What are you trying to do? Articulate your objectives using absolutely no jargon.
My work focuses on understanding and predicting the cognitive and motor deficits in aging and neurodegeneration. I use neuropsychological testing and motor behavioral assessments to map behavioral profiles. Using magnetic resonance imaging I evaluate the relationship between functional and structural brain aspects with these behavioral profiles. In previous work, I assessed how cognitive, motor, and brain health are affected by spaceflight and if brain metrics can predict post-landing task performance.
How is it done today, and what are the limits of current practice?
Most work today focuses on a limited number of behavioral assessments that are being evaluated using mass univariate analyses. This overlooks correlational structures between behavioral assessments and may be less powerful in detecting brain-behavioral associations.
What is new in your approach and why do you think it will be successful?
I extract motor and cognitive profiles using supervised machine learning tools. This takes advantage of the breadth of motor and cognitive functioning and can identify those individuals who are most affected by the effects of microgravity on the central nervous system due to spaceflight.
Who cares? If you are successful, what difference will it make?
Identifying those individuals whose cognitive and motor performance is most affected by spaceflight could be selected for training to mitigate such effects.