Cook Emily, Hammett Stephen T, Larsson Jonas
Department of Psychology and CUBIC, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, TW20 0EX, United Kingdom.
Neurosci Lett. 2016 Oct 6;632:50-4. doi: 10.1016/j.neulet.2016.07.053. Epub 2016 Aug 2.
Early psychological researchers proposed a link between intelligence and low-level perceptual performance. It was recently suggested that this link is driven by individual variations in the ability to suppress irrelevant information, evidenced by the observation of strong correlations between perceptual surround suppression and cognitive performance. However, the neural mechanisms underlying such a link remain unclear. A candidate mechanism is neural inhibition by gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), but direct experimental support for GABA-mediated inhibition underlying suppression is inconsistent. Here we report evidence consistent with a global suppressive mechanism involving GABA underlying the link between sensory performance and intelligence. We measured visual cortical GABA concentration, visuo-spatial intelligence and visual surround suppression in a group of healthy adults. Levels of GABA were strongly predictive of both intelligence and surround suppression, with higher levels of intelligence associated with higher levels of GABA and stronger surround suppression. These results indicate that GABA-mediated neural inhibition may be a key factor determining cognitive performance and suggests a physiological mechanism linking surround suppression and intelligence.
早期的心理学研究者提出智力与低水平感知表现之间存在联系。最近有人指出，这种联系是由抑制无关信息能力的个体差异驱动的，感知周边抑制与认知表现之间的强相关性观察结果证明了这一点。然而，这种联系背后的神经机制仍不清楚。一种可能的机制是γ-氨基丁酸（GABA）介导的神经抑制，但关于GABA介导的抑制作用作为抑制基础的直接实验支持并不一致。在此，我们报告了与一种涉及GABA的全局抑制机制相一致的证据，该机制是感觉表现与智力之间联系的基础。我们测量了一组健康成年人的视觉皮层GABA浓度、视觉空间智力和视觉周边抑制。GABA水平对智力和周边抑制都有很强的预测性，智力水平越高，GABA水平越高，周边抑制越强。这些结果表明，GABA介导的神经抑制可能是决定认知表现的关键因素，并提示了一种将周边抑制与智力联系起来的生理机制。
