Object Concepts

描述（由申请人提供）：了解世界意味着什么？任何知识理论的核心都是概念理论，这些概念是让我们能够对世界上的信息进行分类的心理表征。在这个项目中，我们试图通过研究它们的神经实例来理解概念。这个项目的中心目标是通过相似性的表征来推进我们对概念的神经表征的理解。这个研究项目的更广泛的目标是开发一种理解所有类型知识的神经表征的策略;然而，为了使这个问题更容易处理，我们专注于一种特定类型的概念-具体对象-以及关于这些概念的一种特定类型的知识-它们的视觉外观。具体来说，（1）我们的目标是描述神经表征的对象概念的特征，在多维相似性空间的神经调谐;（2）我们的目标是检查对象概念的神经表征的变化，跨概念，跨个人，跨注意状态;（3）探讨睡眠依赖性巩固过程在新客体概念知识获得中的作用;（4）我们的目标是开发更普遍的神经相似性表征的创新方法。 公共卫生相关性：没有概念，我们将无法理解世界上无限的变化。概念组织我们的经验，它们改变感知，记忆，语言和行动。这个项目的目标是了解概念知识的组织方式和在大脑中实施的方式。我们将应用创新的神经科学方法来发现我们如何学习我们周围的物体，以及我们如何在记住这些物体时访问这些信息。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): What does it mean to know something about the world? Central to any theory of knowledge is a theory of concepts, those mental representations that allow us to categorize information in the world. In this project, we attempt to understand concepts by studying their neural instantiation. The central aim of this project is to advance our understanding of the neural representation of concepts via a characterization of similarity. The broader goal of this research program is to develop a strategy for understanding the neural representation of all types of knowledge; however, to make this problem more tractable, we are focusing on a specific type of concept - concrete objects - and on a particular type of knowledge about those concepts - their visual appearance. Specifically, (1) We aim to describe the neural representation of object concepts by characterizing neural tuning to features in a multidimensional similarity space; (2) We aim to examine variation in the neural representations of object concepts, across concepts, across individuals, and across attentional states; (3) We aim to explore to role of sleep-dependent consolidation processes in the acquisition of new object concept knowledge; (4) We aim to develop innovative methods for the characterization of neural similarity more generally. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Without concepts, we would be unable to make sense of the infinite variation in the world. Concepts organize our experiences, and they alter perception, memory, language, and action. The goal of this project is to understand the way in which conceptual knowledge is organized and the manner in which it is implemented in the brain. We will apply innovative neuroscientific methods to discover how we learn about the objects around us and how we access that information when remembering those objects.