Decoding of hemodynamic signals during the processing of spectral and spatial stimulus features in auditory working memory

听觉工作记忆中频谱和空间刺激特征处理过程中血流动力学信号的解码

• 批准号: 321985823
• 负责人: Privatdozent Dr. Christoph Bledowski
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Institut für Medizinische Psychologie (IMP)
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2015-12-31 至 2020-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/321985823?language=en
• 关键词: Decoding; hemodynamic; signals; during; processing

Working memory forms a central component of many cognitive functions and is thus fundamentally relevant to human cognition and action. Previous work has focused mainly on the ability to keep simple visual stimuli active for short time periods and to perform mental operations on them. Current research topics concern the unit of working memory storage and the question which brain regions can be considered storage regions. Previous magnetoencephalography studies from our laboratory have investigated auditory working memory, which is less well understood than visual working memory. Among our main findings were separate cortical regions for the maintenance of spatial versus nonspatial sound features. Moreover, we have assessed the prioritization of memory contents and its impact on neuronal representations in visual working memory. The present project aims at transferring current findings from the visual modality to auditory working memory and at further elucidating basic, modality-independent mechanisms of working memory. We will use decoding of functional magnetic resonance imaging data to identify auditory working memory storage regions. A series of three studies shall determine which regions fulfill the following criteria for storage regions: coding of information related to the memorized stimulus, correlation between the activation pattern and the precision of memory representations on single-trial basis, resistance of representations against distraction during the maintenance phase, and flexible prioritization of specific memory contents. We will use nonverbal sounds with variable spatial and spectral properties. Thus we can test which regions code preferentially either individual stimulus features or feature bundles. We expect that this project will enhance our knowledge about auditory working memory and provide new fundamental insights into the roles of sensory and hierarchically higher regions for the maintenance of simple and combined stimulus features.

工作记忆是许多认知功能的核心组成部分，因此与人类的认知和行为有着根本的关系。以前的研究主要集中在将简单的视觉刺激保持短时间活跃并对其进行心理操作的能力上。目前的研究课题是工作记忆存储单元和哪些脑区可以被认为是存储区域的问题。我们实验室以前的脑磁图研究已经调查了听觉工作记忆，这比视觉工作记忆了解得少。我们的主要发现之一是不同的皮层区域维持空间和非空间声音特征。此外，我们还评估了记忆内容的优先级及其对视觉工作记忆中神经元表征的影响。本项目旨在将目前的研究成果从视觉模态转移到听觉工作记忆，并进一步阐明工作记忆的基本、模态无关的机制。我们将使用功能性磁共振成像数据的解码来识别听觉工作记忆存储区域。一系列的三个研究将确定哪些区域满足以下存储区域的标准：与记忆刺激相关的信息编码，激活模式与单次记忆表征的准确性之间的相关性，表征在维持阶段对分心的抵抗性，以及特定记忆内容的灵活优先级。我们将使用具有可变空间和频谱特性的非语言声音。因此，我们可以测试哪些区域优先编码单个刺激特征或特征包。我们期望这个项目将增强我们对听觉工作记忆的认识，并为感觉和层次更高的区域在维持简单和组合刺激特征中的作用提供新的基本见解。