Leveraging visual fidelity to understand the neural mechanisms responsible for remembering images and objects

项目摘要 我们记住我们所遇到的图像的能力是非凡的-我们可以在观看数千张图像后正确地确定我们是否见过一张图像，每一张只有几秒钟。虽然我们对支持“视觉识别记忆”的大脑区域（包括下颞叶皮层（IT），嗅周皮层和海马）有一定的了解，但这些大脑区域对视觉识别记忆的具体贡献却知之甚少。此外，我们对灵长类动物的大脑如何支持快速获得的视觉记忆信息的灵活概括知之甚少--例如，报告一个物体是否以前见过，但可能是在不同的背景或配置中。到目前为止，支持视觉识别记忆的神经机制的研究受到以下事实的限制：视觉记忆是在单一图像曝光后存储的，而现有的拟合和评估神经机制模型的技术通常只在应用于相同条件在许多试验中重复的数据时才有效。在这个提议中，我们引入了新的数据分析工具来评估单次曝光的视觉记忆模型与单单位数据。在这些实验中，当我们记录颞叶结构中的神经反应时，猴子执行一个对象不变版本的记忆相似性任务。在目标1中，我们专注于IT和嗅周皮层的贡献，形成单次曝光的视觉记忆行为的泛化。在目标2中，我们专注于内嗅皮层和海马。总之，这些结果将，第一次，描述的差异贡献IT，嗅周皮层，内嗅皮层和海马体形成的概括单次曝光的视觉记忆行为。

PROJECT SUMMARY Our ability to remember the images that we have encountered is remarkable - we can correctly determine whether we have seen an image before after viewing thousands, each only for a few seconds. While we have some understanding of the brain areas involved in supporting ‘visual recognition memory’ (including inferotemporal cortex (IT), perirhinal cortex and the hippocampus), the specific contributions that these brain areas make to visual recognition memory are poorly understood. In addition, very little is known about how the primate brain supports the flexible generalization of rapidly acquired visual memory information – for example, to report whether an object has been seen previously, but perhaps in a different context or configuration. To date, investigations of the neural mechanisms that support visual recognition memory have been limited by the fact that visual memories are stored following single image exposures, whereas the techniques that exist to fit and evaluate models of neural mechanism are most often only effective when applied to data in which the same condition was repeated across many trials. In this proposal, we introduce novel data analysis tools to evaluate single-exposure visual memory models with single-unit data. In these experiments, monkeys perform an object-invariant version of a Mnemonic Similarity task as we record neural responses in temporal lobe structures. In Aim 1, we focus on the contributions of IT and perirhinal cortex to shaping the generalization of single-exposure visual memory behavior. In Aim 2, we focus on entorhinal cortex and the hippocampus. Together, these results will, for the first time, describe the differential contributions of IT, perirhinal cortex, entorhinal cortex and the hippocampus to shaping the generalization of single-exposure visual memory behavior.