Interdisciplinary collaboration, and investigation on a role of motivational salience on face recognition memory across a period of sleep

人类天生擅长面部识别。一项研究估计，英国的年轻人可以识别大约1000 - 10000张面孔（Jenkins等人，2018年）。另一方面，英国约有130万人（2%）患有脸盲症。这些人无法识别熟人的面孔，这会导致精神痛苦、关系冲突甚至失业（亚德利等人，2008年）。为了支持脸盲症患者的健康，我们需要了解人脸识别的潜在机制，特别是人脸识别的灵活性机制，例如，“我们如何识别随着时间变化的人脸，例如通过老化或化妆？以及“我们如何保持对如此大量的每张面孔的记忆？以及“我们如何不混淆不同的面孔，特别是当这些面孔看起来非常相似时（例如，双胞胎（Twins）？最近20年对睡眠和记忆之间关系的研究表明，在睡眠期间，记忆会从其原始形式发生变化。例如，最近的研究表明，睡眠积极促进记忆的概括（Gomez等人，2006）、提取概括的想法或记忆的要点（刘易斯，2011），并且如果它们与提取的要点相匹配，则甚至产生更多的错误（Payne等人，在最近关于睡眠和记忆的研究领域中，我的博士工作集中在睡眠在面部识别记忆中的积极作用。我的博士研究表明，睡眠在区分视觉上彼此相似的面孔记忆方面也很重要（例如，双胞胎（Twins）此外，我的博士论文使用了一种名为表征相似性分析（RSA）的功能性MRI技术，该技术测量了不同条件下大脑活动模式的独特性，揭示了这种睡眠期间的记忆差异与海马体（大脑记忆网络中的关键区域）中视觉相似面孔的大脑反应的解离模式有关。总而言之，睡眠和记忆的最新发现以及我的博士工作的结合为支持人类面部识别灵活性的初步机制提供了基础，其中视觉相似面部的记忆逐渐彼此分离。动机显着性（例如奖励）随着时间的推移维持记忆也很重要。例如，显着性与大脑皮层相关的记忆形成密切相关（Gruber等人，2014）并调节睡眠对记忆转化的影响（Fischer等人，2009).因此，在奖学金期间，我将向面部感知领域的研究人员推广我的博士工作以及睡眠和记忆工作的最新趋势，并发展跨学科合作，以及开展试点工作，以扩展我的博士工作。试点工作将测试动机显著性的存在如何有助于在睡眠期间改变面部识别记忆，其方式与我博士期间开发的行为任务类似。这项试点工作将是申请未来资金和/或奖学金的关键，我将使用发达的行为范式来调查显着性，面部识别记忆和睡眠的神经机制。为了最大限度地发挥我工作的影响力，我将在备受推崇的期刊上发表我的研究。我还将参加国家和国际会议，如认知神经科学学会（CNS）组织的年会，以便从事人脸识别、睡眠和记忆相关学术研究的人可以看到我的工作。此外，我计划访问学者，如伦敦的Michael Banissy教授和约克的Rob Jenkins博士，他们是面部识别记忆和面部感知的主要研究人员，向他们展示我的工作并交换意见，以建立合作者网络。

Humans are innately good at face recognition. A study estimated that young adults in the UK recognize approximately 1,000-10,000 faces (Jenkins et al., 2018). On the other side, approximately 1.3 million (2%) people in the UK are suffering from face blindness. Those people are incapable to recognize faces of acquaintances, which causes mental distress, conflict in relationship or even job loss (Yardley et al., 2008). To support the well-being of people with face blindness, we need to understand the mechanisms underlying human face recognition, especially mechanisms of flexibility in face recognition such as, "How do we recognize faces of people that are varying over time, for example through aging or makeup?", and "How do we maintain memories of each face in such large numbers?, and "How do we not confuse different faces, especially when these look very similar to each other (e.g., faces of twins)?".The recent two decades of research on the relationship between sleep and memory suggests that memory is subject to change from its original form over a period of sleep. For instance, recent work demonstrated that sleep actively promotes generalization of memories (Gomez, et al., 2006), extraction of generalized ideas or gist of memories (Lewis, 2011), and even produces more errors if they are matching the extracted gist, compared to an equal amount of wakefulness (Payne et al., 2009).In a continuum of this recent research field on sleep and memory, my PhD work focused on an active role of sleep in face recognition memory. My PhD work revealed that sleep is also important in distinguishing memories of faces when they are visually similar to each other (e.g., faces of twins). Furthermore, my doctoral work using the functional MRI technique called Representational Similarity Analysis (RSA), which measures distinctiveness of brain activity patterns between conditions, revealed that this memory distinction across a period of sleep was linked with dissociating patterns of brain responses to the visually similar faces in the hippocampus (a crucial area in the brain's memory network). Altogether, the combination of recent findings on sleep and memory and my doctoral work provides the foundation to support a tentative mechanism underlying flexibility in human face recognition, in which memories of visually similar faces are gradually dissociated from each other.Motivational salience (e.g. rewards) is also important when maintaining memories over time. For example, salience is closely linked to hippocampus-linked memory formation (Gruber, et al., 2014) and modulates effects of sleep on memory transformation (Fischer et al., 2009).During the fellowship, therefore, I will promote my doctoral work and recent trends of work on sleep and memory to the community of researchers in face perception and develop interdisciplinary collaboration, as well as running pilot work extending my doctoral work. The pilot work will test how the presence of motivational salience contributes to an alteration of face recognition memory across a period of sleep, in a similar manner to behavioral tasks developed during my PhD. This pilot work will be key to apply for future funding and/or fellowships in which I will use the developed behavioural paradigm to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying salience, face recognition memory and sleep. To maximise the impact of my work, I will publish my research in highly-respected journals. I will also attend national and international conferences such as an annual meeting organized by Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS) so that my work can be seen by people working in academic research relating to human face recognition and sleep and memory. In addition, I plan to visit scholars, such as Prof Michael Banissy in London and Dr Rob Jenkins in York, who are key researchers in face recognition memory and face perception more generally, present my work to them and exchange ideas to develop a network of collaborators.