What’s behind the brain's selective attention? Government-funded research will tell

Aditi Tandon
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, November 8

India is all set to pay greater attention to the fascinating aspects of the human brain, including why it attends selectively to certain things and ignores others.

Among 17 awardees of the Swarnajayanti Fellowship the Government extended on Monday to advance scientific knowledge in the country are scientists tracking the nuances of the brain including Sridharan Devarajan of the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, selected for the grant in the life sciences category.

Devarajan’s area of work is cognition, computation, and behaviour encompassing how the human brain enables us to pay attention selectively to some things and to ignore others or what happens in the brain when we make important decisions. Devarajan’s research focuses on understanding the neural basis of cognitive phenomena such as selective attention and decision making.

Nitin Gupta of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, another of the 17 awardees, works to understand the remarkable capabilities organized by the brain — from seeing to singing, from remembering to running. His research involves the electrical activity of neurons and their role in determining innate behavioral preferences of people.

Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Pune’s Siddhesh Kamat has been selected for his study of the biological mechanisms of lipid signaling pathways in the mammalian nervous and immune system.

Kamat aims to provide new insights and therapeutic paradigms for orphan and or emerging human neurological and immunological diseases.

Another research award has gone to Niti Kumar of CSIR-Central Drug Research Institute, Lucknow, in life sciences for her research that focuses on discovering alternative malarial therapies.

Kumar’s research seeks to understand the protein quality control machinery in human malaria parasites for exploration of alternative drug targets for malaria intervention.

She is also involved in anti-malarial screening for the identification of scaffolds effective against drug-resistant malaria

The Swarna Jayanti scheme was initiated by the government to commemorate the 50th year of Independence. Under the scheme, awardees are extended research fellowships of rs 25000 a month for five years. In addition, the Department of Science also grants the awardees Rs five lakh each for five years of research.

The fellowship is provided in addition to the salaries the scientists draw. In addition, the government also pays for other needs of awardees such as expenditure on consumables, contingencies, national and international travel.