Buzsáki György, Llinás Rodolfo
Neuroscience Institute, Departments of Physiology, Neurology, and Psychiatry, and Center for Neural Science, New York University, New York, NY 10016, USA.
Science. 2017 Oct 27;358(6362):482-485. doi: 10.1126/science.aan8869.
Nothing is more intuitive, yet more complex, than the concepts of space and time. In contrast to spacetime in physics, space and time in neuroscience remain separate coordinates to which we attach our observations. Investigators of navigation and memory relate neuronal activity to position, distance, time point, and duration and compare these parameters to units of measuring instruments. Although spatial-temporal sequences of brain activity often correlate with distance and duration measures, these correlations may not correspond to neuronal representations of space or time. Neither instruments nor brains sense space or time. Neuronal activity can be described as a succession of events without resorting to the concepts of space or time. Instead of searching for brain representations of our preconceived ideas, we suggest investigating how brain mechanisms give rise to inferential, model-building explanations.
没有什么比空间和时间的概念更直观却又更复杂的了。与物理学中的时空不同，神经科学中的空间和时间仍是我们用以关联观察结果的独立坐标。研究导航与记忆的人员将神经元活动与位置、距离、时间点及持续时间联系起来，并将这些参数与测量仪器的单位进行比较。尽管大脑活动的时空序列常常与距离和持续时间的测量结果相关，但这些关联可能并不等同于空间或时间的神经元表征。仪器和大脑都无法感知空间或时间。神经元活动可以被描述为一系列事件，而无需借助空间或时间的概念。我们建议不要去寻找我们先入为主观念的大脑表征，而是研究大脑机制如何产生推理式的、构建模型的解释。
