Object Concepts

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): What does it mean to know something about the world? Central to any theory of knowledge is a theory of concepts, those mental representations that allow us to categorize information in the world. In this project, we attempt to understand concepts by studying their neural instantiation. The central aim of this project is to advance our understanding of the neural representation of concepts via a characterization of similarity. The broader goal of this research program is to develop a strategy for understanding the neural representation of all types of knowledge; however, to make this problem more tractable, we are focusing on a specific type of concept - concrete objects - and on a particular type of knowledge about those concepts - their visual appearance. Specifically, (1) We aim to describe the neural representation of object concepts by characterizing neural tuning to features in a multidimensional similarity space; (2) We aim to examine variation in the neural representations of object concepts, across concepts, across individuals, and across attentional states; (3) We aim to explore to role of sleep-dependent consolidation processes in the acquisition of new object concept knowledge; (4) We aim to develop innovative methods for the characterization of neural similarity more generally. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Without concepts, we would be unable to make sense of the infinite variation in the world. Concepts organize our experiences, and they alter perception, memory, language, and action. The goal of this project is to understand the way in which conceptual knowledge is organized and the manner in which it is implemented in the brain. We will apply innovative neuroscientific methods to discover how we learn about the objects around us and how we access that information when remembering those objects.