Brain Mechanisms Subserving Perception of Rules/Principles

人类可以感知模态和符号信息，如规则、原则、关系等，这些信息不能归因于特定的感知物理能量的受体。这种能力应该是通过灵长类动物不断的进化过程获得的。包括人类在内的灵长类动物大脑信息处理机制的共同模式可以被假设，因此，我们试图在猴子的大脑中发现这样的前体。在人类出生后的过程中，各种高级认知功能与语言功能并行发展，包括身体行为的目的-手段关系、逻辑解决问题的能力、对自我行为及其结果的理性关系的感知、对物体操纵行为的相对逻辑结构的感知等。与身体行为相关的推理和预测的高级认知能力将构成这些功能的基础。我们已经成功地记录了来自大脑皮层的神经元活动，这些活动与日本猴子的各种工具使用行为有关，而这些猴子以前被认为永远不会使用工具。在这种使用工具的学习过程中，我们能够训练猴子完成任务，这些任务将代表上述高级认知功能的前兆，并试图揭示这种智能的神经机制。研究范式包括：1)手口协调行为的语义表征，2)组合工具行为意向表征的神经机制，3)通过语义感知习得“命名”前体，4)训练联合注意后的模仿行为诱导，5)将身体部位的运动表征为构成整体动作的要素，6)基于身体意识的空间结构理解。7)第二体感区自我身体与外部空间关系的感知；8)运动动作的结构/分割的顶叶表征。少

Humans can perceive a modal and symbolic informations such as Rules, Principles, Relationships etc., which could not be attributed to specific receptors which detect physical energy. This abilities should be acquired through continuous primates' evolutionary processes. Common patterns of brain information processing mechanisms among primates, including humans, could be assumed, and thus, we attempted to detect such precursors in the monkey brain.During the course of human postnatal period, varieties of higher cognitive functions develop in parallel with linguistic functions, which include, purpose-means relationship of bodily actions, logical problem solving abilities, perception of rational relationships between self actions and their results, perception of relative logical structures of object manipulation acts, and so on. Higher cognitive abilities of inference and prediction related to bodily acts would comprise bases of these functions. We have been successful in recording neurona … More l activities from the cerebral cortex which are related to various tool-using acts in Japanese monkeys, that were previously believed never be able to use tools. During such tool-use learning processes, we were able to train monkeys with task which would represent precursors of above depicted higher cognitive functions, and attempted to uncover neural mechanisms of such an intelligence.The paradigms included, 1) Representation of semantics of hand-mouth coordination acts in the parietal cortex, 2) Neural mechanisms to represent an intention for combined tool-using acts, 3) Acquisition of the precursors of "naming" by perception of semantics, 4) Induction of imitation behavior after training joint attention, 5) Representation of movements of body parts as elements constituting actions as a whole, 6) Understandings of the spatial structure based on bodily awareness, 7) Perception of relationship between self body and external space in the secondary somatosensory area, 8) Parietal representation of structure/segmentation of the motor acts. Less