Neural Circuits for Attention and Effort

当一个人面临一项需要努力的认知任务时，大脑前扣带皮质区域的神经元就会被激活。目前，我们不知道这一区域的神经元激活是否与唤醒的非特异性效应有关，是否与做出决定所涉及的更多努力有关，或者与注意力分散有关的过程有关。有了这笔用于探索性研究的NSF小额拨款，奥尔森博士将研究人类前扣带回单个神经元在执行激活该区域的任务时的反应。这些动物将接受三种不同任务的训练，以区分由于唤醒、决策或分散注意力而导致的活动增加。这个项目是第一次尝试研究这一区域在动物行为方面的活动。这些结果应该会促进我们对选择性注意和决策背后的认知回路的理解。它们将与人类、机器人和人工智能以及神经科学的决策过程模型相关。

When a person is faced with a cognitive task that takes effort, neurons in a brain region called the anterior cingulate cortex are activated. At present we don't know whether neuronal activation in this region is related to nonspecific effects of arousal, the increased effort involved in making a decision, or processes related to divided attention. With this NSF small grant for exploratory research, Dr. Olson will study the responses of single neurons in the anterior cingulate during the performance of tasks that activate this region in the human. The animals will be trained on three different tasks in order to distinguish between increases in activity that are due to arousal, decision making, or split attention. This project represents the first attempt to study the activity of this area in behaving animals. The results should advance our understanding of the cognitive circuits underlying selective attention and decision making. They will be relevant for models of decision processes in humans, robotics and artificial intelligence as well as neuroscience.***//