Cholinergic contributions to attention and learning: a cross-species approach

心理学和神经科学中剩下的一个基本问题是我们的知识如何塑造感知。也就是说，相信和看到之间的关系。理论模型表明，知识驱动和感觉驱动的加工直接受到通过神经化学乙酰胆碱（ACh）获得的关于一个人感觉环境的预测信息的程度的影响。具体来说，他们提出，在可预测性低的情况下，ACh促进感觉驱动的加工，而在可预测性高的情况下，知识驱动的加工就足够了。因此，当怀疑一个人的感觉环境的可靠性时，乙酰氨基甲酸酯可能会使注意力偏向于促进感觉驱动的皮层加工，这可能会覆盖知识驱动的额顶叶皮层网络的影响。通过使用胆碱能免疫毒性损伤技术选择性地从大鼠皮层中去除乙酰胆碱，以及在用功能磁共振成像（fMRI）技术扫描时阻断人脑中的乙酰胆碱，我们将研究乙酰胆碱的减少是否会加剧我们对知识驱动的感知推理的依赖，从而使大鼠和人类参与者更有可能看到他们相信的东西。我们期望这些研究将产生关于注意力和学习如何与早期感知阶段交互的关键见解。

One of the remaining fundamental questions in psychology and neuroscience is how our knowledge can shape perception. That is, the relationship between believing and seeing. Theoretical models propose that knowledge-driven and sensory-driven processing are directly influenced by the degree of predictive information available about one's sensory environment via the neurochemical acetylcholine (ACh). Specifically, they propose that in cases of an low predictability ACh promotes sensory-driven processing and in cases of highly predictability knowledge-driven processing is sufficient. Thus, when in doubt about the reliability of one's sensory environment, ACh may bias attention to promote sensory-driven cortical processing, which may override the influence of the knowledge-driven frontoparietal cortical network. Through selective removal of ACh from the rat cortex with a cholinergic immunotoxic lesion technique as well as blockade of ACh in the human brain while they are being scanned with the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technique, we will examine whether reduced ACh will exacerbate our reliance on knowledge-driven perceptual inference so that the rat and human participants will be more likely to see what they believe? We expect that these studies will yield critical insights as to how attention and learning interface with early stages of perception.