小柯机器人

美国普林斯顿大学Timothy J. Buschman课题组发现工作记忆和注意力控制背后的共享机制。该研究于2021年3月31日在线发表于国际一流学术期刊《自然》。

研究人员发现，从工作记忆和注意感官刺激中选择的背后具有共享的机制。研究人员训练了恒河猴在两个任务之间切换，要么从工作记忆中保存的一组项目中选择一项，要么从一组视觉刺激中进行一项刺激。神经记录表明，前额叶皮层中的相似表示编码了对选择和注意力的控制，这表明前额叶皮层起着域通用控制器的作用。相比之下，注意力和选择都分别在顶叶和视觉皮层中表现出来。选择和注意都通过增强和转换所选记忆或参与刺激的表示来促进行为。

具体来说，在选择任务期间，最初在前额叶皮层中神经活动的独立子空间中表示记忆项。选择一个项目会导致其表示形式从其自己的子空间转换为用于指导行为的新子空间。发生了类似的变化以引起注意。这些结果表明，前额叶皮层通过动态转换表示来控制认知计算的内容和时间，从而控制认知。 

据悉，认知控制通过调控大脑中信息的表达方式、时间和方式来指导行为。例如，注意力控制感觉处理。前额叶和顶叶皮层自上而下的信号增强了与任务相关刺激的表达。人们认为，类似的“选择”机制可以控制“记住”的表示形式，即在工作记忆中。

附：英文原文

Title: Shared mechanisms underlie the control of working memory and attention

Author: Matthew F. Panichello, Timothy J. Buschman

Issue&Volume: 2021-03-31

Abstract: Cognitive control guides behaviour by controlling what, when, and how information is represented in the brain1. For example, attention controls sensory processing; top-down signals from prefrontal and parietal cortex strengthen the representation of task-relevant stimuli2,3,4. A similar ‘selection’ mechanism is thought to control the representations held ‘in mind’—in working memory5,6,7,8,9,10. Here we show that shared neural mechanisms underlie the selection of items from working memory and attention to sensory stimuli. We trained rhesus monkeys to switch between two tasks, either selecting one item from a set of items held in working memory or attending to one stimulus from a set of visual stimuli. Neural recordings showed that similar representations in prefrontal cortex encoded the control of both selection and attention, suggesting that prefrontal cortex acts as a domain-general controller. By contrast, both attention and selection were represented independently in parietal and visual cortex. Both selection and attention facilitated behaviour by enhancing and transforming the representation of the selected memory or attended stimulus. Specifically, during the selection task, memory items were initially represented in independent subspaces of neural activity in prefrontal cortex. Selecting an item caused its representation to transform from its own subspace to a new subspace used to guide behaviour. A similar transformation occurred for attention. Our results suggest that prefrontal cortex controls cognition by dynamically transforming representations to control what and when cognitive computations are engaged.

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03390-w

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03390-w

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