The Neural Basis and Mechanisms of Task-Irrelevant Perceptual Learning

知觉学习是指通过对特定环境的体验而产生的感官能力的提高，它被认为可以帮助我们更有效地处理感官信息。最近Drs。Aaron Seitz和Takeo Watanabe发现观众可以通过亚阈值的视觉刺激来提高他们的感知能力。这些感知能力的提高涉及到大脑的主要视觉区域，并被认为是整个神经系统普遍存在的基本学习机制的一个指标。在美国国家科学基金会的支持下。Watanabe和Seitz将进行研究，阐明知觉学习的两个重要方面。特别是，他们的工作将识别在感知学习过程中被修改的神经回路，这将有助于更好地描述导致这种现象的过程。这项研究将结合创新的心理物理学方法和功能性磁共振成像（fMRI）来系统地测量学习前后大脑不同区域的活动。这项研究将产生广泛的影响。这些研究的进行将有助于培养研究生和本科生的研究方法和脑成像技术的使用。这些研究的结果将有助于阐明提高感知技能的过程；这些知识可以提高那些受影响感觉处理的疾病折磨的人的培训技术，也可以改善那些需要高度敏锐的感觉能力的专家的培训方法，比如飞行员和放射科医生。这项工作对临床和康复医学也有重要意义，因为它有可能导致用于诊断和治疗感觉障碍的医疗假体和工具的改进。最后，对人类感官和学习过程的理解的改进可以帮助指导在各种工业应用的背景下自动化这些能力的技术的发展。

Perceptual learning refers to improvements in one's sensory abilities that occur through experience with a particular environment, and it is thought to help us to become more efficient in processing sensory information. Recently Drs. Aaron Seitz and Takeo Watanabe have found that viewers can improve their perceptual abilities through sub-threshold exposure to visual stimuli. These improvements in perception have been shown to involve the primary visual areas of the brain and are thought to be an indicator of basic mechanisms of learning that are common throughout the nervous system. With support from the National Science Foundation, Drs. Watanabe and Seitz will conduct research that will clarify two important aspects of perceptual learning. In particular, their work will identify neural circuits that are modified during perceptual learning, and it will help to better characterize the processes that lead to this phenomenon. This research will be conducted by combining innovative psychophysical methods with functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) in order to systematically measure activity in different areas of the brain before during, and after such learning has occurred.This research will have broad impacts. The conduct of the studies will help to train graduate and undergraduate students in research methodology and the use of brain imaging technology. The results from the studies will help illuminate the processes by which perceptual skills can be improved; such knowledge could lead to enhanced training techniques for those afflicted with disorders that affect sensory processing, as well as to improvements in training methods for experts who perform work that requires highly acute sensory abilities, such as pilots and radiologists. This work also has important implications for clinical and rehabilitative medicine as it has the potential to lead to improvements in medical prostheses and tools for the diagnosis and treatment of sensory disorders. Finally, improvements in the understanding of human sensory and learning processes could help to guide the development of technologies for automating such abilities in the context of a wide variety of industrial applications.