Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 2B4, Canada.
Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 2B4, Canada.
Curr Biol. 2022 Jun 6;32(11):2467-2479.e4. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2022.04.029. Epub 2022 May 5.
Visual plasticity declines sharply after the critical period, yet we easily learn to recognize new faces and places, even as adults. Such learning is often characterized by a "moment of insight," an abrupt and dramatic improvement in recognition. The mechanisms that support abrupt learning are unknown, but one hypothesis is that they involve changes in synchronization between brain regions. To test this hypothesis, we used a behavioral task in which non-human primates rapidly learned to recognize novel images and to associate them with specific responses. Simultaneous recordings from inferotemporal and prefrontal cortices revealed a transient synchronization of neural activity between these areas that peaked around the moment of insight. Synchronization was strongest between inferotemporal sites that encoded images and reward-sensitive prefrontal sites. Moreover, its magnitude intensified gradually over image exposures, suggesting that abrupt learning is the culmination of a search for informative signals within a circuit linking sensory information to task demands.
视觉可塑性在关键期后急剧下降，但我们即使成年后也能轻松地学习识别新的面孔和地点。这种学习通常以“顿悟时刻”为特征，即识别能力突然而显著地提高。支持顿悟学习的机制尚不清楚，但有一种假设认为它们涉及到大脑区域之间同步性的变化。为了验证这一假设，我们使用了一种行为任务，在该任务中，非人类灵长类动物迅速学会了识别新的图像，并将它们与特定的反应联系起来。从中颞叶和前额叶皮层同时记录的神经活动显示，这些区域之间的神经活动同步性在顿悟时刻达到峰值，存在短暂的同步。在编码图像的中颞叶部位和对奖励敏感的前额叶部位之间，同步性最强。此外，随着图像曝光的增加，其幅度逐渐增强，这表明突然的学习是在一个将感觉信息与任务需求联系起来的回路中寻找信息信号的结果。
