Synopsis of work
The MURI project is an effort to determine the underlying behavioral and neural mechanisms of training regimens that will enable 21st century military personnel to attain optimal levels of performance. Our work includes three goals, all of which are directed toward improving the skills of military personnel:
- To identify which skills can be enhanced by video game playing or other forms of complex training in adults, and to uncover the neural substrates of this enhancement
- To determine the necessary components in a training regimen that facilitates this learning, and transfer of learning, to new tasks
- To develop a computational theory for learning in complex environments that accounts for the cognitive strategies used by human subjects during complex learning at both the behavioral and neurobiological level, and, more importantly, can explain and predict the transfer of learning across different tasks, conditions, and domains
This research program will therefore allow us to:
- Predict whether a given skill is trainable
- If so, provide us with the task elements that should be incorporated in the training regimen
- Test experimental outcomes of the training regimen against near-optimal models of learning to ensure that the best training regimens are identified
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