研究人员开发了一种脑机接口，以测试大鼠能否通过灵活、目标导向和基于模型的方式控制其海马活动。研究人员发现，在虚拟现实竞技场中，大鼠只需激活并维持适当的海马表征，就能有效地导航或引导物体到达任意目标位置。这为人们深入了解记忆回忆、心理模拟和规划以及想象力的内在机制提供了启示，并为利用海马表征的高级神经假肢提供了可能性。
研究人员表示，海马对于回忆和想象经历至关重要。人们认为，这涉及自愿从海马记忆中提取人物、事件和地点的表征，包括熟悉环境的地图式表征。然而，这种“认知地图”中的表征是否能被意志调用还不得而知。
附：英文原文
Title: Volitional activation of remote place representations with a hippocampal brain–machine interface
Author: Chongxi Lai, Shinsuke Tanaka, Timothy D. Harris, Albert K. Lee
Issue&Volume: 2023-11-03
Abstract: The hippocampus is critical for recollecting and imagining experiences. This is believed to involve voluntarily drawing from hippocampal memory representations of people, events, and places, including maplike representations of familiar environments. However, whether representations in such “cognitive maps” can be volitionally accessed is unknown. We developed a brain–machine interface to test whether rats can do so by controlling their hippocampal activity in a flexible, goal-directed, and model-based manner. We found that rats can efficiently navigate or direct objects to arbitrary goal locations within a virtual reality arena solely by activating and sustaining appropriate hippocampal representations of remote places. This provides insight into the mechanisms underlying episodic memory recall, mental simulation and planning, and imagination and opens up possibilities for high-level neural prosthetics that use hippocampal representations.
DOI: adh5206
Source: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adh5206