题 目：Heritable aspects of biological motion perception and its
covariation with autistic traits
主讲人：蒋毅 教授（中国科学院心理研究所）
时 间: 2019年10月25日（星期五）上午10:00 - 11:00
地 点：心院214会议室
讲座摘要：
The ability to detect biological motion (BM) and decipher the meaning therein is essential to human survival and social interaction. However, at the individual level, we are not equally equipped with this ability. In particular, impaired BM perception and abnormal neural responses to BM have been observed in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a highly heritable neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by devastating social deficits. Here, we examined the underlying sources of individual differences in two abilities fundamental to BM perception (i.e., the abilities to process local kinematic and global configurational information of BM) and explored whether BM perception shares a common genetic origin with autistic traits. Using the classical twin method, we found reliable genetic influences on BM perception and revealed a clear dissociation between its two components—whereas genes account for about 50% of the individual variation in local BM processing, global BM processing is largely shaped by environment. Critically, participants’ sensitivity to local BM cues was negatively correlated with their autistic traits through the dimension of social communication, with the covariation largely mediated by shared genetic effects. These findings demonstrate that the ability to process BM, especially with regard to its inherent kinetics, is heritable. They also advance our understanding of the sources of the linkage between autistic symptoms and BM perception deficits, opening up the possibility of treating the ability to process local BM information as a distinct hallmark of social cognition.
主讲人简介：
蒋毅，中国科学院心理研究所研究员、中国科学院大学特聘教授、博士生导师。主要利用心理物理学实验范式结合脑功能成像技术研究无意识视觉信息加工的神经机制以及面孔和生物运动的特异性视知觉表征机制，研究工作发表在Nature Neuroscience, PNAS, Current Biology, eLife, Brain和Psychological Science等，曾获得中国青年科技奖，并入选中国科学院“百人计划”、国家“万人计划”青年拔尖人才和科技创新领军人才等，获得国家杰出青年科学基金等资助。