近日，发表于PNAS的一项研究发现，大脑自发活动的个体差异可能有助于解释一个人执行类似于在电子游戏中遇到的视觉区分任务的速度和准确度。
Antonello Baldassarre及其同事设计了一个游戏，在这个游戏中，健康的受试者被要求报告在一个显示屏的某处闪动的倒转的字母“T”是否存在。当玩家至少在80%的情况下正确地定位这些字母而没有被以不同方向显示的字母T分散注意力的时候，他们就成功了。就在这项任务之前，这组科研人员使用功能磁共振扫描记录下了每一位玩家静息时候的自发大脑活动。
该研究表明，视觉皮层内部以及视觉皮层和大脑前部区域之间的互联性预测了之后在这个任务中的表现。
互联性强的玩家表现出最初的高准确性并且很快地学习了这个任务，但是与其他玩家相比改善率较慢。相反，互联性弱的玩家早期成绩差，而随着时间推移，与其他玩家相比改善率提高较快。
这组作者说，这些发现表明在不熟悉的知觉任务上的成绩的个体差异可能反映了大脑自发活动的个体差异。（生物谷Bioon.com）
doi:10.1073/pnas.1113148109
PMC:
PMID:
Individual variability in functional connectivity predicts performance of a perceptual task
Antonello Baldassarrea,Christopher M. Lewisa,Giorgia Committeria,Abraham Z. Snyderd,
Gian Luca Romania and Maurizio Corbettaa
People differ in their ability to perform novel perceptual tasks, both during initial exposure and in the rate of improvement with practice. It is also known that regions of the brain recruited by particular tasks change their activity during learning. Here we investigate neural signals predictive of individual variability in performance. We used resting-state functional MRI to assess functional connectivity before training on a novel visual discrimination task. Subsequent task performance was related to functional connectivity measures within portions of visual cortex and between visual cortex and prefrontal association areas. Our results indicate that individual differences in performing novel perceptual tasks can be related to individual differences in spontaneous cortical activity.
