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

人类天生擅长面部识别。一项研究估计，英国的年轻人能识别大约1000 - 10000张面孔（Jenkins等人，2018）。另一方面，英国约有130万人（2%）患有脸盲症。这些人无法识别熟人的面孔，这会导致精神困扰、关系冲突甚至失业（Yardley et al., 2008）。为了支持脸盲症患者的福祉，我们需要了解人类面部识别的潜在机制，特别是面部识别的灵活性机制，例如，“我们如何识别随着时间的推移而变化的人的面孔，例如年龄或化妆？”以及“我们如何保持对每张面孔的大量记忆？”以及“我们如何不混淆不同的面孔，特别是当这些面孔看起来非常相似时（例如双胞胎的面孔）？”最近二十年对睡眠和记忆之间关系的研究表明，在一段时间的睡眠中，记忆会从最初的形式发生变化。例如，最近的研究表明，睡眠积极促进记忆的概括（Gomez等人，2006），提取概括的想法或记忆的要点（Lewis, 2011），甚至产生更多的错误，如果他们符合提取的要点，相比同等数量的清醒（Payne等人，2009）。在最近一系列关于睡眠和记忆的研究中，我的博士研究重点是睡眠在面部识别记忆中的积极作用。我的博士研究表明，睡眠对于区分视觉上相似的面孔（例如双胞胎的面孔）的记忆也很重要。此外，我的博士工作使用了一种称为表征相似性分析（RSA）的功能性MRI技术，它测量了不同条件下大脑活动模式的独特性，揭示了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）中视觉上相似的面孔的反应的分离模式有关。总而言之，最近关于睡眠和记忆的发现以及我的博士工作为支持人类面部识别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相互分离。在长时间保持记忆时，动机显著性（如奖励）也很重要。例如，显著性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化的影响（Fischer等人，2009）。因此，在研究期间，我将向面部感知研究者群体推广我的博士工作和睡眠与记忆方面的最新研究动态，开展跨学科合作，并开展博士工作延伸的试点工作。这项试点工作将测试动机显著性的存在如何影响睡眠期间面部识别记忆的改变，其方式与我博士期间开发的行为任务类似。这项试点工作将是申请未来资金和/或奖学金的关键，我将使用发达的行为范式来研究显著性、面部识别、记忆和睡眠背后的神经机制。为了使我的工作产生最大的影响，我将在备受尊敬的期刊上发表我的研究。我还将参加由认知神经科学学会（CNS）组织的年度会议等国内和国际会议，以便与人脸识别、睡眠和记忆相关的学术研究人员可以看到我的工作。此外，我计划访问一些学者，如伦敦的Michael Banissy教授和约克的Rob Jenkins博士，他们是人脸识别记忆和人脸感知方面的主要研究人员，向他们介绍我的工作，并交换意见，以建立一个合作者网络。

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.