Shinkareva Svetlana V, Mason Robert A, Malave Vicente L, Wang Wei, Mitchell Tom M, Just Marcel Adam
Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.
PLoS One. 2008 Jan 2;3(1):e1394. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0001394.
Previous studies have succeeded in identifying the cognitive state corresponding to the perception of a set of depicted categories, such as tools, by analyzing the accompanying pattern of brain activity, measured with fMRI. The current research focused on identifying the cognitive state associated with a 4s viewing of an individual line drawing (1 of 10 familiar objects, 5 tools and 5 dwellings, such as a hammer or a castle). Here we demonstrate the ability to reliably (1) identify which of the 10 drawings a participant was viewing, based on that participant's characteristic whole-brain neural activation patterns, excluding visual areas; (2) identify the category of the object with even higher accuracy, based on that participant's activation; and (3) identify, for the first time, both individual objects and the category of the object the participant was viewing, based only on other participants' activation patterns. The voxels important for category identification were located similarly across participants, and distributed throughout the cortex, focused in ventral temporal perceptual areas but also including more frontal association areas (and somewhat left-lateralized). These findings indicate the presence of stable, distributed, communal, and identifiable neural states corresponding to object concepts.
以往的研究通过分析功能磁共振成像（fMRI）测量的伴随脑活动模式，成功识别出与对一组描绘类别（如工具）的感知相对应的认知状态。当前的研究聚焦于识别与观看一幅单独线条画（10个熟悉物体中的1个，5个工具和5个住所，如锤子或城堡）4秒相关的认知状态。在此，我们展示了能够可靠地：（1）基于参与者的特征性全脑神经激活模式（不包括视觉区域），识别出参与者正在观看的10幅画中的哪一幅；（2）基于参与者的激活情况，以更高的准确率识别出物体的类别；以及（3）首次仅基于其他参与者的激活模式，识别出参与者正在观看的单个物体及其类别。对类别识别重要的体素在参与者之间的位置相似，分布于整个皮层，集中在腹侧颞叶感知区域，但也包括更多额叶联合区域（且有点偏向左侧）。这些发现表明存在与物体概念相对应的稳定、分布式、共同且可识别的神经状态。
