Neural mechanisms for the genesis of conceptual information

记忆及其情感意义可能是许多精神疾病的根源。为 例如，创伤后应激障碍是一种典型的记忆疾病；侵扰性情绪 记忆是一种核心症状，会导致强烈而持久的痛苦、噩梦 还有倒叙。但其他精神疾病，如抑郁症，会带来记忆 损害：事件优先被记忆为负面记忆，或负面记忆 优先可被召回。人类能够进行高水平的联想过程，并 抽象思维。我们不仅形成了对物体的记忆，更重要的是形成了对情景的记忆， 感觉，以及不一定是感官驱动的概念或规则。了解如何 这些类型的思维过程是在记忆中产生和组织的，这是 对人类认知的理解。拟议研究的目标是探索 概念记忆形成的神经生理学基础与情绪 嵌入到这些概念记忆中的关联。当两只猕猴学习一种 反向学习任务和从中提取规则，我们将记录海马区的神经元活动， 鼻皮质和杏仁核(目标1)。这笔赠款中显示的初步数据支持 这些区域参与了概念记忆的产生过程。我们将测试 一种假设，认为事件的时间连续性导致了一个抽象的过程 形成概念记忆的表征(目标1)。这一假说将 通过使用分析技术在概念形成期间进行测试，以区分 代表事件记忆的神经信号与反映事件的信号的贡献 生成概念表示形式的抽象过程。最后，我们将使用 化学发生法(DREADDS)在HPC和 杏仁核。我们将检验这样的假设，即鼻皮层的输入是过程中必需的 在HPC和杏仁核观察到抽象(目标2)。这些机械论的研究承诺 为未来的协作研究提供机会，将这项工作与研究联系起来 在人类中，包括患者群体，以了解概念之间的相互作用 记忆的形成和情绪。

Memories and their emotional meaning can be the root-cause of many psychiatric diseases. For example, post-traumatic stress disorder is a quintessential `memory illness;' intrusive emotional memories constitute a core symptom that leads to intense and prolonged distress, nightmares, and flashbacks. But other psychiatric disorders, such as depression, present memory impairment: events are preferentially remembered as negative, or negative memories are preferentially accessible to recall. Humans are capable of high-level associative processes and abstract thinking. We form memories not only of objects but also most importantly of situations, feelings, and concepts or rules that are not necessarily sensory driven. Understanding how these types of thought processes are generated and organized in memories is key to the understanding of human cognition. The goal of the proposed research is to explore neurophysiological underpinning of conceptual memory formation and the emotional associations embedded within these conceptual memories. As two macaque monkeys learn a reversal learning task and abstract rules from it, we will record neuronal activity in hippocampus, rhinal cortices, and amygdala (Aim 1). Preliminary data shown in this grant support the involvement of these areas in the process of generation of conceptual memories. We will test the hypothesis that the temporal contiguity of events leads to a process of abstraction that underlies the formation of representations of conceptual memories (Aim 1). This hypothesis will be tested during concept formation by using analytic techniques to distinguish between the contributions of neural signals that represent the memory of events from signals that reflect a process of abstraction that generates a representation of a concept. Finally, we will use a chemogenetic approach (DREADDS) to silence rhinal cortices while recording in HPC and the amygdala. We will test the hypothesis that rhinal cortex input is necessary for the process of abstraction observed in HPC and amygdala (Aim 2). These mechanistic studies promise to provide opportunities for collaborative studies in the future that will connect this work to studies in humans, including patient populations, to understand interactions between conceptual memory formation and emotions.