Neural dynamics of perception with and without awareness

有意识和无意识感知的神经动力学

• 批准号: 7112868
• 负责人: AARON SCHURGER
• 金额: $ 2.74万
• 依托单位: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2006-07-01 至 2008-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7112868
• 关键词: awareness; behavior test; behavioral /social science research tag; clinical research; functional magnetic resonance imaging; human subject; neural information processing; predoctoral investigator; visual perception; visual stimulus

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The relationship between perception (the formation of a neural representation of an object or event) and awareness (the formation of a neural representation that is accessible to introspection and explicit report) remains a significant open question in cognitive neuroscience. It is fundamental to our understanding of many cognitive disorders including schizophrenia and other disorders involving unwanted endogenously-generated experiences. It is also a central question in cognitive and social psychology: what underlies so-called "automatic" processing, and how is it different from the "non-automatic" processing associated with cognitive control? The direction that I intend to pursue in my research is to compare the neural dynamics underlying perception with and without awareness. Given that a perceptual object (a face, for example) is represented in the brain, what determines whether or not this representation is accompanied by awareness of its content? Recent studies of neglect patients and normal subjects demonstrate that category-specific neural responses are possible without awareness of the stimulus. It has been argued that the level of activation in these areas is the determining factor. I will argue, based on the theory of Marcel Kinsbourne, that level of activation alone is not sufficient to account for awareness, but that, in addition, the stability and/or coherence of the distributed pattern of activation is a factor in determining whether or not information reaches awareness. I have designed and begun to carry out a set of behavioral and fMRI experiments designed to test this hypothesis.

描述（由申请人提供）：感知（物体或事件的神经表征的形成）和意识（可进行内省和明确报告的神经表征的形成）之间的关系仍然是认知神经科学中的一个重要的悬而未决的问题。它对于我们理解许多认知障碍（包括精神分裂症和其他涉及不良内源性体验的疾病）至关重要。这也是认知和社会心理学的一个中心问题：所谓的“自动”处理的基础是什么，它与与认知控制相关的“非自动”处理有何不同？我的研究方向是比较有意识和无意识下感知的神经动力学。假设一个感知对象（例如一张脸）在大脑中被表征，那么是什么决定了这种表征是否伴随着对其内容的意识？最近对忽视患者和正常受试者的研究表明，在没有意识到刺激的情况下，特定类别的神经反应是可能的。有人认为这些区域的激活水平是决定因素。我认为，根据马塞尔·金斯伯恩（Marcel Kinsbourne）的理论，仅激活水平不足以解释意识，但除此之外，分布式激活模式的稳定性和/或连贯性是决定是否或信息没有达到意识。我设计并开始进行一系列行为和功能磁共振成像实验，旨在检验这一假设。