CODDE · Co-ordination for optimal decisions in dynamic environments

Everyday actions and social interactions depend on making prompt decisions in a dynamic world. Despite the seeming ease with which we are able to recognise targets for attention and direct our actions, understanding how the brain extracts the key information from the complex input of the natural world to support successful behaviour is one of the greatest open scientific challenges. Meeting this challenge has clear intersectorial benefits: helping to tailor technology to the user, improve interventions for training and rehabilitation, and preserve abilities in old age. Codde addresses the challenge through a multidisciplinary approach that integrates techniques and methodologies from Human-, Physical-, Life- and Computational sciences. This novel synthesis of techniques and approaches between disciplines and sectors offers real potential to improve understanding of the brain processes that support successful behaviour. The eight host centres in the training network represent leading groups with excellent international reputations and state-of-the-art equipment. The training programme combines local activities with network workshops, training courses and personnel- and information- exchange to deliver an unrivalled breadth of training in sensorimotor research. Exchanges are designed to deliver research training significantly beyond that typical for early-stage researchers by exploiting complementary expertise in controlling and quantifying sensory input, with advanced virtual reality interfaces, tools for studying dynamics developed in motor control, insight into neural processing gained from functional brain imaging and system-level operational principles used by the brain gleaned by applying advanced theoretical models. The high-level involvement of industry in the network is exceptional for the field, and will assist us in delivering researchers with excellent technical and transferable skills that will be of lifelong use across disciplines and sectors.