小柯机器人

荷兰神经科学研究所P. R. Roelfsema等研究人员合作发现，代词重新激活人类海马神经元中的概念表征。相关论文于2024年9月27日发表在《科学》杂志上。

研究人员在阅读任务中记录了人类海马体中的单个神经元。当细胞对特定名词具有选择性时，之后代词也会重新激活这些细胞偏好的名词。这些结果表明，概念细胞有助于在语言理解过程中快速而动态的语义记忆网络。

据悉，在话语理解过程中，每个新词都增加了对意义的不断演变的表征，这些表征在连续的句子中不断累积，并限制下一个词的使用。为了最小化重复和发言长度，语言使用代词，如“她”，来指代之前引入的名词和短语。有研究表明，语言理解要求代词激活与名词相同的神经表征。

附：英文原文

Title: Pronouns reactivate conceptual representations in human hippocampal neurons

Author: D. E. Dijksterhuis, M. W. Self, J. K. Possel, J. C. Peters, E. C. W. van Straaten, S. Idema, J. C. Baaijen, S. M. A. van der Salm, E. J. Aarnoutse, N. C. E. van Klink, P. van Eijsden, S. Hanslmayr, R. Chelvarajah, F. Roux, L. D. Kolibius, V. Sawlani, D. T. Rollings, S. Dehaene, P. R. Roelfsema

Issue&Volume: 2024-09-27

Abstract: During discourse comprehension, every new word adds to an evolving representation of meaning that accumulates over consecutive sentences and constrains the next words. To minimize repetition and utterance length, languages use pronouns, like the word “she,” to refer to nouns and phrases that were previously introduced. It has been suggested that language comprehension requires that pronouns activate the same neuronal representations as the nouns themselves. We recorded from individual neurons in the human hippocampus during a reading task. Cells that were selective to a particular noun were later reactivated by pronouns that refer to the cells’ preferred noun. These results imply that concept cells contribute to a rapid and dynamic semantic memory network that is recruited during language comprehension.

DOI: adr2813

Source: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adr2813