CAREER: The Neural Basis of Memory for Visual Environments

当我们在我们的世界中导航时，我们面前的视觉场景与我们对更广阔的空间环境的知识无缝地结合在一起，有助于形成我们环境的心理地图。感知的无缝本质是相当了不起的，特别是考虑到我们对环境的每一个视图都是离散的和短暂的，被广泛的眼球运动分隔开来，产生了我们空间环境的不连续视图。了解这是如何在大脑中完成的是一个重大的科学难题。这个项目的目标是确定在现实世界的场景感知过程中，人类大脑中的记忆和感知是如何交互的。利用包括沉浸式虚拟现实和脑成像在内的多种工具，该项目有望提供有关人类大脑如何构建自然环境记忆以及这些记忆如何影响日常视觉体验的基础知识。该项目还通过消除神经多样性学习者的障碍，扩大乌拉尔大学和女大学生对神经科学的参与，以及促进农村社区的科学推广，推进包容性STEM教育。该项目旨在了解人类大脑中沉浸式真实世界环境的记忆本质，并阐明在现实世界感知过程中助记和感知信号如何相互作用。为了解决这些问题，该项目利用了两个独特的创新：(1)使用头戴式虚拟现实在自然环境中研究人类记忆和感知的新技术方法，以及(2)细粒度个体受试者脑成像（fMRI -功能性磁共振成像）分析，以表征大脑中视觉助记表征的本质。这种多模态方法允许控制测试哪些神经系统支持对真实世界环境的感知和记忆，以及直接操纵学习环境的内容以理解熟悉场景的神经表示。最后，本项目提出了一个关于大脑中记忆-视觉相互作用的新理论，并具体测试了位置记忆是否与相对于场景感知的不同大脑区域（前移）有关。这项研究还将确定大脑对地点记忆的表征位置的变化与上下文信息的数量、参与者的记忆表现和场景特定过程之间的关系。最后，该项目还将探索这种“前移”是否代表了助记和高级视觉区域在大脑中相互作用的一般原则。总之，这些研究有望产生关于人类大脑中沉浸式真实世界环境的记忆本质的基本知识，更广泛地说，在自然视觉体验中，关于世界的存储知识与感知界面的机制。该项目由认知神经科学项目和刺激竞争研究的既定项目（EPSCoR）共同资助。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

As we navigate through our world, the visual scene in front of us is seamlessly integrated with our knowledge of the broader spatial environment, helping to form mental maps of our environment. The seamless nature of perception is quite remarkable, especially considering that each view of our environment is discrete and fleeting, separated by expansive eye movements that produce discontinuous views of our spatial surroundings. Understanding how this is accomplished in the brain is a major scientific puzzle. The goal of this project is to determine how memory and perception interface in the human brain during real-world scene perception. Using a combination of tools, including immersive virtual reality and brain imaging, this project promises fundamental knowledge about how the human brain constructs memories of a naturalistic environments and how these memories influence everyday visual experience. This project also advances inclusive STEM education by removing barriers for neurodiverse learners, broadening participation of URM and female college students in neuroscience, and contributing to scientific outreach in rural communities.This project aims to understand the nature of memory for immersive, real-world environments in the human brain, and to shed light on how mnemonic and perceptual signals interact during real-world perception. To tackle these questions, this project leverages two distinctive innovations: (1) a new technical approach to study human memory and perception in naturalistic settings using head-mounted virtual reality, and (2) fine-grained individual subject brain imaging (fMRI -functional magnetic resonance imaging) analyses to characterize the nature of visuo-mnemonic representations in the brain. This multimodal approach allows for controlled tests of which neural systems support perception and memory for real world environments, and direct manipulations of the content of learned environments to understand the neural representation of familiar scenes. Finally, this project forwards a novel theory of mnemonic-visual interactions in the brain and specifically tests whether place memory is associated with a different brain area (shifted anterior) relative to scene perception. This research will also determine how this change in the location of the brain representation for place memory is related to the amount of contextual information, participants’ memory performance, and scene-specific processes. Finally, this project will also explore whether such an “anterior shift” represents a general principle of how mnemonic and high-level visual areas interact in the brain. Together, these studies promise to generate fundamental knowledge about the nature of memory for immersive, real-world environments in the human brain, and, more broadly, the mechanisms by which stored knowledge about the world interfaces with perception during naturalistic visual experience.This project is jointly funded by the Cognitive Neuroscience Program and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.