The neurophysiological basis of serial learning

描述(由申请人提供)：我们提出了一种研究推理学习的新方法，通过调查猴子和人类在传递性推理(TI)范式的训练中是如何推断内隐序列关系的。如果A&>B和B&>C的关系服从传递性，那么这个逻辑可以扩展到任意数量的项。研究表明，TI存在于各种物种中，如鸽子、猴子和人类，并被认为是理解复杂社会关系(如统治等级)的关键。TI对于理解序数关系也是至关重要的，根据定义，序数关系服从传递性。线性空间关系也遵循传递性(如果A在B的左边，B在C的左边，那么A在C的左边)。因此，已经有人提出，TI可能与居住在虚拟工作空间中的空间表征有关。其思想是，可以将有序列表中相邻的项想象为占据虚线上的相邻位置。因此，看似抽象的顺序关系实际上可以映射到现有的空间表示上。为了测试这一点，我们计划调查顶叶和前额叶皮质区域中新刺激之间的顺序关系的学习和表征，这些区域被认为涉及代表空间信息，特别是相对空间位置。这是第一个在行为水平上研究隐含推理习得的实验，它与整个TI学习(包括习得)中个体脑细胞活动的同步测量同步进行。我们的研究意义重大，因为他们首次对非人类灵长类动物的内隐系列学习进行了神经学研究，这种学习不会受到空间或时间线索的干扰。从生理学家的角度来看，LIP和SEF区已被证明编码视觉刺激的空间和抽象性质。然而，没有一个理论框架来整合这些不同的表现形式。我们建议测试虚拟工作空间可以解释LIP和SEF中的空间和非空间编码的想法。与健康相关：这些实验与精神分裂症、自闭症、阿尔茨海默病和其他疾病有关，这些疾病的患者群体在TI问题上的表现存在缺陷。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): We propose a new approach to the study of inferential learning by investigating how monkeys and humans infer implicit serial relationships during training on a Transitive Inference (TI) paradigm. TI implies the ability to conclude that A C if A > B and B > C. This logic can be extended to any number of items as long as their relationships obey transitivity. TI has been shown to exist in species as diverse as pigeons, monkeys, and humans and is thought to be essential for understanding complex social relationships such as dominance hierarchies. TI is also critical for understanding ordinal relationships, which, by definition, obey transitivity. Linear spatial relationships also obey transitivity (if A is to the left of B, and B is to the left of C, then A is to the left of C). Hene, it has been proposed that TI may be related to spatial representations that inhabit a virtual workspace. The idea is that one can imagine adjacent items in an ordered list as occupying neighboring positions on an imaginary line. Thus, ordinal relationships that seem abstract may in fact be mapped onto existing spatial representations. To test this, we plan to investigate the learning and representation of ordinal relationships among novel stimuli in regions of parietal and prefrontal cortex that are believed to be involved in representing spatial information, especially relative spatial position. These are the first experiments to investigate the acquisition of implict inference at the behavioral level that is synchronized to simultaneous measurement of the activity of individual brain cells throughout TI learning (including acquisition). Ours are signifiant because they provide the first neurological investigation of implicit serial learning in a non-human primate that is not confounded by spatial or temporal cues. From a physiologist's perspective, areas LIP and SEF have been shown to encode both spatial and abstract qualities of visual stimuli. There is, however, no theoretical framework that integrates these different representations. We propose to test the idea that a virtual workspace may account for both spatial and non-spatial coding in LIP and SEF. Health Relatedness: These experiments are relevant to Schizophrenia, Autism, Alzheimer's disease, and other conditions whose patient populations have deficits in their performance of TI problems.