Expertise

Topics:  Motor Coordination, Cognitive Brain Function, Neural Circuits, Neuroscience

Industries: Advanced Medical Equipment

The selection of actions is central to how we interact with the world, a reality that is often not fully appreciated until this ability is lost through impairments like stroke, Parkinson's Disease and OCD. The goal of Eric Yttri's research is to establish how neural circuits lead to these action selection decisions. The vital ability to make appropriate actions requires the coordination of motor, reward and cognitive brain systems. While compelling research has been accomplished in individual brain areas, studying elements of neuronal circuits in isolation yields an incomplete and potentially misleading picture. His research approach is inclusive yet specific: interrogating the functional interactions between areas in a manner more typical of cognitive neuroscience (e.g., fMRI) while also identifying the computational contributions of individual cell types within each region. His work uses electrophysiological, behavioral and computational tools to build upon the distributed action execution model, delineating a specific role for each individual cell in the motor system.

Media Experience

Carnegie Mellon University Hosts Interdisciplinary AI Conference  — India Education Diary
“It was fascinating to talk to all of the outside speakers that are asking very different questions and using very different models,” Yttri said. “Despite some people looking at proteins, RNA or neuroscience, the methods and thought processes we all use are remarkably similar.”

Gov. Wolf’s Health Department Mandates Masks For Schools, Child Care Facilities  — 90.5 WESA
As part of 90.5 WESA’s Good Question, Kid! Series, Eric Yttri, assistant professor of biological sciences and neuroscience researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, explains why songs get stuck in our heads.

New Algorithm to Revolutionize the Study of Behavior  — Carnegie Mellon University
Yttri said B-SOiD provides a huge improvement and opens up several avenues for new research. "It removes user bias and, more importantly, removes the time cost and arduous work," he said. "We can accurately process hours of data in a matter of minutes."

Machine learning algorithm revolutionizes how scientists study behavior  — Medical Xpress
To Eric Yttri, assistant professor of biological sciences and Neuroscience Institute faculty at Carnegie Mellon University, the best way to understand the brain is to watch how organisms interact with the world. "Behavior drives everything we do," Yttri said.

The weird Upside Down science behind ‘Stranger Things’  — CNN
In the lab, they can also create a kind of mind control. It’s not unlike the way the Mindflayer controls Will. “In neuroscience, we have a much less sinister but similar notion of that control,” Yttri said. “We can record neurons and essentially thoughts in the brain, read those out, decode them and then encode them into actions.”