Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.
School of Psychology, Swansea University, Swansea, United Kingdom.
Elife. 2023 Sep 29;12:e84086. doi: 10.7554/eLife.84086.
Previous research has highlighted the role of glutamate and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) in perceptual, cognitive, and motor tasks. However, the exact involvement of these neurochemical mechanisms in the chain of information processing, and across human development, is unclear. In a cross-sectional longitudinal design, we used a computational approach to dissociate cognitive, decision, and visuomotor processing in 293 individuals spanning early childhood to adulthood. We found that glutamate and GABA within the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) explained unique variance in visuomotor processing, with higher glutamate predicting poorer visuomotor processing in younger participants but better visuomotor processing in mature participants, while GABA showed the opposite pattern. These findings, which were neurochemically, neuroanatomically and functionally specific, were replicated ~21 mo later and were generalized in two further different behavioral tasks. Using resting functional MRI, we revealed that the relationship between IPS neurochemicals and visuomotor processing is mediated by functional connectivity in the visuomotor network. We then extended our findings to high-level cognitive behavior by predicting fluid intelligence performance. We present evidence that fluid intelligence performance is explained by IPS GABA and glutamate and is mediated by visuomotor processing. However, this evidence was obtained using an uncorrected alpha and needs to be replicated in future studies. These results provide an integrative biological and psychological mechanistic explanation that links cognitive processes and neurotransmitters across human development and establishes their potential involvement in intelligent behavior.
先前的研究强调了谷氨酸和γ-氨基丁酸（GABA）在感知、认知和运动任务中的作用。然而，这些神经化学机制在信息处理链中的具体作用，以及在人类整个发展过程中的作用仍不清楚。在一项横断纵向设计中，我们使用计算方法来区分 293 名个体在从儿童早期到成年期的认知、决策和视动加工。我们发现，顶内沟（IPS）内的谷氨酸和 GABA 可以解释视动加工的独特差异，较高的谷氨酸预示着年轻参与者的视动加工较差，但成熟参与者的视动加工较好，而 GABA 则呈现相反的模式。这些发现具有神经化学、神经解剖和功能特异性，在大约 21 个月后得到了复制，并在另外两个不同的行为任务中得到了推广。使用静息功能磁共振成像，我们揭示了 IPS 神经化学物质与视动加工之间的关系是由视动网络中的功能连接介导的。然后，我们将研究结果扩展到高级认知行为，预测流体智力表现。我们提出的证据表明，流体智力表现可以通过 IPS GABA 和谷氨酸来解释，并且可以通过视动加工来介导。然而，这一证据是使用未校正的 alpha 获得的，需要在未来的研究中进行复制。这些结果提供了一个综合的生物学和心理学机制解释，将认知过程和神经递质联系起来，贯穿人类的发展，并确定它们在智能行为中的潜在作用。
