CAREER:Single-neuron mechanisms of social attention in humans

人们将视觉注意力集中在我们视野中显著的物体或人上的能力是人类最基本的认知功能之一。这种能力对于学习和与他人进行社会互动至关重要。特别是，对社会刺激的视觉注意(即社会注意)在引导社会行为方面起着至关重要的作用。社会注意力受损是许多精神和神经疾病的基础，例如自闭症和多动症。然而，对人类视觉注意在单个神经元水平上的了解很少。这个职业项目的目标是使用目前提供最高程度的空间分辨率(大脑活动的位置)和时间分辨率(大脑活动的时间)的技术，了解人类社会注意力所涉及的潜在神经过程。研究人员将与神经外科医生合作，在患者接受癫痫治疗时直接从人脑中的神经元进行记录。这些神经元驻留在大脑中涉及注意力、决策或处理社会相关图像的区域。这项研究将阐明特定大脑区域内的单个神经元是如何影响视觉注意力的。这些结果将为这些过程在精神和神经疾病中的不同提供新的见解。这项研究将有助于教材和临床社区的推广。获得的数据和开发的分析工具将免费提供给其他研究人员，以促进认知神经科学研究和人类神经记录领域的科学发展。研究小组将研究人类社会注意的神经回路，包括目标驱动注意力(目标1)和刺激驱动注意力(目标2)。这项研究将：(1)表征内侧颞叶(杏仁核和海马体)和前额叶皮质(特别是眼眶前额皮质)的社会注意信号；(2)使用全面的功能连接分析来分析不同脑区的注意信号；以及(3)比较目标驱动和刺激驱动注意力的神经机制。与独特的人类单神经元记录相结合，这项研究将通过全面分析人类社会注意力的神经回路，解决重要的基本神经科学问题。这项研究的结果对于了解精神和神经疾病患者视觉注意障碍的神经机制非常重要，并将为未来有针对性的干预策略的发展提供信息。这项研究还将整合本科教育，并生成工具和方法，使新的研究小组能够进行最先进的人类单神经元记录。该项目由认知神经科学计划和既定的刺激竞争研究计划(EPSCoR)联合资助。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The ability of people to focus visual attention on salient objects or people in our visual field is one of the most fundamental cognitive functions in humans. This ability is critically important in order to learn and interact socially with others. In particular, visual attention to social stimuli (i.e., social attention) plays a vital role in guiding social behaviors. Impaired social attention underlies many psychiatric and neurological disorders, such as autism and ADHD. However, very little is known about human visual attention at the single-neuron level. The goal of this CAREER project is to understand the underlying neural processes involved in human social attention using technology that provides the highest degree of spatial resolution (location of brain activity) and temporal resolution (timing of brain activity) currently available. The investigators will collaborate with neurosurgeons and record directly from neurons in the human brain, as patients undergo treatment of epilepsy. These neurons reside in brain regions involved in attention, decision making, or processing of socially relevant images. The research will elucidate how single neurons, within specific brain regions, contribute to visual attention. Results will provide novel insight into how these processes differ in psychiatric and neurological disorders. This study will contribute to teaching materials and outreach to clinical communities. The data acquired and analysis tools developed will be made freely available to other researchers in order to advance science in the field of cognitive neuroscience research and human neural recordings.The research team will investigate the neural circuits of social attention in humans for both goal-driven attention (Aim 1) and stimulus-driven attention (Aim 2). The research will: (1) characterize social attention signals in the medial temporal lobe (amygdala and hippocampus) and prefrontal cortex (in particular the orbitofrontal cortex); (2) analyze attention signals from different brain regions using comprehensive functional connectivity analysis; and (3) compare neural mechanisms for goal-driven vs. stimulus-driven attention. Together, with the unique human single-neuron recordings, the research will address important fundamental neuroscience questions by providing comprehensive analysis of the neural circuits underlying social attention in humans. The outcomes of this research are important to understand the neural mechanisms of impaired visual attention in patients with psychiatric and neurological disorders and will be informative for development of future targeted intervention strategies. This research will also integrate undergraduate education and generate tools and methods to enable new research groups to conduct state-of-the-art human single-neuron recordings.This project is jointly funded by the Cognitive Neuroscience Program and by the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).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.