Shelton Amy L, Pippitt Holly A
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA.
Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 2006 Dec;6(4):323-32. doi: 10.3758/cabn.6.4.323.
Mental rotation is among the most widely studied visuospatial skills in humans. The processes involved in mental rotation have been described as analogous to seeing an object physically rotate. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging of the whole brain and localized motion-sensitive hV5/MT+ to compare brain activation for stimuli when they were mentally or visually rotated. The results provided clear evidence for activation in hV5/MT+ during both mental and visual rotation of figures, with increased activation for larger rotations. Combined with the overall similarities between mental and visual rotation in this study, these results suggest that mental rotation recruits many of the same neural substrates as observing motion.
心理旋转是人类中研究最为广泛的视觉空间技能之一。心理旋转所涉及的过程被描述为类似于看到一个物体实际旋转。我们使用全脑功能磁共振成像，并定位了对运动敏感的hV5/MT+区域，以比较刺激在心理旋转或视觉旋转时的大脑激活情况。结果为hV5/MT+区域在图形的心理旋转和视觉旋转过程中均被激活提供了明确证据，且旋转角度越大激活越强。结合本研究中心理旋转与视觉旋转的总体相似性，这些结果表明心理旋转所调用的神经基质与观察运动时所调用的许多神经基质相同。
