Neural Mechanisms of Preferential-looking

描述(由申请人提供)：偏向外观范式依赖于婴儿对观看新奇刺激的固有“偏好”(即，新奇偏好)，以提供记忆或辨别的证据。我们的长期目标是阐明在优先看任务中表现的神经机制，以促进我们对功能神经生物学以及视觉注意和记忆发展的了解。这些知识对于总体上理解认知发展具有重要意义，并最终将有助于我们理解这些系统的发育中断如何导致发育障碍。这项研究背后的具体假设是，优先看主要反映了将视觉场景附带编码到知觉存储中，而不是对信息的回忆或识别。本研究的具体目的是：1.研究新颖性和熟悉性偏好是否与相同或不同的认知过程有关。通过考察视觉配对比较(VPC)中的优先观看与通过事件相关电位(ERPS)对熟悉刺激的后续加工之间的关系，来考察新颖性和熟悉性偏好背后的加工过程。可以推断事件相关电位成分的不同，以反映潜在神经回路的不同，从而反映认知过程的不同。 2.分离与再认和启动相关的过程。这将通过检验VPC中的新颖性偏好与随后在熟悉和新的刺激处理过程中的ERP差异之间的关系来实现。 3.分离与熟悉和新近相关的过程。这将通过研究重复新的和熟悉的刺激对6个月大婴儿的事件相关电位的影响来实现，特别是关注以前工作中与优先任务的表现有关的成分。

Description (provided by applicant): Preferential-looking paradigms rely on an infant's inherent "preference" for viewing novel stimuli (i.e., novelty preferences) to provide evidence for memory or discrimination. Our long-term goal is to elucidate the neural mechanisms underlying performance on preferential-looking tasks in order to advance our knowledge about the functional neurobiology and development of visual attention and memory. Such knowledge has important implications for understanding cognitive development in general, and will ultimately help to inform our understanding of how disruptions in the development of these systems may give rise to developmental disorders. The specific hypothesis behind the proposed research is that preferential-looking primarily reflects the incidental encoding of the visual scene into a perceptual store vs. the recollection or recognition of information. The specific aims of this proposal are to: 1. Investigate whether novelty and familiarity preferences are associated with the same or different cognitive processes. The processes underlying novelty and familiarity preferences will be investigated by examining he relation between preferential-looking in the visual-paired comparison (VPC) and subsequent processing of the familiar stimulus via ERPs. Differences in the topography of ERP components can be inferred to reflect differences in the underlying neural circuits, and hence cognitive processes. 2. Dissociate processes related to recognition vs. priming. This will be accomplished by examining the relation between novelty preferences in the VPC and subsequent ERP differences during the processing of familiar and novel stimuli. 3. Dissociate processes related to familiarity vs. recency. This will be accomplished by investigating the effects of repetition of novel and familiar stimuli on ERPs in 6-month olds, focusing in particular on components that have been related to performance on preferential-looking tasks in previous work.