Understanding the Conceptual-Motor Interface

描述(由申请人提供)：认知神经科学中的一个新兴运动假设，许多认知过程是参与者和环境之间以目标为导向的相互作用的产物。一种补充的观点是“运动促进”理论，该理论认为观察一个物体会激活与之互动的适当动作。因此，假设对象的概念表征和目标导向的行动之间存在着很强的双向联系。部分由于这一调查领域的新颖性，相关理论在很大程度上是高度不受限制的。这项建议利用我们的对象相关行动的概念模型，即2行动系统模型，来框架一组理论驱动的预测，这些预测将在中风和皮质-基底节变性综合征患者的交叉系列研究中进行测试，这两个患者都表现出高水平的行动障碍、健康的受试者、详细的神经成像分析和经颅磁刺激。需要检验的关键假设之一是，不同类型的动作表征可能在不同的任务要求下激活，具有不同的预测时间进程，并基于不同的神经解剖学基础。还需要测试的是与运动能力和概念组织关系的一组假设约束相关的预测。最后，几个实验将把运动系统当前状态的个体差异，以及参与运动计划和执行的大脑结构的潜在完整性，与a)激活先前存在的自然概念表征，以及b)发展人造概念对象和动作表征的能力有关。这些研究将检验这一假设，即运动系统的能力对自然概念提取和人工概念学习都具有高度限制和预测的相关性。这项拟议的工作有望对“行动选择”和“具身认知”理论以及对运动控制高级障碍的解释具有广泛的意义。具体地说，拟议的工作将1)对在概念-运动界面观察到双向联系的背景提供关键限制，2)阐明对象和动作表征激活的准确表征结构和时间过程，3)在详细的认知-神经解剖学模型中锚定相关结构，以及4)澄清高水平(认知)动作障碍患者的概念-运动损伤的性质。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): An emerging movement within cognitive neuroscience posits that many cognitive processes are a product of goal-directed interactions between actors and environments. A complementary view is the theory of "motor facilitation", which maintains that viewing an object activates the appropriate movements for interacting with it. Thus hypothesized is a strong bi-directional link between conceptual representations of objects and goal- directed actions. Due in part to the novelty of this area of investigation, relevant theories are for the most part highly unconstrained. This proposal makes use of our conceptual model of object-related actions, the 2 Action System model, to frame a theoretically- driven set of predictions that will be tested in an interdigitated series of studies with patients with stroke and cortico-basal ganglionic degeneration syndrome, both of whom exhibit high-level action disorders, healthy subjects, detailed neuroimaging analyses, and transcranial magnetic stimulation. One of the critical hypotheses to be tested is that different types of action representations may be activated under different task demands, with differing predicted time courses, and based upon distinct neuroanatomic substrates. Also to be tested are predictions related to a hypothesized set of constraints on the relationship of motor competence and conceptual organization. Finally, several experiments will relate individual differences in the current status of the motor system, and underlying integrity of brain structures involved in motor planning and execution, to a) activation of previously-existing, natural conceptual representations and b) the ability to develop artificial conceptual object and action representations. These studies will test the hypothesis that the competence of the motor system has highly circumscribed and predicted relevance for both natural concept retrieval as well as artificial concept learning. The proposed work is expected to have broad significance for theories of "selection for action" and "embodied cognition", as well as for accounts of higher-level disorders of motor control. Specifically, the proposed work will 1) provide critical constraints on the contexts in which bidirectional links are observed at the conceptual- motor interface, 2) elucidate the precise representational structure and time-course of activation of object and action representations, 3) anchor relevant constructs in a detailed cognitive-neuroanatomic model, and 4) clarify the nature of conceptual-motor impairments of patients with high-level (cognitive) action disorders.