UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London WC1N 3AR, UK.
Cereb Cortex. 2012 Jan;22(1):166-74. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhr101. Epub 2011 May 30.
The capacity to imagine being somewhere else and seeing the environment from a different point of view is crucial for spatial planning in daily life and for understanding the intentions, actions, and state of mind of other people. The neural bases of spatial updating of multiple object locations were investigated using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Healthy volunteers saw an array of objects on a table in a virtual reality environment and imagined movement of their own viewpoint or rotation of the array. Their memory for the locations of the objects was then tested with a change-detection task. Behavioral results confirmed the advantage for imagined viewpoint change compared with imagined array rotation of equivalent size. Encoding of object locations was associated with a network of areas, including bilateral superior and inferior parietal cortices. The precuneus was additionally activated by the demands of both viewpoint- and array rotation. The parieto-occipital sulcus/retrosplenial cortex and hippocampus were additionally activated by the demands of viewpoint rotation, while array rotation was associated with activation of the right intraparietal sulcus. These findings support a computational model of spatial memory in which parieto-occipital sulcus/retrosplenial cortex mediates spatial updating as part of a process of translation between "egocentric" and "allocentric" reference frames.
想象自己身处别处并从不同角度观察环境的能力对于日常生活中的空间规划以及理解他人的意图、行为和思维状态至关重要。本研究使用功能磁共振成像技术研究了多个物体位置的空间更新的神经基础。健康志愿者在虚拟现实环境中看到桌子上的一组物体，并想象自己的视点移动或数组旋转。然后，他们使用变化检测任务测试对物体位置的记忆。行为结果证实了与想象中的数组旋转相比，想象中的视点变化具有优势。物体位置的编码与包括双侧顶下和顶叶皮质在内的区域网络相关。扣带回后部也被视点和数组旋转的需求激活。旁枕沟/后扣带回和海马体也被视点旋转的需求激活，而数组旋转与右顶内沟的激活相关。这些发现支持空间记忆的计算模型，其中旁枕沟/后扣带回介导空间更新，作为“自我中心”和“非自我中心”参考框架之间转换过程的一部分。
