EVOLUTION OF NEUROANATOMICAL ASYMMETRY AND SPATIAL TRANSFORMATION

描述(申请人提供)：许多学习和神经发育障碍与反转或异常的神经解剖不对称有关。大脑支配地位反转或异常的一种被认为的表现是无法区分左右。本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区别的关系。有人提出，区分左右需要一个不对称的大脑，而这种能力是人类独有的。为了验证这一理论，将使用条件辨别和样本匹配范式对猴子和黑猩猩的左右辨别进行评估，并随后将其与从磁共振图像中获得的神经解剖不对称性和胼胝体形态的测量相关联。 将对大脑半球间信息传递的神经生理学测量进行评估 是否物种间的差异与其转移时间和纤维组成的不同有关。我们还将考察猴子和黑猩猩根据视觉和听觉提示学习辨别左右附肢的能力，以及它们从自己和他人的角度参考左右附肢的能力。在学习视觉模仿任务时使用左右参照点的自发能力将在每个物种中进行评估。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将明显较差。最后，正电子发射断层扫描(PET)将被用来评估猴子和黑猩猩左右分辨的神经底物。在这一系列实验中，将收集正电子发射断层扫描图像，同时要求受试者解决辨别和模仿任务，这些任务需要在与上下平面相比，从左到右进行空间变换。

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.