HEMISPHERIC DISTRIBUTION OF VISUAL MEMORY

视觉记忆的半球分布

• 批准号: 3400246
• 负责人: ROBERT W DOTY
• 金额: $ 12.74万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 1983
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1983-12-01 至 1986-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/3400246
• 关键词: amygdala; brain commissure; hippocampus; interhemispheric transfer; interocular transfer; memory; neuropsychology; optic chiasmas; psychomotor reaction time; split brain; thalamic nuclei; visual perception

The proposed experiments incorporte two heretofore separate but highly productive lines of attack on defining and elucidating the neural substrate of memory, a problem of vast import to fields as diverse as education, psychiatry, neurology and gerontology. The experiments utilize, on the one hand, the sophisticated techniques recently developed for testing memory in nonhuman primates. These have demonstrated a striking similarity between macque and man in the processes of visual memory, both in its normal operation and in the nature of the impairment consequent to homologous cerebral loss. On the other hand, these experiments exploit the extraordinary possibilities afforded by the "split-brain" approach, whereby information can be supplied to or demanded from each cerebral hemisphere individually, thus allowing comparison of performance by "intact" versus damaged hemispheres in the same animal, the tracing and comparison of different pathways for interhemispheric communication, etc. Macaques with surgically transected optic chiasm view with one or the other eye, or each seriatim, a number of pictures which they are subsequently called upon to identify when viewed by the same or other eye and hemisphere. Interhemispheric communication is limited by cutting one of the forebrain commissures. Lesions are to be created reversibly by cooling, local anesthetization, or electrical tetanization; and irreversibly by subpial suction or transection. The primary goals are to study 1) how initial distribution of visual mnemonic input to one or the other hemisphere affects the retrieval of these memories when achieved ipsilaterally, contralaterally or bilaterally, comparing interhemishpheric communication via anterior commissure versus splenium of the corpus callosum in this regard; and 2) to define how unilateral, reversible or irreversible, elimination of various cerebral structures having a suspected role in visual memory will alter the mnemonic capability of that hemisphere, particulary as to whether "recording" versus "retrieval" is differentially affected. By such means, it should be possible to define the structures essential to visual mnemonic processing, and to some degree the nature of their role therein.

提出的实验结合了两个迄今为止独立但高度