?

‘Mind-reading’
‘This “mind-reading” experiment, is quite a sensationalist term,’ says Dr Demis Hassabis reflecting on the media response to a recent experiment, ‘but it’s not entirely incorrect either.’ Hassabis is one of a group of Wellcome Trust researchers based at University College London, who have been looking at how memory is stored in the brain. ‘I am interested in auto-biographical memory, events in our lives, what makes us who we are,’ says Hassabis. ‘That is the type of memory that goes first in Amnesia, in Alzheimer’s, it’s the most vulnerable because it is also the most complex memory.’? The team is looking for what is encoded by memory when people experience something, and are exploring the hippocampus, the part of the brain critical for memory.?
?
Higher-level thinking
‘People have done experiments,’ says Hassabis, ‘where they have shown participants pictures of cars and people, and they worked out from their brain activity what they were looking at.’ What they haven’t been able to identify is higher-level thinking, such as spatial memory. Before he completed his Doctorate, Hassabis was a well-known computer games developer, and he brought this expertise to this project.

‘We basically created an experiment with a virtual reality environment,’ says Hassabis, ‘which people navigated around, like playing Quake. The only task you had to do is walk from A to B to C to D, four pre-described positions in a green room and a blue room.’ When participants reached the assigned point they pressed a button, eyes down to the floor so they weren’t registering any image in particular, while brain activity was being scanned the whole time.

Spatial memory
‘We showed,’ explains Hassabis, ‘that just from activity in the hippocampus, we can predict where somebody was standing in the room. We are in some sense looking at the internal representation of space in the person’s brain. The only difference in each position is the person’s internal map of where they are. We were the first to show a high-level thought, a high-level memory, and investigate the nature of that in the human brain.’ The key says Hassabis, is that if you know what makes something memorable, you could develop a therapy to, ‘emphasize those aspects that we know are good for something being memorable.’

大腦解讀
“這項實驗的叫‘大腦解讀’，這名字聽上去可夠有轟動效應(yīng)的?！?回憶起媒體對這項試驗的反應(yīng)，戴米斯?哈薩比斯說，“但這也不完全不對?！惫_比斯是倫敦大學(xué)學(xué)院的一名維康基金會研究員。他主要研究記憶是如何儲存在大腦中的?！拔业难芯颗d趣是人的自傳式記憶，我們生命中各種事件和我們?nèi)绾涡纬勺约簜€性的，”哈薩比斯說?！叭绻藗兓忌狭诉z忘癥或阿爾茨海默氏癥（又稱早老性癡呆癥），自傳式記憶將最先消失。這種記憶最容易受損，因為它是最復(fù)雜的記憶?！惫_比斯所在的研究隊伍正試圖發(fā)現(xiàn)，當(dāng)人們經(jīng)歷一個事件時，是什么被編碼在了記憶里。他們還在進(jìn)行海馬區(qū)的掃描工作。這一區(qū)域?qū)τ洃泚碚f至關(guān)重要。

高級記憶
哈薩比斯說：“人們對大腦進(jìn)行過很多實驗。比如，科學(xué)家給人們出示汽車或人物的圖片，并通過研究人腦的活動判斷他們所看的圖片內(nèi)容。” 但是，這些實驗還沒有涉及人的高級記憶，比如空間記憶。在完成自己博士學(xué)位之前，哈薩比斯就已經(jīng)是一個知名的電腦游戲開發(fā)人了，他把自己這方面的專業(yè)知識應(yīng)用到該項目的研究中來。

“我們利用虛擬現(xiàn)實技術(shù)設(shè)計了這個實驗，”哈薩比斯說，“人們可以在這個虛擬世界自由行動，就像玩《雷神之錘》游戲一樣。這里面你唯一要完成的任務(wù)就是從A點走到B點再走到C點再走到D點。這四個預(yù)先設(shè)定好的點分布在一間綠屋子和一間藍(lán)屋子里?！?參與者到達(dá)一個預(yù)定點后就按一下按鈕。然后眼睛看地板，這樣他的大腦就不會接收任何別的圖像。這時科學(xué)家會對他的大腦活動進(jìn)行掃描。

空間記憶
“實驗顯示，”哈薩比斯說，“單從觀察海馬區(qū)的活動，我們就能預(yù)測出實驗參與者在房間中的位置。從某種程度上講，我們在觀察大腦對空間的內(nèi)部反映。各個點的唯一不同在于它們在大腦內(nèi)部地圖上位置的不同。我們是第一個做到呈現(xiàn)人類這種高級思維和高級記憶的。我們正在對這種記憶的屬性進(jìn)行研究。”哈薩比斯說，研究的重要性在于，如果我們能夠發(fā)現(xiàn)是什么因素使某個事件進(jìn)入記憶，我們就能研究出一種治療方式，用來“強化那些使人們獲得記憶的因素。”

?

?

該內(nèi)容來源于英國總領(lǐng)事館文化教育處
?