Doctoral Dissertation Research: Imaging Brain Areas Involved in Biological Motion Perception

博士论文研究：对参与生物运动感知的大脑区域进行成像

• 批准号: 0121962
• 负责人: Randolph Blake
• 金额: $ 1.8万
• 依托单位: Vanderbilt University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2001
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2001-09-01 至 2003-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0121962&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Imaging; Brain

Humans are incredibly skilled at visually recognizing the actions of others, even when the optical information portraying those actions is reduced to a sparse collection of light points attached to the individual's joints. In these "point-light" animations, accurate perception of body movements can only be recovered from the integration of the associated motion signals over space and time. Brain imaging research has disclosed that a region on the ventral bank of the posterior temporal sulcus (posterior STS) becomes active when people view human activity portrayed by these point-light animations. This project will examine the relationship between activity levels in posterior STS and the quality of the perceptual experience associated with viewing biological motion. Observers will view single trials of biological motion animations that range in coherence from completely biological to completely scrambled and will rate them according to perceived coherence. The experiments will also examine the extent to which posterior STS is specialized for whole-body human movement. Measures of neural activity will be taken as observers view point-light animations of animal motion, hand movements and face movements. Finally, the anatomical location of posterior STS is quite near neural areas involved in auditory perception. If posterior STS lies within multi-modal cortical areas, then measures will be made of the extent to which neural signals originating from STS can be modulated by congruent versus incongruent auditory and visual events.

人类在视觉上识别他人的动作方面非常熟练，即使描绘这些动作的光学信息被减少到附着在个人关节上的稀疏光点。在这些“点光”动画中，对身体运动的准确感知只能从空间和时间上的相关运动信号的整合中恢复。脑成像研究表明，当人们看到这些点光动画描绘的人类活动时，后颞沟（后STS）腹侧的一个区域变得活跃。本计画将探讨后STS的活动程度与观看生物运动相关的知觉经验品质之间的关系。观察者将观看生物运动动画的单一试验，其范围从完全生物到完全混乱的连贯性，并将根据感知的连贯性对其进行评级。实验还将检查后STS专门用于全身人体运动的程度。神经活动的措施将采取观察员查看点光动画的动物运动，手部动作和面部动作。 最后，后STS的解剖位置是相当接近参与听觉感知的神经区域。如果后部STS位于多模态皮质区域内，则将测量源自STS的神经信号可以被一致与不一致的听觉和视觉事件调制的程度。