THE EVOLUTION OF NEUROANATOMICAL ASYMMETRY AND SPATIAL TRANSFORMATION

描述（由申请人提供）：许多学习和神经发育障碍与反向或异常神经解剖不对称相关。一种被认为是反向或异常的大脑优势的表现是无法区分左右。这些研究的目的是从系统发育的角度评估大脑不对称性与左右辨别之间的关系。有人提出，辨别左形右需要一个不对称的大脑，这种能力是人类独有的。为了验证这一理论，将使用条件性辨别和样本匹配范例在猴子和黑猩猩中评估左右辨别，随后将其与从磁共振图像中获取的神经解剖学不对称和胼胝体形态学的测量相关联。 将进行大脑半球间信息传递的神经生理学测量，以评估 胼胝体形态的物种差异是否与不同的胼胝体转移时间和纤维成分有关。猴子和黑猩猩的能力，学习区分他们的左，右附属物的视觉和听觉线索和他们的能力，参考左，右从自己和另一个的角度也将被检查。将评估每个物种在学习视觉模仿任务时使用左右参考点的自发能力。据推测，大脑不对称程度较低的物种和个体在这些任务中的表现会明显较差。最后，正电子发射断层扫描（PET）将用于评估猴子和黑猩猩左右辨别的神经基质。在这一系列实验中，将收集PET扫描，同时要求受试者解决与上下平面相比需要左右空间变换的辨别和模仿任务。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): A number of learning and neurodevelopmental disorders are associated with reversed or anomolous neuroanatomicai asymmetries. One proposed manifestation of reversed or anomalous brain dominance is the inability to discriminate left from right. The purpose of the proposed studies is to evaluate the relationship between brain asymmetry and the discrimination of left and right from a phylogenetic perspective. It has been proposed that discrimination of left form right requires an asymmetric brain and that this ability is unique to humans. To test this theory, left-right discrimination will be assessed in monkeys and chimpanzees using conditional discrimination and matching-to-sample paradigms, and subsequently correlated with measures of neuroanatomical asymmetries and corpus callosum morphology taken from magnetic resonance images. Neurophysiological measures of interhemispheric transfer of information will be made to evaluate whether species differences in corpus callosum morphology are linked to differential callosal transfer time and fiber composition. The ability of monkeys and chimpanzees to learn to discriminate their left and right appendages in response to visual and acoustic cues and their ability to reference left and right from their own and another's perspective will also be examined. The spontaneous ability to use references points of left and right when learning visual imitation tasks will be assessed in each species. It is hypothesized that species and individuals with less asymmetric brains will perform significantly poorer on these tasks. Lastly, positron emission tomography (PET) will be used to evaluate the neural substrates of left-right discrimination in monkeys and chimpanzees. In this series of experiments PET scans will be collected while subjects are required to solve discrimination and imitation tasks requiring spatial transformation on the left-right compared to the top-bottom plane.