基于相似性的类别学习ERPs研究

目的:研究类别学习过程中,基于类别相似性的不同时间限制下被试分类学习脑激活机制.方法:通过对15名被试采用事件相关电位技术(ERPs),使用2相似程度不同(高相似vs低相似)×3呈现时间不同(10ms vs 200ms vs 600ms)的多因素实验设计,探讨不同相似程度及刺激呈现时间不同下的类别学习脑机制.结果:类别高相似的脑激活机制更加复杂,激活的脑区更多;刺激呈现时间为10ms的时候被试的波形图与200ms和600ms类似,但是其潜伏期更短,决策速度更快;三种时间条件下都激活了N400,可能存在语义加工.结论:类别学习在视觉加工阶段就已经发生;类别学习过程并非全或无的竞争机制,而是内隐和外显综合加工的结果.     

事件诱发电位信号分类的时空特征提取方法

准确对事件诱发电位(ERPs)进行分类,对于各种人类认知研究和临床医学评估非常有意义.由于ERPs信号是非常高维的数据,而且其中包含非常多的与分类无关的信息,从ERPs信号中提取特征尤显重要.分析了共空间模式(CSP)的原理和不足,引入自回归(AR)模型与白化变换相结合,提出了针对ERPs分类的时空特征提取方法,并设计了验证该方法的认知实验,在认知实验数据上分别用时空特征提取方法与CSP提取特征,用同样的分类器支持向量机(SVM)训练分类器,比较它们的分类效果.实验表明,在ERPs分类问题上,时空特征提取方法与CSP相比具有明显的优势,在参数确定合理的情况下,时空特征提取方法可使分类准确率达到90%以上.     

早产儿语言发展及其脑机制

早产儿语言发展存在特殊规律.行为研究发现,早产儿在词汇、句法、语义言语流畅性等方面存在发展滞后的现象.早产对语言发展的影响可能持续到成年早期,但具体的滞后程度受到生物因素和社会因素的影响.随着脑成像技术的发展,有研究开始考察早产儿的脑发育情况.研究者发现,青少年时期的早产儿在大脑白质、皮层下灰质和小脑结构等方面发生了改变,但关于早产儿语言发展的脑机制还有待进一步的研究来确证.简述了早产儿语言发展的行为研究和脑神经研究方面的最新进展,以揭示早产儿这一特殊群体在语言发展和认知神经方面的规律.研究认为,应结合行为研究与脑神经研究的优势,进一步深化对早产儿语言发展机制的探讨,也为考察正常儿童语言获得规律提供特殊的科学依据.     

听觉反馈与鸣禽鸣唱学习可塑性

对近年来听觉反馈在鸣禽鸣唱学习可塑性方面的研究进行综述．鸣禽的鸣曲学习与人类的语言学习都是一种依赖于听觉反馈的模仿学习．在鸣曲学习过程中,幼鸟根据听觉反馈的信息对鸣曲进行比较和修正,使其不断完善;在鸣曲维持过程中,成鸟通过听觉反馈实时监测自己鸣曲的完整性与准确性,使鸣曲保持稳定．鸣曲的输出与听觉反馈信息在鸟脑中得到整合,并指导下一次鸣唱做出适当的调整．近年来,这种感觉与运动信息在鸣禽发声核团中的整合机制逐渐引起了国内外研究者的兴趣．其中,新纹状体巨细胞核外侧部(LMAN)神经元对自鸣曲(BOS)高度选择性的听觉应答在鸣曲去稳定化过程中的作用,以及高级发声中枢(HVC)中镜像神经元的发现,为今后的研究提供了重要的线索．     

汉语数词和数字脑加工差异的功能磁共振成像研究

数字加工是人类最重要的认知功能之一,数字加工与语言之间的关系也一直是认知神经科学的研究焦点.本文采用功能磁共振成像技术,通过比较阿拉伯数字和汉语数词对数字大小比较任务加工的影响,考察了语言与数字加工的关系.结果显示,不同语言编码影响了脑内数字处理加工的模式,在以汉语数词为编码的情况下,梭状回的激活显著高于阿拉伯数字为编码的情况,顶叶的激活则弱于以阿拉伯数字为编码的情况.这表明数字加工会受到语言编码的影响,支持了数字加工与语言密切相关的观点.     

类别学习的脑机制研究现状和展望

本文主要探讨类别学习的脑机制。首先介绍类别学习的基本过程及主要研究范式。其次从脑损伤和脑成像两方面探讨此过程中的脑机制,主要包括额区、内侧颞叶、基底神经节的激活。再次,介绍了ERP研究类别学习过程的方法和结果,主要相关成分包括N1、P1、N2、P2、N300、P3、P450。最后对类别学习的脑机制进行小结和展望,认为ERPs和脑成像技术的结合可使此研究深化。     

语言发展认知神经科学研究:重要进展、趋势与规划建议

语言是人类独特的脑高级功能.语言发展和脑发育是发展认知神经科学研究的核心领域之一.深入理解语言发展和脑发育的复杂联系,不仅对破解人脑奥秘意义重大,同时可为理解和促进人类脑智发育提供重要依据.本文概述了语言获得和发展的脑机制、阅读发展与脑发育、二语学习年龄效应及脑机制、语言发展的遗传因素等方面的重要研究进展,并基于当前该...     

创伤后应激障碍患者脑固有连接网络研究

采用静息态功能磁共振成像方法 ,探索创伤后应激障碍(post-trauma stress disorder,PTSD)患者脑固有网络的功能异常情况。应用独立成分分析方法,提取14名PTSD患者和性别年龄均匹配的14例健康被试的脑固有连接网络。两样本检验的结果显示,PTSD患者组较健康对照组的高级认知网络有不同程度的改变。其中,默认模式网络的后扣带回、楔前叶和右侧角回功能连接呈现降低趋势;背侧注意网络和自我参考网络的功能连接呈现升高趋势,主要包括左侧顶下小叶和内侧前额叶(P0.05)。静息态下PTSD患者高级认知网络脑区之间的连接效能异常可能同其认知功能损害有关,这些异常在PTSD的病理机制中可能发挥了重要作用。     

跨通路注意的失匹配负波研究

采用“跨通路延迟反应”实验模式 ,提高了非注意纯度 ,排除了偏差刺激中的目标任务因素 ,以 1 2名青年正常人为被试者 ,研究注意与非注意条件下的ERPs.实验分为 2项 :( 1 )注意视觉通路 ,忽视听觉通路 ;( 2 )注意听觉通路 ,忽视视觉通路 .主要分析偏差刺激ERP减去标准刺激ERP所得之偏差成分 .结果发现视听通路在注意条件下均能产生MMN ,N2b和P3,在非注意时主要产生MMN .听觉MMN与视觉MMN具有如下共同特征 :注意时视听最大MMN波幅分布于它们的初级感觉投射区 ,而在非注意条件下视听最大MMN波幅均分布于额中央部 .视觉MMN与听觉MMN波幅无显著性差异 .MMN波幅及其头皮分布不受注意影响 ,提示MMN波幅是反映自动加工的重要ERP指标 ;但视听觉MMN潜伏期皆受注意影响 ,表明MMN不仅仅反映自动加工 ,尚与控制加工有关     

大白鼠下丘、桥脑B型单胺氧化酶(MAO-B)的研究

脊椎动物听觉皮层下该团的功能性研究被揭示时尚很有限,(?)报导用神经生化的方法,研究了大白鼠中枢神经系统中,与听觉有关的下丘,桥脑比全脑MAO-B monoamme oxidase E C 1.23.4的活性,及在药物作用下的变化,以探讨单胺类神经递质在支因下听觉中枢作用的可能性,结果表明:1.与听觉有关的下丘,桥脑MAO-B活性明显高于全脑的平均水平.2.药物制首乌对下丘、桥脑及全脑的MAO-B活性均有显著的抑制作用,结果提示:下丘、桥脑MAO-B对单胺类神经递质的氧化脱氨作用高于全脑的平均水平,单胺类神经递质有可能作为皮层下听觉中枢的神经递质参与听觉的活动.     

Faster Sound Stream Segmentation in Musicians than in Nonmusicians

The musician''s brain is considered as a good model of brain plasticity as musical training is known to modify auditory perception and related cortical organization. Here, we show that music-related modifications can also extend beyond motor and auditory processing and generalize (transfer) to speech processing. Previous studies have shown that adults and newborns can segment a continuous stream of linguistic and non-linguistic stimuli based only on probabilities of occurrence between adjacent syllables, tones or timbres. The paradigm classically used in these studies consists of a passive exposure phase followed by a testing phase. By using both behavioural and electrophysiological measures, we recently showed that adult musicians and musically trained children outperform nonmusicians in the test following brief exposure to an artificial sung language. However, the behavioural test does not allow for studying the learning process per se but rather the result of the learning. In the present study, we analyze the electrophysiological learning curves that are the ongoing brain dynamics recorded as the learning is taking place. While musicians show an inverted U shaped learning curve, nonmusicians show a linear learning curve. Analyses of Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) allow for a greater understanding of how and when musical training can improve speech segmentation. These results bring evidence of enhanced neural sensitivity to statistical regularities in musicians and support the hypothesis of positive transfer of training effect from music to sound stream segmentation in general.     

Shaping of object representations in the human medial temporal lobe based on temporal regularities

Regularities are gradually represented in cortex after extensive experience [1], and yet they can influence behavior after minimal exposure [2, 3]. What kind of representations support such rapid statistical learning? The medial temporal lobe (MTL) can represent information from even a single experience [4], making it a good candidate system for assisting in initial learning about regularities. We combined anatomical segmentation of the MTL, high-resolution fMRI, and multivariate pattern analysis to identify representations of objects in cortical and hippocampal areas of human MTL, assessing how these representations were shaped by exposure to regularities. Subjects viewed a continuous visual stream containing hidden temporal relationships-pairs of objects that reliably appeared nearby in time. We compared the pattern of blood oxygen level-dependent activity evoked by each object before and after this exposure, and found that perirhinal cortex, parahippocampal cortex, subiculum, CA1, and CA2/CA3/dentate gyrus (CA2/3/DG) encoded regularities by increasing the representational similarity of their constituent objects. Most regions exhibited bidirectional associative shaping, whereas CA2/3/DG represented regularities in a forward-looking predictive manner. These findings suggest that object representations in MTL come to mirror the temporal structure of the environment, supporting rapid and incidental statistical learning.     

When encoding yields remembering: insights from event-related neuroimaging.

To understand human memory, it is important to determine why some experiences are remembered whereas others are forgotten. Until recently, insights into the neural bases of human memory encoding, the processes by which information is transformed into an enduring memory trace, have primarily been derived from neuropsychological studies of humans with select brain lesions. The advent of functional neuroimaging methods, such as positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), has provided a new opportunity to gain additional understanding of how the brain supports memory formation. Importantly, the recent development of event-related fMRI methods now allows for examination of trial-by-trial differences in neural activity during encoding and of the consequences of these differences for later remembering. In this review, we consider the contributions of PET and fMRI studies to the understanding of memory encoding, placing a particular emphasis on recent event-related fMRI studies of the Dm effect: that is, differences in neural activity during encoding that are related to differences in subsequent memory. We then turn our attention to the rich literature on the Dm effect that has emerged from studies using event-related potentials (ERPs). It is hoped that the integration of findings from ERP studies, which offer higher temporal resolution, with those from event-related fMRI studies, which offer higher spatial resolution, will shed new light on when and why encoding yields subsequent remembering.     

The role of medial temporal lobe structures in implicit learning: an event-related FMRI study

The medial temporal lobe (MTL) has been associated with declarative learning of flexible relational rules and the basal ganglia with implicit learning of stimulus-response mappings. It remains an open question of whether MTL or basal ganglia are involved when learning flexible relational contingencies without awareness. We studied learning of an explicit stimulus-response association with fMRI. Embedded in this explicit task was a hidden structure that was learnt implicitly. Implicit learning of the sequential regularities of the "hidden rule" activated the ventral perirhinal cortex, within the MTL, whereas learning the fixed stimulus-response associations activated the basal ganglia, indicating that the function of the MTL and the basal ganglia depends on the learned material and not necessarily on the participants' awareness.     

High Density Event-related Potential Data Acquisition in Cognitive Neuroscience

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is currently the standard method of evaluating brain function in the field of Cognitive Neuroscience, in part because fMRI data acquisition and analysis techniques are readily available. Because fMRI has excellent spatial resolution but poor temporal resolution, this method can only be used to identify the spatial location of brain activity associated with a given cognitive process (and reveals virtually nothing about the time course of brain activity). By contrast, event-related potential (ERP) recording, a method that is used much less frequently than fMRI, has excellent temporal resolution and thus can track rapid temporal modulations in neural activity. Unfortunately, ERPs are under utilized in Cognitive Neuroscience because data acquisition techniques are not readily available and low density ERP recording has poor spatial resolution. In an effort to foster the increased use of ERPs in Cognitive Neuroscience, the present article details key techniques involved in high density ERP data acquisition. Critically, high density ERPs offer the promise of excellent temporal resolution and good spatial resolution (or excellent spatial resolution if coupled with fMRI), which is necessary to capture the spatial-temporal dynamics of human brain function.Download video file.^{(101M, mp4)}     

Memory strength and repetition suppression: multimodal imaging of medial temporal cortical contributions to recognition

Declarative memory permits an organism to recognize stimuli that have been previously encountered, discriminating them from those that are novel. One basis for recognition is item memory strength, which may support the perception of stimulus familiarity. Though the medial temporal lobes are known to be critical for declarative memory, at present the neural mechanisms supporting perceived differences in memory strength remain poorly specified. Here, functional MRI (fMRI) and anatomically constrained magnetoencephalography (MEG) indexed correlates of graded memory strength in the human brain, focusing on medial temporal cortex. fMRI revealed a decrease in medial temporal cortical activation that tracked parametric levels of perceived memory strength. Anatomically constrained MEG current estimates revealed that strength-dependent signal reductions onset within 150-300 ms. Memory strength appears to be rapidly signaled by medial temporal cortex through repetition suppression (activation reductions), providing a basis for the subjective perception of stimulus familiarity or novelty.     

A Beamformer Analysis of MEG Data Reveals Frontal Generators of the Musically Elicited Mismatch Negativity

To localize the neural generators of the musically elicited mismatch negativity with high temporal resolution we conducted a beamformer analysis (Synthetic Aperture Magnetometry, SAM) on magnetoencephalography (MEG) data from a previous musical mismatch study. The stimuli consisted of a six-tone melodic sequence comprising broken chords in C- and G-major. The musical sequence was presented within an oddball paradigm in which the last tone was lowered occasionally (20%) by a minor third. The beamforming analysis revealed significant right hemispheric neural activation in the superior temporal (STC), inferior frontal (IFC), superior frontal (SFC) and orbitofrontal (OFC) cortices within a time window of 100–200 ms after the occurrence of a deviant tone. IFC and SFC activation was also observed in the left hemisphere. The pronounced early right inferior frontal activation of the auditory mismatch negativity has not been shown in MEG studies so far. The activation in STC and IFC is consistent with earlier electroencephalography (EEG), optical imaging and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies that reveal the auditory and inferior frontal cortices as main generators of the auditory MMN. The observed right hemispheric IFC is also in line with some previous music studies showing similar activation patterns after harmonic syntactic violations. The results demonstrate that a deviant tone within a musical sequence recruits immediately a distributed neural network in frontal and prefrontal areas suggesting that top-down processes are involved when expectation violation occurs within well-known stimuli.     

A Large N400 but No BOLD Effect – Comparing Source Activations of Semantic Priming in Simultaneous EEG-fMRI

Numerous studies have reported neurophysiological effects of semantic priming in electroencephalography (EEG) and in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Because of differing methodological constraints, the comparability of the observed effects remains unclear. To directly compare EEG and fMRI effects and neural sources of semantic priming, we conducted a semantic word-picture priming experiment while measuring EEG and fMRI simultaneously. The visually presented primes were pseudowords, words unrelated to the target, semantically related words and the identical names of the target. Distributed source analysis of the event-related potentials (ERPs) successfully revealed a large effect of semantic prime-target relatedness (the N400 effect), which was driven by activations in a left-temporal source region. However, no significantly differing activations between priming conditions were found in the fMRI data. Our results support the notion that, for joint interpretations of existing EEG and fMRI studies of semantic priming, we need to fully appreciate the respective methodological limitations. Second, they show that simultaneous EEG-fMRI, including ERP source localization, is a feasible and promising methodological advancement for the investigation of higher-cognitive processes. Third, they substantiate the finding that, compared to fMRI, ERPs are often more sensitive to subtle cognitive effects.     

Non-invasive evaluation of face and motion perception in humans

The neural mechanisms for the perception of face and motion were studied using psychophysical threshold measurements, event-related potentials (ERPs), and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). A face-specific ERP component, N170, was recorded over the posterior temporal cortex. Removal of the high-spatial-frequency components of the face altered the perception of familiar faces significantly, and familiarity can facilitate the cortico-cortical processing of facial perceptions. Similarly, the high-spatial-frequency components of the face seemed to be crucial for the recognition of facial expressions. Aging and visuospatial impairments affected motion perception significantly. Two distinct components of motion ERPs, N170 and P200, were recorded over the parietal region. The former was related to horizontal motion perception while the latter reflected the perception of radial optic flow motion. The results of fMRI showed that horizontal movements of objects and radial optic flow motion were perceived differently in the V5/MT and superior parietal lobe. We conclude that an integrated approach can provide useful information on spatial and temporal processing of face and motion non-invasively.     

A complementary systems account of word learning: neural and behavioural evidence

In this paper we present a novel theory of the cognitive and neural processes by which adults learn new spoken words. This proposal builds on neurocomputational accounts of lexical processing and spoken word recognition and complementary learning systems (CLS) models of memory. We review evidence from behavioural studies of word learning that, consistent with the CLS account, show two stages of lexical acquisition: rapid initial familiarization followed by slow lexical consolidation. These stages map broadly onto two systems involved in different aspects of word learning: (i) rapid, initial acquisition supported by medial temporal and hippocampal learning, (ii) slower neocortical learning achieved by offline consolidation of previously acquired information. We review behavioural and neuroscientific evidence consistent with this account, including a meta-analysis of PET and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) studies that contrast responses to spoken words and pseudowords. From this meta-analysis we derive predictions for the location and direction of cortical response changes following familiarization with pseudowords. This allows us to assess evidence for learning-induced changes that convert pseudoword responses into real word responses. Results provide unique support for the CLS account since hippocampal responses change during initial learning, whereas cortical responses to pseudowords only become word-like if overnight consolidation follows initial learning.