Spatial and nonspatial knowledge

空间和非空间知识

• 批准号: 10556335
• 负责人: RUSSELL A EPSTEIN
• 金额: $ 54.93万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-02-01 至 2026-01-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10556335
• 关键词: Address; Alzheimer' s Disease; Animals; Architecture; Articulation; Behavior; Behavioral; Brain; Brain region; Cells; Cities; Code; Cognition; Cognitive; Cognitive Science; Complex; Coupled; Elements; Environment; Episodic memory; Fire - disasters; Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Future; Graph; Grouping; Head; Hippocampal Formation; Human; Imagination; Impairment; Individual; Individual Differences; Investigation; Knowledge; Life; Location; Maps; Mediating; Memory; Methods; Mind; Nature; Neighborhoods; Neurocognitive; Neurodegenerative Disorders; Neurons; Pattern; Persons; Play; Process; Psyche structure; Psychologist; Recording of previous events; Research; Rodent; Role; Route; Scientist; Self-Help Devices; Semantic memory; Semantics; Stroke; Structure; Support System; System; Techniques; Testing; Thinking; Traction; Vision; Visuospatial; Work; behavior measurement; behavioral study; cognitive function; cognitive neuroscience; experimental study; mental representation; neural; neural correlate; neuroimaging; neuromechanism; neurophysiology; normal aging; operation; prospective; rehabilitation strategy; spatial memory; spatial relationship; theories; way finding

Project Summary The ability to navigate from one place to another is essential for a flourishing and autonomous human life. Cognitive scientists have long believed that navigation in humans and animals is guided by mental representations of the spatial structure of the world, which are referred to as “cognitive maps” because they play a functional role that is similar to physical maps. Consistent with this idea, electrophysiologists have identified neurons in rodent brains that fire as a function of spatial variables that are essential elements of a cognitive map, such as location, distance, and heading direction, while cognitive neuroscientists have investigated possible neural correlates of cognitive maps in several regions of the human brain, including the hippocampal formation (HF) and the retrosplenial complex (RSC). Notably, these brain regions are also known to be essential for several important cognitive functions besides spatial navigation, including memory, imagination, and thinking about the future. However, despite this previous work, there remain two crucial gaps in our knowledge. First, we have an incomplete understanding of how cognitive maps are represented in the human brain. Behavioral studies indicate that our spatial knowledge is often fragmented, hierarchically organized, and distorted in multiple ways compared to metric truth, and we do not yet understand how these “real” cognitive maps are represented in brain structures such as HF and RSC. Most notably, we do not understand how the brain divides environments into spatial parts (such as rooms within a building, or neighborhoods in a city), and how it then combines these parts into a larger whole. Second, we do not yet have a good theory of how spatial cognitive maps can be applied to non-spatial domains, thus allowing brain structures such as HF and RSC to mediate both spatial and nonspatial functions. The current project will address these issues by using advanced neuroimaging techniques, such as multivoxel pattern analysis and individual difference analyses to: (i) identify the neural mechanisms that allow the brain to encode subspaces within a larger space; (ii) delineate the neural processes by which subspaces representations are combined into a larger cognitive map, and (iii) understand how the principles underlying spatial cognitive maps can be applied to nonspatial domains. This project has the potential to make a major and sustained advance in the field by resolving longstanding questions about the cognitive and neural systems underlying spatial navigation, and by providing fundamental knowledge about how the brain mediates a wide range of basic cognitive functions, including not just navigation, but also semantic and episodic memory, prospective thinking, and reasoning.

项目摘要 从一个地方导航到另一个地方的能力对于一个繁荣和自主的 人类生活认知科学家一直认为，人类和动物的导航是 由世界空间结构的心理表征指导，这些表征被称为 “认知地图”，因为它们发挥的功能作用类似于物理地图。一致 有了这个想法，电生理学家已经确定了啮齿动物大脑中的神经元， 空间变量的功能是认知地图的基本要素，如位置， 距离和前进方向，而认知神经科学家已经研究了可能的 神经相关的认知地图在几个地区的人类大脑，包括 海马结构（HF）和压后复合体（RSC）。值得注意的是，这些大脑区域 也被认为是几个重要的认知功能，除了空间 导航，包括记忆，想象力和对未来的思考。但尽管 在我们之前的工作中，仍然存在两个关键的知识空白。首先，我们有一个 不完全理解认知地图在人脑中的表现方式。 行为研究表明，我们的空间知识往往是碎片化的， 有组织的，与度量真理相比以多种方式扭曲，我们还没有 了解这些“真实的”认知图如何在大脑结构中表现出来，如HF和 RSC。最值得注意的是，我们不知道大脑如何将环境划分为空间部分 (such建筑物内的房间，或城市中的社区），以及如何将这些 把一部分变成一个更大的整体。其次，我们还没有一个很好的理论来解释空间认知是如何 地图可以应用于非空间域，从而使大脑结构，如HF和RSC 来调节空间和非空间功能。目前的项目将解决这些问题 通过使用先进的神经成像技术，如多体素模式分析和个人 差异分析：（i）识别允许大脑编码的神经机制 在一个更大的空间内的子空间;（ii）描绘子空间的神经过程 表征被组合成一个更大的认知地图，以及（iii）理解 空间认知图的基本原理可以应用于非空间领域。这个项目 通过解决长期存在的问题， 关于空间导航的认知和神经系统的问题，以及 提供关于大脑如何介导广泛的基本认知功能的基础知识。 功能，不仅包括导航，还包括语义和情景记忆，前瞻性 思考和推理。