CAREER: Testing a unified theory of perception and memory in the medial temporal lobe

职业：测试内侧颞叶感知和记忆的统一理论

• 批准号: 1554871
• 负责人: Rosemary Cowell
• 金额: $ 59.96万
• 依托单位: University of Massachusetts Amherst
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-01-01 至 2021-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1554871&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Testing; unified; theory; perception

Memory is critical to our everyday existence, enabling us to recognize an acquaintance's face, remember where we have parked our car, or recall an event from last week in vivid detail. And yet, it is fragile: memory performance can decline noticeably with age and deteriorates even more dramatically in individuals with damage to the medial temporal lobes of the brain. Until recently, theories of memory assumed that the medial temporal lobes are dedicated solely to memory function. However, recent evidence suggests that these brain regions are important for other cognitive tasks, including imagining the future and visually discriminating between two highly similar objects. Therefore, a critical gap in current knowledge is a theory of how memory interacts with high-level visual perception and why both of these cognitive functions depend upon the medial temporal lobes. With the support of this NSF CAREER award, Dr. Rosie Cowell will develop such a theory and test it with empirical studies. By applying the theory to both amnesia caused by brain damage and the more moderate memory loss caused by normal aging, this project will investigate whether these two forms of memory loss can be explained by the same mechanisms. In addition, the project will benefit society more broadly by (1) providing a uniquely integrated research training regime in which graduate students receive direct experience with both theory-building and hypothesis-testing, and (2) broadening participation in STEM fields via hands-on science workshops for female students from high-schools that serve under-represented groups, and via public outreach in the local Massachusetts community.To develop a unifying theory of memory and high-level perception, the proposed research will employ behavioral studies, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and computational modeling. The studies will examine the effect of perceptual interference on memory in two cognitively-impaired populations: individuals with medial temporal lobe (MTL) damage and heathy, older adults. The central hypothesis of this proposal is that the MTL houses conjunctive representations of objects and events that are critical for both memory and perception. The conjunctions are critical for perception because they allow differentiation between two similar objects or events, and critical for memory because they shield against a constant stream of perceptual interference that would otherwise cause dramatic forgetting of an object or event. It is assumed that both MTL damage and normal aging compromise the conjunctive representations, forcing a person to rely upon the fragmental, feature-based representations that remain in sensory cortex. Feature-based representations are inadequate for differentiating similar items (leading to perceptual impairments) and highly susceptible to perceptual interference (leading to memory problems). The planned studies are expected to reveal that MTL structures contribute to any cognitive task, mnemonic or perceptual, whenever the task solution requires complex, conjunctive representations of stimuli. This representational approach to understanding cognition will be fully exploited by developing a formal, neuro-computationally plausible model that links neural representations to cognitive performance with an explicit mechanism.

记忆对我们的日常生活至关重要，使我们能够认识到熟人的脸，记住我们停在了汽车的地方，或者以生动的细节回忆起上周的活动。然而，这是脆弱的：记忆性能会随着年龄的增长而明显下降，并且在对大脑内侧颞叶受损的个体中更加急剧下降。直到最近，内存理论都假定内侧颞叶仅专用于内存功能。但是，最近的证据表明，这些大脑区域对于其他认知任务很重要，包括想象未来以及在两个高度相似的物体之间进行视觉区分。因此，当前知识的关键差距是一种理论，即记忆如何与高级视觉感知相互作用，以及为什么这两个认知功能都取决于内侧颞叶。在这一NSF职业奖的支持下，Rosie Cowell博士将开发出这样的理论，并通过经验研究对其进行测试。通过将理论应用于由脑损伤引起的失忆症和正常老化引起的更为中等记忆力丧失，该项目将调查是否可以通过相同的机制来解释这两种形式的记忆丧失。此外，该项目将通过（1）提供一个独特的综合研究培训制度，在该制度中，研究生在理论建设和假设测试中都能获得直接的经验，以及（2）通过动手的STEM领域通过动手的科学工作室来扩大参与STEM领域的参与，从而通过为不足的群体和群体提供社区的高中生，并为统一的群体提供服务，并统一统一的群体，并统一统一的社区。高级感知，拟议的研究将采用行为研究，功能磁共振成像（fMRI）和计算建模。该研究将研究两个认知障碍人群中感知干扰对记忆的影响：内侧颞叶（MTL）损害和恶性，老年人的影响。该提议的中心假设是MTL容纳对物体和事件的结合表示，这些表示对记忆和感知至关重要。连词对于感知至关重要，因为它们允许在两个相似的对象或事件之间进行区分，并且对于内存至关重要，因为它们会屏蔽不断的感知干扰流，否则会导致对对象或事件的巨大忘记。假定MTL损伤和正常衰老都会损害结合表示形式，从而迫使一个人依靠仍然保留在感觉皮质中的碎片，基于特征的表示。基于特征的表示不足以区分相似项目（导致感知障碍），并且高度容易受到感知干扰（导致记忆问题）。预计计划的研究将揭示MTL结构在任务解决方案需要刺激的复杂，结合性表示时，有助于任何认知任务，即助记符或感知。这种代表性理解认知的方法将通过开发形式的，神经兼容的模型来充分利用，该模型将神经表示与认知表现与明确的机制联系起来。