小柯机器人

英国牛津大学Thomas Akam，Timothy E. J. Behrens和Veronika Samborska等研究人员共同合作近期取得重要工作进展，他们研究发现海马和前额叶皮层的互补任务表征可用于概括相关问题之间得共同结构。相关论文2022年9月28日在线发表于《自然—神经科学》杂志上。

为了研究大脑是如何做到这一点的，研究人员用一系列具有相同结构但有不同物理实现的逆转学习问题来训练老鼠。各个问题的表现都有所改善，表明知识的转移。尽管感觉运动相关性不同，内侧前额叶皮层（mPFC）中的神经元在不同问题上保持相似的表征，而海马（dCA1）表征受每个问题细节的影响更大。对于包含每次试验的事件的表征，以及在多次试验中综合选择和结果来指导动物决策的表征，都是如此。

这些数据表明，前额叶皮层和海马在知识泛化概括方面发挥着互补的作用。PFC抽象出相关问题之间的共同结构，而海马将这种结构映射到当前情况的具体细节上。

据了解，人类和其他动物不费吹灰之力就能概括先前的知识来解决新的问题，方法是抽象出共同的结构并将其映射到新的感觉运动特性上。

附：英文原文

Title: Complementary task representations in hippocampus and prefrontal cortex for generalizing the structure of problems

Author: Samborska, Veronika, Butler, James L., Walton, Mark E., Behrens, Timothy E. J., Akam, Thomas

Issue&Volume: 2022-09-28

Abstract: Humans and other animals effortlessly generalize prior knowledge to solve novel problems, by abstracting common structure and mapping it onto new sensorimotor specifics. To investigate how the brain achieves this, in this study, we trained mice on a series of reversal learning problems that shared the same structure but had different physical implementations. Performance improved across problems, indicating transfer of knowledge. Neurons in medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) maintained similar representations across problems despite their different sensorimotor correlates, whereas hippocampal (dCA1) representations were more strongly influenced by the specifics of each problem. This was true for both representations of the events that comprised each trial and those that integrated choices and outcomes over multiple trials to guide an animal’s decisions. These data suggest that prefrontal cortex and hippocampus play complementary roles in generalization of knowledge: PFC abstracts the common structure among related problems, and hippocampus maps this structure onto the specifics of the current situation.

DOI: 10.1038/s41593-022-01149-8

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-022-01149-8

Nature Neuroscience：《自然—神经科学》，创刊于1998年。隶属于施普林格·自然出版集团，最新IF：28.771
官方网址：https://www.nature.com/neuro/
投稿链接：https://mts-nn.nature.com/cgi-bin/main.plex