Neural Basis of Social Attention

社会注意力的神经基础

• 批准号: 7033727
• 负责人: MICHAEL L PLATT
• 金额: $ 26.43万
• 依托单位: DUKE UNIVERSITY
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2006-06-15 至 2008-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7033727
• 关键词: Macaca mulatta; attention; behavior test; behavioral /social science research tag; brain electrical activity; brain mapping; cues; electrophysiology; eye movements; face; neural information processing; parietal lobe /cortex; psychological adaptation; psychophysiology; social adjustment; social behavior; social perception; temporal lobe /cortex; visual fixation; visual perception; Macaca mulatta; attention; behavior test; behavioral /social science research tag; brain electrical activity; brain mapping; cues; electrophysiology; eye movements; face; neural information processing; parietal lobe /cortex; psychological adaptation; psychophysiology; social adjustment; social behavior; social perception; temporal lobe /cortex; visual fixation; visual perception

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Mobile animals orient to salient features of the environment. In primates, covert orienting of attention has also evolved as a flexible mechanism for monitoring potentially important locations or stimuli in the absence of overt orienting. While prior laboratory studies have extensively probed attention in both human and nonhuman primates trained to discriminate simple stimuli whose behavioral significance has been arbitrarily assigned, observational studies conducted in natural settings suggest that social stimuli are intrinsically salient and attract attention. Moreover, recent laboratory studies indicate that social cues, such as the direction of gaze of other individuals, access a privileged information channel that reflexively guides attention in both human and nonhuman primates. These studies suggest that mechanisms of attention have evolved that are sensitive to cues predicting the goals and intentions of other individuals, but exactly what these cues are and how they guide attention remain obscure, despite the fact that breakdown of these mechanisms is associated with severely debilitating mental disorders such as autism and schizophrenia. Although neurophysiological studies have revealed that social stimuli such as faces, their identity, emotional state, and direction of gaze, are processed in ventral stream visual areas of temporal cortex, these areas are not known to be important for orienting attention. In contrast, parietal cortex is thought to play a crucial role in both overt and covert allocation of visuo-spatial attention, but neurons in this area are not known to be particularly sensitive to stimulus attributes such as facial identity or the direction of gaze in a face. These observations strongly suggest that visual social signals arising in the temporal lobe are somehow transformed into orienting commands in parietal cortex, but the mechanisms supporting these transformations remain unknown. The objective of our research is to decipher how visual social signals are transformed into attentional orienting, using a combination of ethological, psychophysical, and neurophysiological techniques in monkeys. First, psychophysical techniques will be used to quantify the intrinsic motivational value of social stimuli for both covertly and overtly orienting attention. Second, neurophysiological techniques will be used to study the neural correlates of socially-motivated attention in parietal cortex, a principal structure controlling attention. Finally, the role of orbitofrontal cortex in socially-cued and socially-motivated attention will be determined using the same techniques. Achieving these aims will constrain models of the transformation of visual social signals arising in the ventral visual processing stream into socially appropriate orienting.

描述（由申请人提供）：移动动物的环境显着特征。在灵长类动物中，注意力的秘密定位也发展为在没有明显方向的情况下监测潜在重要位置或刺激的灵活机制。虽然先前的实验室研究已经广泛探讨了在人类和非人类灵长类动物中均受过训练的简单刺激的训练，其行为意义已被任意分配，但在自然环境中进行的观察性研究表明，社会刺激在本质上是显着的，并引起了人们的注意。此外，最近的实验室研究表明，社会提示，例如其他人的凝视方向，访问了特权信息渠道，该信息通道反射指导人类和非人类灵长类动物的注意力。这些研究表明，关注机制已经发展到对预测其他个体的目标和意图的提示敏感的，但是这些提示的确是什么以及它们如何引导注意力仍然晦涩难懂，尽管这些机制的崩溃与自闭症和精神分裂症等严重衰弱有关。尽管神经生理学研究表明，在颞皮层的腹侧溪流视觉区域处理了社会刺激，例如面部，其身份，情绪状态和凝视的方向，但这些区域并不重要，对于指导注意力而言。相比之下，壁皮层被认为在视觉空间注意的明显和秘密分配中起着至关重要的作用，但是该区域的神经元并不是对刺激属性（例如面部识别或面部凝视方向）特别敏感。这些观察结果强烈表明，在颞叶中产生的视觉社会信号在某种程度上转化为顶叶皮层的定向命令，但是支持这些转换的机制仍然未知。我们研究的目的是使用猴子中的伦理学，心理物理和神经生理技术的结合，解读视觉社会信号如何转化为注意力方向。首先，心理物理技术将用于量化社交刺激的内在动机价值，以掩盖和明显的关注。其次，神经生理技术将用于研究壁皮层的社会动机注意力的神经相关性，这是一种控制注意力的主要结构。最后，将使用相同的技术确定轨道额皮层在社会发展和社会动机关注中的作用。实现这些目标将限制在腹侧视觉处理流中引起的视觉社会信号转换的模型。