大脑基底核在控制运动技能和认知技能（或称为习惯行为）中起到至关重要作用。它的异常导致多种运动和认知方面的障碍，如帕金森氏症和亨廷顿氏症等。当前，常常认为技能学习和学习取得后的技能是分别关联于不同的基底核部位。但是，近期的研究揭示不同的基底核部位存储不同类型的技能。比如，基底核的壳参与运动技能的存储，尾状核则参与认知技能的存储。特别是，我们最近的研究表明尾状核的头部在专业棋士的直觉决定最好的下一步时起到至关重要的作用。本基金项目申请拟揭开有关尾状核头部参与专业人士直觉的基本神经机制。通过长期培训新手被试者对不同空间刺激和行动的联合的取得，我们将检验尾状核头部存储有关空间信息和行动选择的联合这一假说。同时，通过跟踪被试者的学习过程，我们将揭开相关的神经信息处理过程的变化。通过本研究，我们期待充分理解直觉形成的神经机制，并且找到和个人匹配的学习技能的有效方法。

Basal ganglia plays critical role in control of both motor skills and cognitive skills, or so-called habits, as well as these skill learning. Its abnormality leads to multiple motor and cognitive impairments, such as Parkinson's disease and Huntington's disease. Currently, it has been influentially suggested that skill learning and well-acquired skills are separately involved in different sub-regions of basal ganglia. However, recent studies reveal that these different sub-regions also host different types of skills. For instance, putamen is involved in motor skills, and caudate nucleus is involved in cognitive skills. Specifically, our recent studies showed that the head of caudate nucleus plays a crucial role in professional chess players' intuitive decision-making on the best next-move. This grant application proposes a further study to reveal the basic neural mechanisms of caudate head involved in professional players' intuition. By training novice subjects to acquire associations between different spatial stimuli and different actions with a long-term period, we will test our hypothesis that the head of caudate nucleus stores association between spatial information and action selection. We will also follow the subjects' learning process, to reveal the changes of neural information processing with long-term training. Through this study, we expect to understand the neural mechanisms of intuition formation, and to find out the approaches of efficient learning based on individual learners.