Courtière A, Hardouin J, Burle B, Vidal F, Hasbroucq T
Institut de Médecine Navale du Service de Santé des Armées, Toulon, France.
Behav Brain Res. 2007 Apr 16;179(1):69-75. doi: 10.1016/j.bbr.2007.01.012. Epub 2007 Jan 20.
In humans, the Simon effect refers to the fact that choice reaction time (RT) is shorter when the stimulus corresponds spatially to the response than when it does not, albeit the location of the stimulus is irrelevant to the task. This effect has motivated innumerable empirical and theoretical studies and is considered to reflect elementary cognitive processes. We report an experiment demonstrating that rats also display a Simon effect, the dynamics of which--as assessed by factorial manipulations and RT distribution analyses--partly corresponds to those of the effect studied in human participants. The present results are consistent with the ideas that in rats, like in humans, (i) the information conveyed by the stimulus is processed via two parallel routes, one controlled and relatively slow, and one fast and automatic (dual-route architecture) and (ii) the dual-route processing is finished before the start of motor processes. The correspondence between these findings and those reported in humans open new perspectives for neurophysiological investigations of the dual-route architecture in an animal model routinely studied in neuroscience research.
在人类中，西蒙效应指的是这样一个事实：当刺激在空间上与反应相对应时，选择反应时（RT）比不对应时更短，尽管刺激的位置与任务无关。这种效应激发了无数的实证和理论研究，并被认为反映了基本的认知过程。我们报告了一项实验，证明大鼠也表现出西蒙效应，通过因子操作和反应时分布分析评估，其动态部分与在人类参与者中研究的效应相对应。目前的结果与以下观点一致：在大鼠中，与人类一样，（i）刺激所传达的信息通过两条平行路径进行处理，一条是受控且相对较慢的路径，另一条是快速且自动的路径（双路径架构）；（ii）双路径处理在运动过程开始之前完成。这些发现与人类报告的结果之间的对应关系，为神经科学研究中经常研究的动物模型的双路径架构的神经生理学研究开辟了新的视角。
