MRI: Acquisition of Instrumentation to Measure the Time-Course and Distribution of Cortical Activity in Perceptual Cognitive, and Social Psychological Processing

该补助金支持购买仪器来测量认知和社会神经科学研究中的事件相关电位（ERP）。ERPs反映了大脑在精神活动中发生的突触活动。所要求的仪器将在芝加哥大学的大脑研究成像中心（BRIC）与功能磁共振成像大脑扫描一起使用。BRIC购买了一台3T扫描仪，用于研究心理过程，如口语理解、注意力转移、感知运动规划和运动想象以及社会分类。虽然行为研究已经告诉我们很多关于这些心理过程的信息，但这些研究并不能指出大脑执行这种处理的具体方式。功能磁共振成像可以识别大脑的哪些部分参与处理。虽然功能磁共振成像可以定位皮质区域，但血流反应太慢，无法测量这些区域的活动时间。ERPs提供了这种定时信息，但不能像功能性磁共振成像那样精确地定位大脑活动。功能磁共振成像结合事件相关电位结合高空间分辨率和时间分辨率来研究大脑的功能处理。在功能磁共振成像中测量ERP活动将有助于将皮层处理的时间和空间信息联系起来。三个广泛的项目最初将使用该仪器。其中一个项目将研究在语言理解过程中语言特定机制和更一般的认知过程之间的相互作用。本研究探讨了理解如何使用注意和记忆以及非语言信息。ERP测量将研究与特定语言处理相比，工作记忆和注意力中皮层活动的相对时间。第二个项目将研究涉及感知和行动产生的神经机制。知觉处理的符号线索的行动与直接的人类运动线索（触发“镜像”细胞）的比较将调查运动和电机的“意象”电路的概念操作的神经机制。第三个项目研究情感评价和社会分类解决理论，积极和消极的态度是由不同的机制介导。功能磁共振成像和ERP将确定相关的大脑区域，并检查这些网络的情感，感知和自主部分的处理的时间过程，以研究情感评估系统如何介导社会分类中的刻板反应。

This grant supports the acquisition of instrumentation to measure Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) in cognitive and social neuroscience research. ERPs reflect the synaptic activity of the brain that occur during mental activity. The requested instrumentation will be used with fMRI brain scanning at the Brain Research Imaging Center (BRIC) at the University of Chicago. BRIC has purchased a 3T scanner to study psychological processes such as spoken language understanding, shifts of attention, perceptuo-motor planning and motor imagery, and social categorization. Although behavioral studies have told us much about these mental processes, these studies cannot indicate the specific way in which the brain implements this processing. fMRI can identify which parts of the brain are involved in processing. Although fMRI can localize cortical areas, blood-flow responses are too slow to measure the timing of activity in these areas. ERPs provide this timing information, but cannot localize brain activity as finely as fMRI. fMRI together with ERP combines high spatial resolution and temporal resolution to investigate the functional processing in the brain. Measuring ERP activity during fMRI will aid in relating temporal and spatial information about cortical processing. Three broad projects will initially use the instrumentation. One project will investigate interactions between language-specific mechanisms and more general cognitive processes during language comprehension. This research examines how understanding uses attention and memory as well as paralinguistic information. ERP measures will investigate relative timing of cortical activity in working memory and attention compared with specifically linguistic processing. The second project will examine neural mechanisms involved in perception and production of action. Comparison of perceptual processing of symbolic cues for actions with direct human movement cues (to trigger "mirror" cells) will investigate neural mechanisms underlying conceptual operations in motor movements and motor "imagery" circuits. The third project investigates affective evaluation and social categorization addressing the theory that positive and negative attitudes are mediated by different mechanisms. fMRI and ERP will identify relevant brain areas and examine the time-course of processing in affective, perceptual, and autonomic parts of these networks to investigate how affective evaluation systems mediate stereotypic responses in social categorization.