The neurophysiological basis of serial learning

描述（由申请人提供）：我们提出了一种新的方法来研究推理学习，通过调查猴子和人类如何推断隐含的串行关系，在训练过程中的传递性推理（TI）范式。TI意味着如果A > B且B > C，则得出A C的结论的能力。这个逻辑可以扩展到任何数量的项目，只要它们的关系服从传递性。TI已被证明存在于鸽子、猴子和人类等多种物种中，并被认为是理解复杂社会关系（如统治阶层）的关键。TI对于理解序数关系也很重要，根据定义，序数关系服从传递性。线性空间关系也服从传递性（如果A在B的左边，而B在C的左边，那么A在C的左边）。因此，有人提出TI可能与居住在虚拟工作空间中的空间表示有关。这个想法是，人们可以想象有序列表中的相邻项占据假想线上的相邻位置。因此，看起来抽象的序数关系实际上可以映射到现有的空间表示。为了验证这一点，我们计划研究顶叶和前额叶皮层区域的新刺激之间的顺序关系的学习和表示，这些区域被认为参与表示空间信息，特别是相对空间位置。这些是第一个实验，以调查收购的行为水平，是同步的，以同时测量的活动，个别脑细胞在整个TI学习（包括收购）的内隐推理。我们的研究意义重大，因为它们首次对非人类灵长类动物的内隐序列学习进行了神经学研究，而且不受空间或时间线索的干扰。从生理学家的角度来看，区域LIP和SEF已被证明编码视觉刺激的空间和抽象品质。然而，没有理论框架来整合这些不同的表征。我们建议测试的想法，一个虚拟的工作空间可能占空间和非空间编码LIP和SEF。健康相关性：这些实验与精神分裂症、孤独症、阿尔茨海默病和其他病症有关，这些病症的患者群体在TI问题的表现方面存在缺陷。

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.