小柯机器人

研究揭示人类神经元如何编码对他人的看法
2021-01-29 14:12

美国哈佛医学院Ziv M. Williams小组揭示人类神经元如何编码对他人的看法。这一研究成果于2021年1月27日在线发表在国际学术期刊《自然》上。

通过人类背内侧前额叶皮层中的单细胞测序,研究人员可以鉴别出一些神经元,这些神经元可以在各种情况下可靠地编码有关他人看法的信息,并且可以将自我看法与其他看法相关的表现区分开来。通过进一步跟踪它们的编码动态,研究人员展示了这些单元如何表示其他人的看法,并准确地预测了它们是对还是错。研究人员还展示了这些细胞如何从他人的特定角度跟踪推断出的看法,以及它们的活动与行为表现之间的关系。这些发现共同揭示了人类背内侧前额叶皮层对他人看法的详细细胞加工过程,并确定了可以支持认知理论的候选神经元。 

据介绍,人类的社会行为主要取决于自身对他人进行推理的能力。心理理论的这种能力在社会认知中起着至关重要的作用,因为它不仅使人类不仅可以形成对其他人的想法和信念的理解,而且还可以理解他人可能与自己的不同。尽管人脑中的许多区域都与社交推理及其对多种社会心理疾病的破坏相关联,但人类心理理论基础的基本细胞机制仍然不确定。

附:英文原文

Title: Single-neuronal predictions of others’ beliefs in humans

Author: Mohsen Jamali, Benjamin L. Grannan, Evelina Fedorenko, Rebecca Saxe, Raymundo Bez-Mendoza, Ziv M. Williams

Issue&Volume: 2021-01-27

Abstract: Human social behaviour crucially depends on our ability to reason about others. This capacity for theory of mind has a vital role in social cognition because it enables us not only to form a detailed understanding of the hidden thoughts and beliefs of other individuals but also to understand that they may differ from our own1,2,3. Although a number of areas in the human brain have been linked to social reasoning4,5 and its disruption across a variety of psychosocial disorders6,7,8, the basic cellular mechanisms that underlie human theory of mind remain undefined. Here, using recordings from single cells in the human dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, we identify neurons that reliably encode information about others’ beliefs across richly varying scenarios and that distinguish self- from other-belief-related representations. By further following their encoding dynamics, we show how these cells represent the contents of the others’ beliefs and accurately predict whether they are true or false. We also show how they track inferred beliefs from another’s specific perspective and how their activities relate to behavioural performance. Together, these findings reveal a detailed cellular process in the human dorsomedial prefrontal cortex for representing another’s beliefs and identify candidate neurons that could support theory of mind.

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03184-0

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03184-0

Nature:《自然》,创刊于1869年。隶属于施普林格·自然出版集团,最新IF:69.504
官方网址:http://www.nature.com/
投稿链接:http://www.nature.com/authors/submit_manuscript.html


本期文章:《自然》:Online/在线发表

分享到:

0