Laboratory for Neuro- and Psychophysiology, Department of Neurosciences, KU Leuven Medical School, Leuven 3000, Belgium; Leuven Brain Institute, KU Leuven, Leuven 3000, Belgium.
Laboratory for Neuro- and Psychophysiology, Department of Neurosciences, KU Leuven Medical School, Leuven 3000, Belgium; Leuven Brain Institute, KU Leuven, Leuven 3000, Belgium; Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA 02129, USA; Department of Radiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02144, USA.
Neuron. 2021 Apr 21;109(8):1381-1395.e7. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2021.02.013. Epub 2021 Mar 4.
Perception improves by repeated practice with visual stimuli, a phenomenon known as visual perceptual learning (VPL). The interplay of attentional and neuromodulatory reward signals is hypothesized to cause these behavioral and associated neuronal changes, although VPL can occur without attention (i.e., task-irrelevant VPL). In addition, task-relevant VPL can be category-selective for simple attended oriented stimuli. Yet, it is unclear whether category-selective task-irrelevant VPL occurs and which brain centers mediate underlying forms of adult cortical plasticity. Here, we show that pairing subliminal complex visual stimuli (faces and bodies) with electrical microstimulation of the ventral tegmental area (VTA-EM) causes category-selective task-irrelevant VPL. These perceptual improvements are accompanied by fMRI signal changes in early and late visual and frontal areas, as well as the cerebellum, hippocampus, claustrum, and putamen. In conclusion, Pavlovian pairing of unattended complex stimuli with VTA-EM causes category-selective learning accompanied by changes of cortical and subcortical neural representations in macaques.
通过对视觉刺激进行反复练习，感知能力会得到提高，这种现象被称为视觉感知学习（VPL）。注意力和神经调质奖励信号的相互作用被假设会导致这些行为和相关神经元的变化，尽管 VPL 可以在没有注意力的情况下发生（即，与任务无关的 VPL）。此外，与任务相关的 VPL 可以对简单的注意定向刺激进行类别选择。然而，目前尚不清楚是否会发生类别选择性的与任务无关的 VPL，以及哪些大脑中心介导了成人皮质可塑性的潜在形式。在这里，我们表明，将阈下复杂视觉刺激（面孔和身体）与腹侧被盖区（VTA-EM）的电微刺激配对会导致类别选择性的与任务无关的 VPL。这些感知上的改善伴随着早期和晚期视觉和额叶区域以及小脑、海马体、屏状核和壳核的 fMRI 信号变化。总之，对未被注意的复杂刺激进行巴甫洛夫式配对，加上 VTA-EM 的电微刺激，会导致猕猴的类别选择性学习，并伴有皮质和皮质下神经表现的变化。
