尤里卡! 开创性的研究揭示了“有意识意识”的起源
When an infant’s foot is tethered to the mobile, each foot movement causes the mobile to move. Positive feedback amplifies and highlights the cause-and-effect relationship between infant and mobile motion.
生物有目的地行动. 但目标从何而来? How do humans make sense of their relation to the world and realize their ability to effect change? 这些基本问题 机构 – acting with purpose – have perplexed some of the greatest minds in history including Sir Isaac Newton, 查尔斯·达尔文, Erwin Schrödinger和Niels Bohr.
A KU体育官网APP study reveals groundbreaking insight into the origins of 机构 using an unusual and largely untapped source – human babies. Since goal-directed action appears in the first months of human life, the 能力 研究 team used young infants as a test field to understand how spontaneous movement transforms into purposeful action.
For the study, infants began the experiment as disconnected observers. 然而, when 研究ers tethered one of the infants’ feet to a crib-mounted baby mobile, 婴儿发现他们可以移动手机. To catch this moment of realization like lightning in a bottle, 研究ers measured infant and mobile movement in 3D space using cutting-edge motion capture technology to uncover dynamic and coordinative features marking the “birth of 机构.”
研究结果发表在 美国国家科学院院刊, 为这个古老的难题提供一个解决方案. Analysis and dynamical modeling of experiments on human infants suggest that 机构 emerges from the coupled relation between the organism (baby) 还有环境 (mobile). 但如何 完全 这种情况会发生吗??
When an infant’s foot is tethered to the mobile, each foot movement causes the mobile to move. 人们认为手机移动得越多, 婴儿被刺激得越动, 产生更多的移动动作.
“Positive feedback amplifies and highlights the cause-and-effect relationship between infant and mobile motion,” J.A. 斯科特·凯尔索, Ph.D., senior author and Glenwood and Martha Creech Eminent Scholar in Science at the 复杂系统和脑科学中心 在能力的 查尔斯·E. 施密特理学院. “在某种关键的协调水平上, the infant recognizes its causal powers and transitions from spontaneous to intentional behavior. 这个啊! moment is marked by an abrupt increase in infant movement rate.”
艾丽莎·斯隆博士.D., lead author and a postdoctoral 研究 scientist in 能力’s 复杂系统和脑科学中心, 形成一个定量的“啊哈”!” detector to search for abrupt increases in infant movement rate related to sudden infant discovery.
Sloan’s technique demonstrated that the “birth” of 机构 can be quantified as a “eureka-like,” pattern-changing phase transition within a dynamical system that spans the baby, 大脑, 还有环境. The system switches from a less correlated state to a state where both movements of the mobile and the tethered limb are highly coordinated as the infant discovers its functional connection to the mobile.
Although the basic design of the experiment has been used in developmental 研究 since the late 1960s, related 研究 traditionally focused solely on infant activity, 将婴儿和环境视为独立的实体. 在50年的正式婴儿车实验中, the 能力 study is the first to directly measure the motion of the mobile and to use coordinative analysis to provide quantified observations of the emergence of human 机构.
The new approach used in this study frames 机构 as an emergent property from the functional coupling of organism and environment. 研究ers took a deep dive into the baby-mobile interaction through the eyes of Coordination Dynamics – Kelso and colleagues’ theory of how complex living things are coordinated (from cells to society) and how function and order emerge.
Although it was expected that infants would discover their control over the mobile through their coordinated action with the mobile, 婴儿停顿的模式是惊人的.
“Our findings demonstrate that it’s not just the infants’ active movements that matter,” 南希·琼斯, Ph.D.，合著者，能力教授 心理学系 也是能力的主任 波 实验室.
完整的婴儿运动协调分析, 移动运动及其相互作用, found that the emergence of 机构 is a punctuated self-organizing process, 在运动和静止中都能找到意义.
“The babies in our study have revealed something really profound: that there is action in the midst of inaction, 在行动中无所作为. Both provide meaningful information to the infant exploring the world and its place in it,” 凯尔索说. “The coordination dynamics of movement and stillness jointly constitute the unity of the baby’s conscious awareness – that they can make things happen in the world. 故意.”
The 能力 study also revealed that infants navigate functional coupling with the mobile in different ways. Distinct clusters in the timing and degree of bursts of infant activity were detected, suggesting that behavioral phenotypes (observable characteristics) of agentive discovery exist – and that dynamics provide a means to identify them. This novel phenotyping method may be useful for preventive care and early treatment of infants at risk.
The study was conducted in the Human Brain and Behavior 实验室 within the 能力 复杂系统和脑科学中心.
This 研究 was supported by the 能力 Foundation and by National Institute of Mental 健康 (MH-080838) of the National 研究院 of 健康.
能力,