Brumback Carrie R, Low Kathy A, Gratton Gabriele, Fabiani Monica
Psychology Department and Beckman Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 405 N. Mathews, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
Neuroreport. 2004 Feb 9;15(2):373-6. doi: 10.1097/00001756-200402090-00032.
The way our brain reacts to sensory stimulation may provide important clues about higher-level cognitive function and its operation. Here we show that short-latency (< 200 ms) sensory cortical responses elicited by visual and auditory stimuli differ dramatically between subjects with high and low working-memory span, as well as between subjects scoring high and low on a fluid intelligence test. Our findings also suggest that this link between sensory responses and complex cognitive tasks is modality specific (visual sensory measures correlate with visuo-spatial tasks whereas auditory sensory measures correlate with verbal tasks). We interpret these findings as indicating that people's effectiveness in controlling attention and gating sensory information is a critical determinant of individual differences in complex cognitive abilities.
我们大脑对感觉刺激的反应方式可能为高级认知功能及其运作提供重要线索。在此我们表明，视觉和听觉刺激引发的短潜伏期（<200毫秒）感觉皮层反应在工作记忆跨度高和低的受试者之间，以及在流体智力测试中得分高和低的受试者之间存在显著差异。我们的研究结果还表明，感觉反应与复杂认知任务之间的这种联系是模态特异性的（视觉感觉测量与视觉空间任务相关，而听觉感觉测量与语言任务相关）。我们将这些发现解释为表明人们在控制注意力和筛选感觉信息方面的有效性是复杂认知能力个体差异的关键决定因素。
