1) The hypothesis should be related to the topic you selected in Part I. While this provides some continuity, the hypothesis
does NOT have to be related to the papers you reviewed for that topic. Moreover, you do NOT need to do a literature review
or study up on what has been done previously. You are welcome, of course, to draw on your knowledge and literature. But
this is not required. You can just think about what interests you about this topic and what kinds of questions you have about
the topic from a cognitive neuroscience perspective.2) The hypothesis should be amenable to being tested with the methods of cognitive neuroscience. That is, the hypothesis
and experiment(s) you will propose to test the hypothesis should involve something about mind/brain relationships.3) You can propose one or two experiments—whatever you think is best for testing your hypothesis. You will not be
penalized if you do just a single experiment that provides a good test of your hypothesis.
As long as you follow these three requirements, you can take the assignment in any direction you like.
To give one example:
Hypothesis: The basal ganglia are important for multi-tasking, essential for the transition from one mental state to another,
in a manner similar to how this structure is known to be essential for initiating movement.
Possible experiments:
a) Test Parkinson patients (as your model of basal ganglia dysfunction) on tasks that require multi-tasking and a control
task.
b) Look at BOLD in healthy individuals, using event-related method time-locked to when you expect mental state
transitions to occur (relative to some control, no transition condition).
c) Optogenetic manipulation of some targeted region in the basal ganglia in a rat model on a multi-tasking experiment.
d) Functional connectivity study looking at connectivity between basal ganglia and cortical regions, comparing conditions
that involve multi-tasking and conditions that do not involve multi-tasking.
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