Visual Working Memory: Representation and Process

视觉工作记忆：表征和过程

• 批准号: 7027322
• 负责人: STEVEN J LUCK
• 金额: $ 8.04万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF IOWA
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2006-01-01 至 2006-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7027322
• 关键词: adolescence (12-20); behavioral /social science research tag; brain electrical activity; clinical research; cognition disorders; evoked potentials; human subject; long term memory; neural information processing; short term memory; visual cortex; visual perception; visual stimulus; young adult human (21-34)

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Working memory plays a central role in cognitive processing, and an understanding of working memory is essential if we are to understand simple cognitive tasks such as retrieving a fact from memory, complex cognitive tasks such as cooking a meal, and psychopathologies that involve impaired cognition such as schizophrenia. The proposed research seeks to further our understanding of the visual storage component of the working memory system by means of a combination of traditional cognitive methods, psychophysical procedures adapted from vision research, computational simulations of explicit models, and human electrophysiological recordings (ERPs). This project will focus on four fundamental questions about the nature of visual working memory representations and the processes that create those representations. First, we will explore how the multiple features of an object are bound together in working memory, testing the hypothesis that bound objects are the fundamental units of visual working memory storage. Second, we will determine whether visual working memory consists of a small set of discrete, fixed-resolution representations or a potentially large set of variable-resolution representations. Third, we will ask whether working memory representations consist of structured sets of basic features or activations of potentially rich long-term memory representations (or both). Finally, we will examine the processes that transform transient and fragile perceptual representations into durable working memory representations that can survive the passage time and the perception of new stimuli. These issues will be addressed at the cognitive level, but they will also be linked to an explicit hypothesis about the neural mechanisms of working memory storage. The general goal of this project is to provide a deeper understanding of the most fundamental aspects of visual working memory, pushing basic science research on working memory to the next level. At the same time, the methods and findings of this project will provide the backbone for our laboratory's ongoing program of translational research on schizophrenia. Impairments in working memory are a key component of a spectrum of severe and pervasive cognitive dysfunctions in schizophrenia; these treatment-refractory cognitive impairments are largely responsible for the functional disability that is characteristic of the illness. However, it has been difficult to precisely characterize the nature of the working memory impairment in schizophrenia with the psychometric methods usually used in clinical research. This makes it difficult to define specific cognitive targets for new treatments or to provide a precise assessment of the effectiveness of these treatments. The methods and findings that will follow from the proposed research will make it possible to more accurately characterize and measure working memory deficits, which is an important component of ongoing efforts to develop treatments for cognitive impairments in schizophrenia.

描述（由申请人提供）：工作记忆在认知处理中起着核心作用，并且对工作记忆的理解是必不可少的，如果我们要了解简单的认知任务，例如从记忆中检索事实，复杂的认知任务，例如烹饪饭菜，以及涉及诸如精神分裂症等认知障碍的心理病理学。拟议的研究旨在通过传统的认知方法，心理物理学程序的结合，视觉研究的适应性，显式模型的计算模拟以及人类电生理记录（ERP）的结合，以进一步了解我们对工作记忆系统的视觉存储部分。该项目将重点介绍有关视觉工作记忆表示的性质以及创建这些表示形式的过程的四个基本问题。首先，我们将探讨对象的多个特征如何在工作内存中绑定在一起，从而测试绑定对象是视觉工作记忆存储的基本单位的假设。其次，我们将确定视觉工作记忆是由一小部分离散，固定分辨率表示或潜在的可变分辨率表示形式组成。第三，我们将询问工作记忆表示是否由结构化的基本特征集或潜在的长期记忆表示（或两者兼而有之）的激活集组成。最后，我们将研究将瞬时和脆弱的感知表示转化为持久的工作记忆表示的过程，这些记忆表示可以在通道时间和新刺激的感知中生存。这些问题将在认知水平上解决，但它们也将与有关工作记忆存储的神经机制的明确假设有关。该项目的一般目标是对视觉工作记忆的最基本方面有更深入的了解，从而将基础科学研究推向了新的水平。同时，该项目的方法和发现将为我们实验室正在进行的关于精神分裂症的转化研究计划提供骨干。工作记忆障碍是精神分裂症中严重和普遍认知功能障碍的关键组成部分。这些不良治疗的认知障碍在很大程度上是疾病特征的功能残疾。但是，很难通过通常在临床研究中使用的心理测量方法来精确地表征精神分裂症中工作记忆障碍的性质。这使得很难为新疗法定义特定的认知靶标或对这些治疗的有效性进行精确评估。拟议的研究将遵循的方法和发现将使更准确地表征和衡量工作记忆缺陷成为可能，这是持续努力开发精神分裂症认知障碍治疗的重要组成部分。