Mason Robert A, Schumacher Reinhard A, Just Marcel Adam
Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, 15213, USA.
Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, 15213, USA.
NPJ Sci Learn. 2021 Oct 11;6(1):29. doi: 10.1038/s41539-021-00107-6.
Cognitive neuroscience methods can identify the fMRI-measured neural representation of familiar individual concepts, such as apple, and decompose them into meaningful neural and semantic components. This approach was applied here to determine the neural representations and underlying dimensions of representation of far more abstract physics concepts related to matter and energy, such as fermion and dark matter, in the brains of 10 Carnegie Mellon physics faculty members who thought about the main properties of each of the concepts. One novel dimension coded the measurability vs. immeasurability of a concept. Another novel dimension of representation evoked particularly by post-classical concepts was associated with four types of cognitive processes, each linked to particular brain regions: (1) Reasoning about intangibles, taking into account their separation from direct experience and observability; (2) Assessing consilience with other, firmer knowledge; (3) Causal reasoning about relations that are not apparent or observable; and (4) Knowledge management of a large knowledge organization consisting of a multi-level structure of other concepts. Two other underlying dimensions, previously found in physics students, periodicity, and mathematical formulation, were also present in this faculty sample. The data were analyzed using factor analysis of stably responding voxels, a Gaussian-naïve Bayes machine-learning classification of the activation patterns associated with each concept, and a regression model that predicted activation patterns associated with each concept based on independent ratings of the dimensions of the concepts. The findings indicate that the human brain systematically organizes novel scientific concepts in terms of new dimensions of neural representation.
认知神经科学方法能够识别通过功能磁共振成像（fMRI）测量的熟悉个体概念（如苹果）的神经表征，并将其分解为有意义的神经和语义成分。本研究采用这种方法来确定与物质和能量相关的更为抽象的物理概念（如费米子和暗物质）在10位卡内基梅隆大学物理教师大脑中的神经表征及其潜在维度，这些教师思考了每个概念的主要属性。一个新的维度编码了概念的可测量性与不可测量性。后经典概念特别引发的另一个新的表征维度与四种认知过程相关，每种认知过程都与特定的脑区相连：（1）对无形事物进行推理，考虑到它们与直接经验和可观察性的分离；（2）评估与其他更可靠知识的一致性；（3）对不明显或不可观察的关系进行因果推理；（4）对由其他概念的多层次结构组成的大型知识组织进行知识管理。另外两个先前在物理专业学生中发现的潜在维度，即周期性和数学公式化，在这个教师样本中也存在。使用稳定响应体素的因子分析、与每个概念相关的激活模式的高斯朴素贝叶斯机器学习分类以及基于概念维度的独立评分预测与每个概念相关的激活模式的回归模型对数据进行了分析。研究结果表明，人类大脑根据神经表征的新维度系统地组织新的科学概念。
