Reading hidden intentions in the human brain
Reading hidden intentions in the human brain
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DOI：
10.1016/j.cub.2006.11.072
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发表时间：
2007-02-20
期刊：
影响因子：
9.2
通讯作者：
Passingham, Richard E.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Haynes, John-Dylan;Sakai, Katsuyuki;Passingham, Richard E.
当人类从事与目标相关的处理时，前额叶皮层的活动会增加[1，2]。然而，目前还不清楚这种前额叶活动是否编码了受试者的当前意图[3]。相反，活动水平的增加可能反映了运动反应的准备（4，5），记住一组潜在的选择[6]，跟踪以前反应的记忆[7]，或与建立新任务集相关的一般过程。在这里，我们研究的对象自由决定两个任务中的哪一个来执行，并在可变延迟期间秘密地坚持一个意图。只有在这一延迟之后，他们才执行所选择的任务，并指出他们准备的任务。我们证明，在延迟期间，它是可能的解码从活动的内侧和外侧区域的前额叶皮层这两个任务的受试者是暗中打算执行。这表明，隐蔽目标可以通过前额叶皮层的分布式活动模式来表示，从而为前瞻记忆提供了潜在的神经基质[8-10]。在任务执行过程中，大多数信息可以从前额叶皮层的后部区域解码，这表明不同的大脑区域在任务准备和任务执行期间编码目标。对意图的解码在内侧前额叶皮层中最为强大，这与该区域在受试者反思自己的精神状态时的特定作用一致。
When humans are engaged in goal-related processing, activity in prefrontal cortex is increased [1, 2]. However, it has remained unclear whether this prefrontal activity encodes a subject's current intention [3]. Instead, increased levels of activity could reflect preparation of motor responses (4, 5], holding in mind a set of potential choices [6], tracking the memory of previous responses [7], or general processes related to establishing a new task set. Here we study subjects who freely decided which of two tasks to perform and covertly held onto an intention during a variable delay. Only after this delay did they perform the chosen task and indicate which task they had prepared. We demonstrate that during the delay, it is possible to decode from activity in medial and lateral regions of prefrontal cortex which of two tasks the subjects were covertly intending to perform. This suggests that covert goals can be represented by distributed patterns of activity in the prefrontal cortex, thereby providing a potential neural substrate for prospective memory [8-10]. During task execution, most information could be decoded from a more posterior region of prefrontal cortex, suggesting that different brain regions encode goals during task preparation and task execution. Decoding of intentions was most robust from the medial prefrontal cortex, which is consistent with a specific role of this region when subjects reflect on their own mental states.