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Sustained Activity Mechanisms for Neurally Encoding Linguistic Structure

神经编码语言结构的持续活动机制

基本信息

批准号：
1749407
负责人：
Ellen Lau
金额：
$ 38.66万
依托单位：
University of Maryland, College Park
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
Standard Grant
财政年份：
2018
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2018-09-01 至 2024-02-29
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1749407&HistoricalAwards=false
关键词：
Sustained Activity Mechanisms Neurally Encoding

项目摘要

The project will examine how the human brain implements the short-term memory representations necessary for comprehending language. In particular, the proposed experiments will investigate how sustained increases in neural activity contribute to language understanding, by recording brain activity as adults comprehend structured sentences. In so doing, this work will speak to questions about the role of sustained neural activity in short-term memory in cognition more broadly, which is currently the subject of much debate in the field. The basic research proposed here will ultimately pave the way for a better understanding of the language deficits associated with working memory problems in neurocognitive disorders such as aphasia and schizophrenia, as well as providing more fine-grained neural measures for evaluating language comprehension abilities in populations undergoing first and second language acquisition. The project will also provide numerous training opportunities for students in a technical and highly interdisciplinary research area that draws upon the fields of linguistics, cognitive psychology, computational linguistics, and cognitive neuroscience. A key methodological element of the current project is the use of multimodal neuroimaging, which integrates data from a range of techniques (electroencephalography, magnetoencephalography, and functional MRI) in order to precisely identify relevant neural activity both in time and in brain space. These techniques are used to evaluate prior proposals that sustained activity in several brain regions (left inferior frontal cortex and left posterior temporal cortex) is what allows humans to represent relations between different parts of a sentence during language comprehension. Critically, the project builds on foundational work from linguistics and computational linguistics to devise structured language materials that can effectively probe different hypotheses about these neural mechanisms.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该项目将研究人类大脑如何实现理解语言所需的短期记忆表征。特别是，拟议的实验将通过记录成年人理解结构化句子时的大脑活动，研究神经活动的持续增加如何有助于语言理解。在这样做的过程中，这项工作将更广泛地讨论有关短期记忆中持续神经活动在认知中的作用的问题，这是目前该领域争论的主题。这里提出的基础研究最终将为更好地理解与失语症和精神分裂症等神经认知障碍中的工作记忆问题相关的语言缺陷铺平道路，并为评估正在进行第一和第二语言习得的人群的语言理解能力提供更细粒度的神经措施。该项目还将为学生提供大量的培训机会，在一个技术和高度跨学科的研究领域，借鉴了语言学，认知心理学，计算语言学和认知神经科学领域。当前项目的一个关键方法要素是使用多模态神经成像，它整合了一系列技术（脑电图，脑磁图和功能性MRI）的数据，以精确识别时间和大脑空间中的相关神经活动。这些技术被用来评估先前的建议，即在几个大脑区域（左下额叶皮层和左后颞叶皮层）的持续活动是什么让人类在语言理解过程中代表句子不同部分之间的关系。重要的是，该项目建立在语言学和计算语言学的基础工作之上，设计出结构化的语言材料，可以有效地探测关于这些神经机制的不同假设。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。