new researchers without having to shift funds away from the most productive researchers and reduce the necessity of discontinuing funding from some productive researchers. (Total=$1.75 million)
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7.1.2 Special funds for imaging. One of the emerging fields in brain research is neural imaging. Typically, the usage costs run in the order of $1500 per subject. Most studies would run on the order of 5-10 subjects. If one assumes 3 studies per year, the total costs would be in the order of $45,000 before adding personnel costs, computing time, and so on. We propose that funds be earmarked to fund imaging studies for 4 year allocation cycle, subject to review at the time of the next reallocation exercise. It is recommended that there be monies available for 10 awards, with an average value of $45,000. (Total=$450,000)
7.2. Consequences of no reallocated funds
There are three clear consequences of the current funding levels. First, in view of the escalating costs of both behavioural neuroscience and cognitive neuroscience, the committee is going to have to fund fewer applicants to allow a few well-established researchers to compete internationally. This is likely to have the harshest impact on the young researchers, who may instead choose to leave Canada. Second, it is not going to be possible to do the imaging studies in cognitive neuroscience without additional funds. Canada has the facilities but if the operating costs cannot be met, Canadian researchers will fall out of the field. Third, increasing animal care costs are driving researchers at many institutions out of animal work and into human work. Canada is internationally renowned for behavioural neuroscience using laboratory animals and this advantage will be seriously jeopardized.
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10. SUMMARY
This is an exciting time for researchers in Brain, behaviour and Cognitive Science. Research on both basic and applied problems, at many levels of analysis from brain to behaviour, is making great progress. There have been many important advances in basic sciences that are important for Canada,s position in the industrialized world. Considering the urgency of the challenges facing modern society (e.g. higher education, scientific and computer literacy, human-machine interface) and the threats to productivity and human well being (e.g., substance abuse, neurological and psychiatric disorders), continued progress has obvious importance to Canada.
Over the past decade, research in brain, behaviour, and cognitive science has begun to coalesce around three emerging themes: cognitive neuroscience, brain plasticity, and applied engineering research. More traditional research areas, such as studies of object perception or language development will not be abandoned but will slowly encompass more ideas and techniques from the emerging areas.
Increased funding is essential for researchers in GSC12 to keep pace internationally. This increased funding is necessary to support highly trained technical assistance, growing involvement with molecular and biochemical technology, as well as neural imaging. These are exciting times for BBCS researchers who, in spite of inadequate funding, have managed to remain internationally competitive. The increased funding for BBCS-related research in the United States, Japan, and Europe is going to make this a far more tenuous possibility unless Canada can begin to do the same. With the increase we have recommended, research funded by GSC12 will continue to be both world class and an exceptional value into the next millennium.
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Send comments to Bryan Kolb: Kolb@uleth.ca
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