Descripción del proyecto
La suma de todas nuestras experiencias le da significado a nuestras acciones
La cognición semántica se refiere a nuestra capacidad para utilizar la información que hemos adquirido a lo largo de una vida de aprendizaje y experiencias para facilitar innumerables comportamientos verbales y no verbales. Se basa en dos sistemas neuronales principales que interactúan entre sí: la representación y el control. Los circuitos neuronales que subyacen a este marco de cognición semántica controlada (CSC, por sus siglas en inglés) y la integración de estos dos sistemas neuronales se desconocen en gran medida. El proyecto financiado con fondos europeos MapInCSC estudia mediante experimentos ambos subsistemas en personas sanas y pacientes con trastornos semánticos. Los científicos del proyecto utilizan los datos de imágenes para modelar las redes dinámicas y caracterizar la causalidad de las interacciones en la salud y la enfermedad.
Objetivo
"People, places and things have ""meaning"" that we use to know who/what they are and what we can do with them. Our ability to use that knowledge –our ""Semantic Cognition""– is essential for making sense of what we see, enabling us to interact appropriately with the world. This important ability depends on two separate brain systems: the system of representations that encodes our conceptual knowledge and the system of control that manipulates activation within the representational system, generating appropriated behaviours. However, we do not yet know how the two systems interact. A fuller understanding of the semantic cognition depends on us uncovering this relationship in healthy behaviours and to know how is reshaped after brain damage/disruption. A joint account of both subsystems has been recently proposed by my supervisor: the Controlled Semantic Cognition (CSC). The key goal of this project is the neural computational modelling of the CSC and its disorders. I will model both semantic subsystems jointly for the first time by testing one healthy group and two patient groups with dissociated semantic disorders: semantic dementia (impaired in semantic representations); and semantic aphasia (impaired in semantic control). I will use different neuroimaging techniques such as DWMRI, fMRI and TMS in combination with the comparison between healthy controls and patients to model the dynamical causal networks, cross-validate the models and pinpoint the interactions between the semantic subnetworks, understanding how and under what circumstances they recruit each other. Our results will bring insights into how the brain manipulates information that gives rise semantic behaviours, advancing knowledge about a critical part of the human experience. Also in the implementation of methods for multimodal neuroimaging integration in the study of dynamics and plasticity in highly-distributed cognitive systems, such as CSC, in healthy and dysfunctional brains."
Ámbito científico
Palabras clave
Programa(s)
Régimen de financiación
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinador
CB2 1TN Cambridge
Reino Unido