Understanding the Conceptual-Motor Interface

描述（由申请人提供）：认知神经科学领域的一个新兴运动认为，许多认知过程是行为者和环境之间目标导向相互作用的产物。一个互补的观点是“运动促进”理论，该理论认为，观看一个物体会激活与之互动的适当动作。因此，假设在对象的概念表征和目标导向行为之间存在很强的双向联系。部分由于这一研究领域的新颖性，相关理论在很大程度上是不受约束的。该建议利用我们的物体相关动作的概念模型，即2动作系统模型，来构建一套理论驱动的预测，这些预测将在卒中和皮质-基底神经节变性综合征患者的一系列交叉研究中进行测试，这两种患者都表现出高水平的动作障碍，健康受试者，详细的神经成像分析和经颅磁刺激。需要测试的一个关键假设是，不同类型的动作表征可能在不同的任务需求下被激活，具有不同的预测时间过程，并基于不同的神经解剖学基础。同样需要测试的是关于运动能力和概念组织关系的假设约束的预测。最后，几个实验将运动系统当前状态的个体差异，以及涉及运动计划和执行的大脑结构的潜在完整性，与a)先前存在的自然概念表征的激活以及b)发展人工概念对象和动作表征的能力联系起来。这些研究将检验一个假设，即运动系统的能力对自然概念检索和人工概念学习都有高度限制和预测的相关性。这项工作有望对“行动选择”和“具身认知”理论，以及对更高水平的运动控制障碍的解释，具有广泛的意义。具体来说，本研究将：(1)对在概念-运动界面上观察到双向联系的背景提供关键约束；(2)阐明物体和动作表征的精确表征结构和激活时间过程；(3)在详细的认知神经解剖学模型中锚定相关结构；(4)阐明高级（认知）动作障碍患者的概念-运动障碍的本质。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): An emerging movement within cognitive neuroscience posits that many cognitive processes are a product of goal-directed interactions between actors and environments. A complementary view is the theory of "motor facilitation", which maintains that viewing an object activates the appropriate movements for interacting with it. Thus hypothesized is a strong bi-directional link between conceptual representations of objects and goal- directed actions. Due in part to the novelty of this area of investigation, relevant theories are for the most part highly unconstrained. This proposal makes use of our conceptual model of object-related actions, the 2 Action System model, to frame a theoretically- driven set of predictions that will be tested in an interdigitated series of studies with patients with stroke and cortico-basal ganglionic degeneration syndrome, both of whom exhibit high-level action disorders, healthy subjects, detailed neuroimaging analyses, and transcranial magnetic stimulation. One of the critical hypotheses to be tested is that different types of action representations may be activated under different task demands, with differing predicted time courses, and based upon distinct neuroanatomic substrates. Also to be tested are predictions related to a hypothesized set of constraints on the relationship of motor competence and conceptual organization. Finally, several experiments will relate individual differences in the current status of the motor system, and underlying integrity of brain structures involved in motor planning and execution, to a) activation of previously-existing, natural conceptual representations and b) the ability to develop artificial conceptual object and action representations. These studies will test the hypothesis that the competence of the motor system has highly circumscribed and predicted relevance for both natural concept retrieval as well as artificial concept learning. The proposed work is expected to have broad significance for theories of "selection for action" and "embodied cognition", as well as for accounts of higher-level disorders of motor control. Specifically, the proposed work will 1) provide critical constraints on the contexts in which bidirectional links are observed at the conceptual- motor interface, 2) elucidate the precise representational structure and time-course of activation of object and action representations, 3) anchor relevant constructs in a detailed cognitive-neuroanatomic model, and 4) clarify the nature of conceptual-motor impairments of patients with high-level (cognitive) action disorders. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The proposal describes a series of studies with neurological patients and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) having broad significance for our understanding of clinical disorders of object-related action (apraxias). These disorders are extremely common and disabling in both stroke and degenerative dementia, yet have been the subject of comparatively little research. The proposed experiments will focus on clarifying the mechanisms and interactions of neural systems responsible for coding different types of object-related action, and are a critical missing step in the design of theoretically and empirically informed approaches to treatment.