MRI: Acquisition of Instrumentation to Measure the Time-Course and Distribution of Cortical Activity in Perceptual Cognitive, and Social Psychological Processing

这笔赠款支持购买仪器，以测量认知和社会神经科学研究中的事件相关电位(ERPs)。事件相关电位反映了大脑在精神活动过程中的突触活动。所要求的仪器将用于芝加哥大学脑研究成像中心(BRIC)的fMRI脑扫描。金砖四国购买了一台3T扫描仪，用于研究心理过程，如口语理解、注意力转移、知觉-运动规划和运动想象，以及社会分类。虽然行为研究已经告诉了我们许多关于这些心理过程的信息，但这些研究并不能指出大脑执行这一过程的具体方式。功能磁共振成像可以识别大脑的哪些部分参与了处理。虽然功能磁共振成像可以定位皮质区域，但血流反应太慢，无法测量这些区域的活动时间。事件相关电位提供了这种定时信息，但不能像功能磁共振成像那样精确地定位大脑活动。FMRI和事件相关电位结合了高空间分辨率和高时间分辨率来研究大脑的功能处理。在功能磁共振成像过程中测量事件相关电位活动将有助于将有关皮质处理的时间和空间信息联系起来。最初将有三个广泛的项目使用该仪器。其中一个项目将研究语言特有的机制和语言理解过程中更一般的认知过程之间的相互作用。这项研究考察了理解如何利用注意力和记忆以及副语言信息。事件相关电位测量将调查工作记忆和注意力中皮层活动的相对时间，并与具体的语言处理进行比较。第二个项目将研究与感知和产生行动有关的神经机制。动作的象征性线索的知觉处理与直接的人类运动线索(触发“镜像”细胞)的比较将探讨运动动作和运动“想象”回路中概念操作的神经机制。第三个项目研究情感评价和社会分类，提出积极态度和消极态度通过不同的机制进行调节的理论。FMRI和ERP将识别相关的大脑区域，并研究这些网络的情感、知觉和自主神经部分的处理过程，以调查情感评估系统如何在社会分类中调节刻板印象反应。

This grant supports the acquisition of instrumentation to measure Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) in cognitive and social neuroscience research. ERPs reflect the synaptic activity of the brain that occur during mental activity. The requested instrumentation will be used with fMRI brain scanning at the Brain Research Imaging Center (BRIC) at the University of Chicago. BRIC has purchased a 3T scanner to study psychological processes such as spoken language understanding, shifts of attention, perceptuo-motor planning and motor imagery, and social categorization. Although behavioral studies have told us much about these mental processes, these studies cannot indicate the specific way in which the brain implements this processing. fMRI can identify which parts of the brain are involved in processing. Although fMRI can localize cortical areas, blood-flow responses are too slow to measure the timing of activity in these areas. ERPs provide this timing information, but cannot localize brain activity as finely as fMRI. fMRI together with ERP combines high spatial resolution and temporal resolution to investigate the functional processing in the brain. Measuring ERP activity during fMRI will aid in relating temporal and spatial information about cortical processing. Three broad projects will initially use the instrumentation. One project will investigate interactions between language-specific mechanisms and more general cognitive processes during language comprehension. This research examines how understanding uses attention and memory as well as paralinguistic information. ERP measures will investigate relative timing of cortical activity in working memory and attention compared with specifically linguistic processing. The second project will examine neural mechanisms involved in perception and production of action. Comparison of perceptual processing of symbolic cues for actions with direct human movement cues (to trigger "mirror" cells) will investigate neural mechanisms underlying conceptual operations in motor movements and motor "imagery" circuits. The third project investigates affective evaluation and social categorization addressing the theory that positive and negative attitudes are mediated by different mechanisms. fMRI and ERP will identify relevant brain areas and examine the time-course of processing in affective, perceptual, and autonomic parts of these networks to investigate how affective evaluation systems mediate stereotypic responses in social categorization.