Expert Memory: Superior Encoding, Enhanced Retrieval, and Refined Perception

描述(由申请者提供)：专家擅长记住他们特定专业领域中的项目。例如，汽车专家比新手更有可能记住他在上班路上路过的是什么型号的汽车。这些能力背后的机制是日常生活中表现的基础，例如，杂货店收银员可以很容易地区分不同类型的苹果，并记住与每种苹果相关的定价代码。我们大多数人都经历过面部感知专长的现象，这是一个类似于其他视觉刺激专长的领域。我们都是面孔专家，但大多数是针对和你有相同种族背景的面孔，因为我们识别其他种族的面孔的经验较少。尽管专业知识增强记忆的效果是众所周知的，但潜在的认知和神经过程还不是很清楚。拟议的项目将阐明在记忆编码(即学习)和提取方面导致与专门知识有关的便利的机制。它还将识别大脑活动的神经标记，这些标记反映了记忆编码和检索的便利，这可以通过长期的知觉和语义学习来实现，就像知觉专业知识中所看到的那样。此外，该项目还将通过调查在成为专家的最初阶段如何以及何时发展感知和记忆方面的便利，来审查经常与专业知识相关的感知过程的微调。这项研究还将确定情景记忆中的学习过程是否会对知觉系统中的学习过程产生因果影响。为了实现这些目标，专业水平差异很大的受试者的大脑活动将在受试者从事行为任务时用事件相关电位进行记录。通过这种方法，可以在行为改善和感知、记忆编码和记忆提取的神经过程的变化之间建立联系。此外，还将使用培训任务来模拟成为专家的初始阶段。最后，药物咪达唑仑将被用于模拟顺行性健忘症，以更好地了解健忘症是如何影响专家记忆和专业知识学习的。对知觉专业知识的研究通常是在多年的过程中发展起来的，它将为研究人类感知和记忆系统的长期学习机制和长期可塑性提供一个框架。这个项目将促进我们对人类记忆编码、提取、感知及其相互作用的子过程的理解。这项基础研究将加深我们对人类学习和记忆的了解，这是为那些因衰老、精神疾病、学习障碍、发育障碍或伤害而记忆力受损的个人开发干预措施的关键任务。该项目还将促进未来治疗方法的发展，使人们在遭受记忆问题后能够维持或重返工作岗位，因为所有人都是某一领域的专家，最常见的是他们的专业。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Experts excel at remembering items from their specific domain of expertise. For example, a car expert is more likely than a novice to remember what models of cars he passed on his way to work. The mechanisms underlying these abilities are the foundation of performance in everyday life when, for example, a grocery cashier can readily discriminate different types of apples and remember the pricing code associated with each. Most of us experience the phenomenon of perceptual expertise with faces, a domain akin to expertise with other visual stimuli. We are all face experts, but mostly for faces that share ou own racial background, because we have less experience identifying faces from other races. Although the memory enhancing effects of expertise are well known, the underlying cognitive and neural processes are not. The proposed project will elucidate the mechanisms that lead to expertise-related facilitations in memory encoding (i.e., learning) and retrieval. It will also idetify the neural markers of brain activity that reflect facilitations in memory encoding and retrieval, which can be achieved by long-term perceptual and semantic learning as seen in perceptual expertise. The project will in addition examine the fine-tuning of perceptual processes that is often associated with expertise by investigating how and when facilitations in perception and memory develop during the initial stages of becoming an expert. This research will also determine whether learning processes in episodic memory causally influence learning processes in the perceptual system. To achieve these goals, the brain activity of subjects who vary widely in their level of expertise will be recorded with event-related potentials while subjecs engage in behavioral tasks. With this approach, associations can be established between behavioral improvements and changes in the neural processes of perception, memory encoding, and memory retrieval. In addition, training tasks will be used to simulate the initial stages of becoming an expert. Finally, the drug midazolam will be used to simulate anterograde amnesia to gain a better understanding of how amnesia affects expert memory and expertise learning. Studying perceptual expertise, which usually develops over the course of many years, will provide a framework for investigating the mechanisms of long-term learning and the long-term plasticity of the human perceptual and memory systems. This project will advance our understanding of the sub-processes of human memory encoding, retrieval, perception, and their interactions. This basic research will deepen our knowledge of human learning and memory, a vital undertaking for developing interventions for individuals whose memory has been compromised by aging, mental disease, learning disabilities, developmental disorders, or injury. This project will also facilitate the future development of treatments that enable people to maintain or return to employment after having suffered memory problems because all people are experts in some domain, most often in their profession.