周一精读:注意力可以人为改善吗

Zapping the Brain to UnderstandAttention

刺激大脑了解注意力

Understanding how the brain reroutesinformation could lead to technology that keeps sleepless soldiers focused ontheir task

了解大脑科技怎么改变大脑信息让值班士兵专注他们的任务

This article was produced for AMEDD byScientific American Custom Media, a division separate from the magazine's boardof editors.

 

本文出版于美国陆军医疗部下面一个独立的编辑部公告。

By the middle of the nextdecade, soldiers will be working with technology so closely that they will seemto be a single system, says Javier Garcia, a neuroscientist at Army Research Laboratory(ARL) in Adelphi, Maryland. To achieve such seamless integration, artificialintelligence agents must understand and predict what humans are doing, thenreact accordingly. To enable that to happen, Garcia is shooting magnetic pulsesinto brains.

马里兰州阿德菲陆军研究实验室 (ARL) 的神经科学家哈维尔·加西亚 (Javier Garcia) 表示，到下一个十年中期，士兵将与技术密切合作成一个单一的系统。为了实现这种无缝集成，人工智能代理要理解和预测人类在做什么，然后做出相应的反应，为了实现这一点，加西亚正在向大脑发射磁脉冲。

Those magnetic pulses target a specificpart of the brain and mimic stroke damage there. By observing how the brainrecovers, Garcia can learn rules that govern how it reroutes information aroundcompromised areas. AI agents that understand those rerouting rules might beable to work around these problems as they arise. “If we could build apredictive model, the agent could be aware of the state of the human—and thenmaybe there could be some intervention,” Garcia says.

这些磁脉冲针对大脑的特定部位并模拟那里的中风损伤然后观察大脑如何恢复，加西亚可以学习如何控制在受损区域周围的重建路径和规则。了解这些重新路由规则的人工智能代理也许能在这些问题出现时解决这些问题。加西亚说：“如果我们能建立一个预测模型，人工智能就可以知道人类的状态——然后也许进行一些干预，”

Such interventions could sharpen thewaning attention of a sleepless soldier in a situation where distraction couldbe the difference between life or death.

这种干预或许可以迅速加剧不眠士兵在危急情况下分散的注意力。

More than a century of research,including neurological studies of people who have suffered brain damage, havemapped functions to specific areas of the brain. But scientists also know thatinjury to one area of the brain can affect functioning in another, an effectknown as diaschisis. This is because each brain area is also part of largerbrain networks.

超过一个多世纪对脑部受损的人的神经研究，已能将功能映射到大脑的特定区域，但科学家们也知道，大脑一个区域的损伤会影响另一个区域的功能，这种效应被称为神经失常。这是因为每个大脑区域是更大的大脑网络的一部分。

Garcia wants to understand how the brainreorganizes those networks to compensate for damage. To find out, he and histeam simulated the effects of a stroke by placing magnets on each subject’sskull, and sending a pulse into their head every second for 15 minutes. Thisrepetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) temporarily quieted theneural activity of the targeted area and disrupted brain networks. Subjectsthen lay in a functional MRI (fMRI) scanner and kept track of images ofspinning pinwheels, while Garcia and the team collected data that monitoredtheir brain activity.

 

By comparing how well the subjects did on subsequent runs of this trackingtask, the researchers could visualize how the brain quickly learned tocompensate for the simulated damage. The networks returned to normal in about15 minutes, the team reported last year in the journal ScientificReports.

该团队在去年的科学期刊上表示通过跟踪比较受试者在此任务的后续运行中的表现，研究人员可以想象大脑如何快速补偿模拟的损伤，神经网络在大约 15 分钟后恢复正常，

“This shows us the resilience of thebrain,” Garcia says. “And maybe it’s something that can be harnessed tomaintain or increase the performance of an individual.” If an agent couldpredict a fall in a person’s attention, he says, it could potentially use somesort of cue to refocus it—not necessarily magnetic stimulation, but perhaps anaudio or visual cue.

 

加西亚说到：这告诉我们大脑的弹性，或许它可以用来维持或提高个人的表现。如果人工智能体可以预测一个人的注意力下降，它可能会使用某种提示来重新聚焦——不一定是磁刺激，但可能是音频或视觉提示。

 

Zap （尤指蓄意）破坏、谋杀；用微波炉蒸

      We’re really going to zap the competition withthis new product.

      我们这个新产品无人能及。

      迅速去某处、快速做

      Have I got time to zap into town and dosomething?

      我有时间到市区去买些东西吗？

 

Reroute 改变…的路线/给…复位路线

 

AMEDD( American Medical Department )美国陆军医疗部

 

Division 分配、分配方法、部门、级别、分歧、不和、废除

The sales division销售部

The team plays in one of the lower divisions.

低一级队伍的队员

 

Separate 各自的/单独的/不同的/使分开/分离/分居

You can’t separate morality from politics.

你不能把政治和道德分开。

 

Seamless 无缝的/连续的

The intention to achieve a seamless transition with acontinuity of management.

目的是保持管理层连续性实现顺利的转变。

 

Accordingly 相应地/照着

When we receive your instructions we will act accordingly.

我们接到你的指令就会遵命行事。

 

Pulse 脉搏/震动/脉冲

 

Compromise妥协/让步/折中/和解

 

Repetitive（尤指乏味的方式）重复的反复的方式