Interdisciplinary collaboration, and investigation on a role of motivational salience on face recognition memory across a period of sleep

跨学科合作，研究动机显着性对睡眠期间面部识别记忆的作用

• 批准号: ES/T00603X/1
• 负责人: Hikaru Tsujimura
• 金额: $ 12.1万
• 依托单位: CARDIFF UNIVERSITY
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Fellowship
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2019 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FT00603X%2F1
• 关键词: Interdisciplinary; collaboration; investigation; role; motivational

Humans are innately good at face recognition. A study estimated that young adults in the UK recognize approximately 1,000-10,000 faces (Jenkins et al., 2018). On the other side, approximately 1.3 million (2%) people in the UK are suffering from face blindness. Those people are incapable to recognize faces of acquaintances, which causes mental distress, conflict in relationship or even job loss (Yardley et al., 2008). To support the well-being of people with face blindness, we need to understand the mechanisms underlying human face recognition, especially mechanisms of flexibility in face recognition such as, "How do we recognize faces of people that are varying over time, for example through aging or makeup?", and "How do we maintain memories of each face in such large numbers?, and "How do we not confuse different faces, especially when these look very similar to each other (e.g., faces of twins)?".The recent two decades of research on the relationship between sleep and memory suggests that memory is subject to change from its original form over a period of sleep. For instance, recent work demonstrated that sleep actively promotes generalization of memories (Gomez, et al., 2006), extraction of generalized ideas or gist of memories (Lewis, 2011), and even produces more errors if they are matching the extracted gist, compared to an equal amount of wakefulness (Payne et al., 2009).In a continuum of this recent research field on sleep and memory, my PhD work focused on an active role of sleep in face recognition memory. My PhD work revealed that sleep is also important in distinguishing memories of faces when they are visually similar to each other (e.g., faces of twins). Furthermore, my doctoral work using the functional MRI technique called Representational Similarity Analysis (RSA), which measures distinctiveness of brain activity patterns between conditions, revealed that this memory distinction across a period of sleep was linked with dissociating patterns of brain responses to the visually similar faces in the hippocampus (a crucial area in the brain's memory network). Altogether, the combination of recent findings on sleep and memory and my doctoral work provides the foundation to support a tentative mechanism underlying flexibility in human face recognition, in which memories of visually similar faces are gradually dissociated from each other.Motivational salience (e.g. rewards) is also important when maintaining memories over time. For example, salience is closely linked to hippocampus-linked memory formation (Gruber, et al., 2014) and modulates effects of sleep on memory transformation (Fischer et al., 2009).During the fellowship, therefore, I will promote my doctoral work and recent trends of work on sleep and memory to the community of researchers in face perception and develop interdisciplinary collaboration, as well as running pilot work extending my doctoral work. The pilot work will test how the presence of motivational salience contributes to an alteration of face recognition memory across a period of sleep, in a similar manner to behavioral tasks developed during my PhD. This pilot work will be key to apply for future funding and/or fellowships in which I will use the developed behavioural paradigm to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying salience, face recognition memory and sleep. To maximise the impact of my work, I will publish my research in highly-respected journals. I will also attend national and international conferences such as an annual meeting organized by Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS) so that my work can be seen by people working in academic research relating to human face recognition and sleep and memory. In addition, I plan to visit scholars, such as Prof Michael Banissy in London and Dr Rob Jenkins in York, who are key researchers in face recognition memory and face perception more generally, present my work to them and exchange ideas to develop a network of collaborators.

人类天生擅长人脸识别。一项研究估计，英国的年轻人大约能认出1000-10,000张面孔(Jenkins等人，2018年)。另一方面，英国约有130万人(2%)患有面部失明。这些人无法识别熟人的面孔，这会导致精神痛苦、关系冲突甚至失业(Yardley等人，2008年)。为了支持脸盲者的健康，我们需要了解人脸识别的基本机制，特别是人脸识别中的灵活性机制，例如，“我们如何识别随时间变化的人的脸，例如随着年龄或化妆而变化的脸？”，以及“我们如何保持对如此大量的每一张脸的记忆？”以及“我们如何不混淆不同的脸，特别是当这些脸看起来彼此非常相似的时候(例如，近二十年来关于睡眠和记忆之间关系的研究表明，记忆在一段时间的睡眠过程中会发生改变。例如，最近的工作表明，与同等数量的清醒相比，睡眠积极地促进了记忆的泛化(Gomez等人，2006)，提取记忆的概括性概念或要点(Lewis，2011)，甚至在与提取的要点匹配的情况下会产生更多错误(Payne et al.，2009)。在最近关于睡眠和记忆的研究领域的一个连续体中，我的博士工作集中在睡眠在面孔识别记忆中的积极作用。我的博士研究表明，当面孔在视觉上相似(例如，双胞胎的面孔)时，睡眠对于区分面孔的记忆也很重要。此外，我的博士研究使用了名为代表性相似性分析(RSA)的功能磁共振技术，该技术测量了不同条件下大脑活动模式的差异性，结果显示，睡眠期间的这种记忆差异与大脑对海马体(大脑记忆网络的关键区域)中视觉相似的面孔的反应的分离模式有关。总之，结合最近关于睡眠和记忆的发现和我的博士工作，为支持人脸识别中潜在的灵活性的初步机制提供了基础，在这种机制中，视觉上相似的面孔的记忆逐渐彼此分离。当随着时间的推移保持记忆时，动机突显(例如奖励)也很重要。例如，显著与海马体相关的记忆形成密切相关(Gruber等人，2014)，并调节睡眠对记忆转换的影响(Fischer等人，2009)。因此，在团契期间，我将向面孔感知的研究人员社区推广我的博士工作和睡眠和记忆方面的最新工作趋势，并发展跨学科合作，以及开展扩展我的博士工作的试点工作。这项试点工作将测试激励突显的存在如何影响睡眠期间面孔识别记忆的变化，类似于我在博士期间开发的行为任务。这项试点工作将是申请未来资金和/或奖学金的关键，在这项工作中，我将使用开发的行为范式来研究突显、面孔识别记忆和睡眠的神经机制。为了最大限度地发挥我的工作的影响，我将在备受尊敬的期刊上发表我的研究成果。我还将参加国内和国际会议，如认知神经科学学会(CNS)组织的年度会议，以便从事与人脸识别、睡眠和记忆相关的学术研究的人可以看到我的工作。此外，我计划拜访伦敦的迈克尔·巴尼西教授和约克的罗布·詹金斯博士等学者，他们是人脸识别记忆和更广泛的人脸感知方面的关键研究人员，向他们介绍我的工作，并交流想法，以建立一个合作者网络。