近日，伦敦大学学院刘云哲博士及其团队的研究发现，人类大脑的重演模式会自发地重新组织经验来帮助新的学习。2019年7月25日出版的《细胞》杂志发表了这项成果。

该研究组首先训练参与者熟悉一个定义对象顺序的规则，然后打乱排序规则呈现一组新的对象。在两项研究中，研究人员观察到这些新对象的代表性特征在随后的休息中被重新激活。与啮齿类动物一样，人类“重播”事件的时间序列比实际经历要快，而且在获得奖励后，它们的方向会发生逆转。值得注意的是，重放并不只是简单地视觉再现，而是与所获得的关于排序原则的知识背景相一致。此外，每一次重播包含的不仅仅是相关物体的感官表征。在感知对象表征前50毫秒的时刻，优先产生一个由序列位置和序列标识码构成的编码。该研究组认为这种分解式序列有助于利用前期的学习经验来了解新的对象。

研究人员表示，从前期的经验中获取的知识有助于应对新的学习过程。基于这个结论，研究人员想了解前期获取的经验能否迅速参与大脑重演并指导新的体验。

附：英文原文

Title: Human Replay Spontaneously Reorganizes Experience

Author: Raymond J. Dolan, Zeb Kurth-Nelson, Timothy E.J. Behrens, Yunzhe Liu

Issue&Volume: Volume 178 Issue 3

Abstract: Knowledge abstracted from previous experiences can be transferred to aid new learning. Here, we asked whether such abstract knowledge immediately guides the replay of new experiences. We first trained participants on a rule defining an ordering of objects and then presented a novel set of objects in a scrambled order. Across two studies, we observed that representations of these novel objects were reactivated during a subsequent rest. As in rodents, human “replay” events occurred in sequences accelerated in time, compared to actual experience, and reversed their direction after a reward. Notably, replay did not simply recapitulate visual experience, but followed instead a sequence implied by learned abstract knowledge. Furthermore, each replay contained more than sensory representations of the relevant objects. A sensory code of object representations was preceded 50 ms by a code factorized into sequence position and sequence identity. We argue that this factorized representation facilitates the generalization of a previously learned structure to new objects.

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2019.06.012

Source: https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(19)30640-3#