School of Psychology, University of Sussex, Falmer BN1 9QH, UK.
Cereb Cortex. 2021 Jun 10;31(7):3494-3505. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhab027.
Our knowledge about people can help us predict how they will behave in particular situations and interpret their actions. In this study, we investigated the cognitive and neural effects of person knowledge on the encoding and retrieval of novel life-like events. Healthy human participants learnt about two characters over a week by watching 6 episodes of one of two situation comedies, which were both centered on a young couple. In the scanner, they watched and then silently recalled 20 new scenes from both shows that were all set in unfamiliar locations: 10 from their trained show and 10 from the untrained show. After scanning, participants' recognition memory was better for scenes from the trained show. The functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) patterns of brain activity when watching the videos were reinstated during recall, but this effect was not modulated by training. However, person knowledge boosted the similarity in fMRI patterns of activity in the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) when watching the new events involving familiar characters. Our findings identify a role for the MPFC in the representation of schematic person knowledge during the encoding of novel, lifelike events.
我们对人的了解可以帮助我们预测他们在特定情况下的行为方式，并解释他们的行为。在这项研究中，我们调查了人物知识对新的、类似生活的事件的编码和提取的认知和神经影响。健康的人类参与者通过观看两部情景喜剧中的六集来了解两周的两个角色，这两部情景喜剧都以一对年轻夫妇为中心。在扫描仪中，他们观看并默想来自两个节目的 20 个新场景，这些场景都设置在不熟悉的地点：10 个来自训练节目，10 个来自未训练节目。扫描后，参与者对训练节目中的场景的识别记忆更好。观看视频时大脑活动的功能磁共振成像（fMRI）模式在回忆时被重新激活，但这种效果不受训练的调节。然而，人物知识在观看涉及熟悉角色的新事件时，提高了内侧前额叶皮层（MPFC）中活动 fMRI 模式的相似性。我们的发现确定了在编码新的、类似生活的事件时，MPFC 在 schematic 人物知识表示中的作用。
