Neural mechanisms for the genesis of conceptual information

记忆及其情感意义可能是许多精神疾病的根源。为 例如，创伤后应激障碍是一种典型的“记忆疾病”; 记忆构成了一个核心症状，导致强烈和长期的痛苦，噩梦， 和闪回但其他精神疾病，如抑郁症， 损伤：事件被优先记住为负面的，或者负面的记忆被 更容易被召回。人类能够进行高层次的联想过程， 抽象思维我们不仅对物体形成记忆，更重要的是对情境形成记忆， 感觉，概念或规则，不一定是感官驱动的。了解如何 这些类型的思维过程是在记忆中产生和组织的， 对人类认知的理解这项研究的目的是探索 概念记忆形成的神经生理学基础和情绪 这些概念性记忆中的关联。当两只猕猴学会 逆向学习任务并从中提取规则，我们将记录海马神经元的活动， 鼻皮质和杏仁核（Aim 1）。初步数据显示，这项赠款支持 这些区域参与概念记忆的产生过程。我们将测试 事件的时间连续性导致抽象过程的假设， 是概念记忆表征形成的基础（目标1）。这一假设将 在概念形成过程中通过使用分析技术进行测试，以区分 代表事件记忆的神经信号的贡献来自反映事件记忆的信号。 产生概念表示的抽象过程。最后，我们将使用 化学发生学方法（DREADDS）在HPC中记录时使鼻皮质沉默， 杏仁核我们将检验这一假设，即鼻皮层输入是必要的过程， 在HPC和杏仁核中观察到提取（Aim 2）。这些机制研究承诺， 为将来的合作研究提供机会，将这项工作与研究联系起来 在人类中，包括患者群体，以了解概念之间的相互作用 记忆形成和情感

Memories and their emotional meaning can be the root-cause of many psychiatric diseases. For example, post-traumatic stress disorder is a quintessential `memory illness;' intrusive emotional memories constitute a core symptom that leads to intense and prolonged distress, nightmares, and flashbacks. But other psychiatric disorders, such as depression, present memory impairment: events are preferentially remembered as negative, or negative memories are preferentially accessible to recall. Humans are capable of high-level associative processes and abstract thinking. We form memories not only of objects but also most importantly of situations, feelings, and concepts or rules that are not necessarily sensory driven. Understanding how these types of thought processes are generated and organized in memories is key to the understanding of human cognition. The goal of the proposed research is to explore neurophysiological underpinning of conceptual memory formation and the emotional associations embedded within these conceptual memories. As two macaque monkeys learn a reversal learning task and abstract rules from it, we will record neuronal activity in hippocampus, rhinal cortices, and amygdala (Aim 1). Preliminary data shown in this grant support the involvement of these areas in the process of generation of conceptual memories. We will test the hypothesis that the temporal contiguity of events leads to a process of abstraction that underlies the formation of representations of conceptual memories (Aim 1). This hypothesis will be tested during concept formation by using analytic techniques to distinguish between the contributions of neural signals that represent the memory of events from signals that reflect a process of abstraction that generates a representation of a concept. Finally, we will use a chemogenetic approach (DREADDS) to silence rhinal cortices while recording in HPC and the amygdala. We will test the hypothesis that rhinal cortex input is necessary for the process of abstraction observed in HPC and amygdala (Aim 2). These mechanistic studies promise to provide opportunities for collaborative studies in the future that will connect this work to studies in humans, including patient populations, to understand interactions between conceptual memory formation and emotions.