Decoding the Contents and Attentional States of Visual Short-Term Memory Representations, and their Effect on Behaviour

环境中存在的信息比人类在给定时刻能够处理的信息要多得多。因此，认知神经科学研究面临的一个关键问题是，鉴于信息处理中的这些瓶颈，人类大脑如何能够促进日常行为。 该提案中概述的研究旨在了解人类大脑如何能够在短时间内“在线”保存视觉信息。这个过程，被称为视觉短期记忆，是非常有限的，虽然限制这种能力的神经机制是未知的。此外，视觉记忆与其他过程相互作用，以帮助产生行为。因此，我们将进行的一些研究将研究支持视觉短期记忆的神经机制如何决定环境中的哪些信息被关注，以及最终感知到哪些信息。这些研究将使用功能性MRI（fMRI）和脑电图（EEG）来检查实时大脑活动，同时参与者执行任务，以衡量他们在短期记忆，注意力和感知测试中的表现。总之，这些研究将有助于了解人类大脑如何处理视觉信息，以及这种处理的局限性如何影响和决定我们的日常行为。

There is much more information present in the environment than humans are able to process at a given moment. Consequently, one of the critical questions facing cognitive neuroscience research is how the human brain is able to facilitate everyday behaviour given these bottlenecks in information processing. The research outlined in this proposal is aimed at understanding how the human brain is able to hold visual information "on-line" for short periods of time. This process, known as visual short-term memory, is severely limited, although the neural mechanisms that limit this ability are unknown. In addition, visual memory interacts with other processes to help produce behaviour. Consequently, some of the studies we will conduct will examine how the neural mechanisms that support visual short-term memory determine what information in the environment is attended, as well as what information is ultimately perceived. These studies will use functional MRI (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG) to examine real-time brain activity while participants perform tasks that measure their performance on tests of short-term memory, attention, and perception. Together, these studies will help inform how the human brain is able to process visual information, and how the limits of this processing affect and determine our everyday behaviour.