Federal Project Grant Award Summary

The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) awarded a $638,908 Project Grant to Stony Brook University on February 2, 2026, under the Research Related to Deafness and Communication Disorders program (CFDA 93.173). This grant funds a five-year research project extending through January 31, 2031, investigating discrimination learning and neural dynamics in gustatory cortical circuits. The research will deliver scientific knowledge regarding how the gustatory cortex processes sensory and decision-related signals through metastable activity patterns during taste discrimination tasks. Specifically, the project will produce experimental data from high-density electrophysiological recordings of mouse neural ensembles during behavioral training on taste-mixture choice tasks, analyzed through Hidden Markov Model techniques to document plastic changes in metastable neural sequences.

The research will additionally deliver computational products in the form of spiking neuron network models capable of simulating discrimination learning-induced changes in gustatory cortical activity. These modeling studies will integrate experimental findings into theoretical frameworks that unify sensory representation enhancement with decision-making processes in primary sensory areas. The outputs of this federally funded research will contribute to fundamental understanding of neural mechanisms underlying perceptual learning and sensory discrimination, potentially informing future investigations into taste and smell perception disorders addressed by the NIDCD mission.