Law Chi-Tat, Gold Joshua I
Department of Neuroscience, 116 Johnson Pavilion, 3610 Hamilton Walk, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-6074, USA.
Nat Neurosci. 2008 Apr;11(4):505-13. doi: 10.1038/nn2070. Epub 2008 Mar 9.
This study aimed to identify neural mechanisms that underlie perceptual learning in a visual-discrimination task. We trained two monkeys (Macaca mulatta) to determine the direction of visual motion while we recorded from their middle temporal area (MT), which in trained monkeys represents motion information that is used to solve the task, and lateral intraparietal area (LIP), which represents the transformation of motion information into a saccadic choice. During training, improved behavioral sensitivity to weak motion signals was accompanied by changes in motion-driven responses of neurons in LIP, but not in MT. The time course and magnitude of the changes in LIP correlated with the changes in behavioral sensitivity throughout training. Thus, for this task, perceptual learning does not appear to involve improvements in how sensory information is represented in the brain, but rather how the sensory representation is interpreted to form the decision that guides behavior.
本研究旨在确定视觉辨别任务中感知学习背后的神经机制。我们训练了两只猕猴,让它们在我们记录它们中颞叶区域(MT)和顶内沟外侧区域(LIP)时判断视觉运动的方向。在经过训练的猕猴中,MT区域代表用于解决任务的运动信息,LIP区域则代表运动信息向扫视选择的转换。在训练过程中,对微弱运动信号的行为敏感性提高伴随着LIP区域神经元运动驱动反应的变化,而MT区域没有变化。LIP区域变化的时间进程和幅度与整个训练过程中行为敏感性的变化相关。因此,对于这项任务,感知学习似乎并不涉及大脑中感觉信息表征方式的改善,而是涉及感觉表征如何被解释以形成指导行为的决策。