Neural Basis of Social Attention

社会注意力的神经基础

基本信息

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
项目类别：
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

项目摘要

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）：移动动物能够适应环境的显着特征。在灵长类动物中，隐蔽的注意力定向也已发展成为一种灵活的机制，用于在没有明显定向的情况下监测潜在的重要位置或刺激。虽然之前的实验室研究已经广泛探讨了人类和非人类灵长类动物的注意力，这些动物被训练来区分简单刺激，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，社会刺激本质上是显着的并引起注意。此外，最近的实验室研究表明，社会线索（例如其他个体的注视方向）可以访问一个特权信息通道，该通道反射性地引导人类和非人类灵长类动物的注意力。这些研究表明，注意力机制已经进化，对预测其他个体的目标和意图的线索很敏感，但这些线索到底是什么以及它们如何引导注意力仍然不清楚，尽管这些机制的崩溃与严重衰弱有关。精神障碍，如自闭症和精神分裂症。尽管神经生理学研究表明，诸如面部、身份、情绪状态和注视方向等社会刺激是在颞叶皮层的腹侧流视觉区域中处理的，但这些区域对于定向注意力是否重要尚不清楚。相比之下，顶叶皮层被认为在视觉空间注意力的显性和隐性分配中发挥着至关重要的作用，但目前尚不清楚该区域的神经元对刺激属性（例如面部身份或注视方向）特别敏感。脸。这些观察结果强烈表明，颞叶中产生的视觉社交信号以某种方式转化为顶叶皮层的定向命令，但支持这些转化的机制仍然未知。我们研究的目的是结合行为学、心理物理学和神经生理学技术，破译猴子的视觉社交信号如何转化为注意力定向。首先，心理物理学技术将用于量化社会刺激的内在动机价值，以隐蔽和公开地引导注意力。其次，神经生理学技术将用于研究顶叶皮层（控制注意力的主要结构）中社交动机注意力的神经相关性。最后，将使用相同的技术确定眶额皮层在社交暗示和社交动机注意力中的作用。实现这些目标将限制腹侧视觉处理流中产生的视觉社会信号转化为适合社会的定向的模型。