VEN神经元通过快慢路径权衡实现社交决策速度与准确性的生物机制。
The Fast Lane Hypothesis: Von Economo Neurons Implement a Biological Speed-Accuracy Tradeoff
- 将VEN建模为快速漏电积分-发放神经元，与普通锥体神经元并行工作。
- 典型条件下决策速度最快（均值20.7ms），自闭症样条件次之（26.9ms），FTD样最慢。
- 首次提出并验证了VEN在快速社交决策中起关键作用的计算模型。
von Economo神经元（VENs）是仅存在于人类、类人猿、鲸类和大象等具有复杂社会认知物种前扣带皮层（ACC）和前岛叶中的大型双极投射神经元。其在额颞叶痴呆（FTD）中选择性丢失及自闭症中发育异常，提示其参与快速社交决策，但此前缺乏计算模型。本文提出‘快车道假说’：VENs通过提供稀疏且快速的投射通路，实现速度-准确性权衡（SAT），使快速社交决策以牺牲精细处理精度为代价。我们在包含2000个锥体神经元的脉冲皮层电路中，将VEN建模为快速漏电积分-发放神经元（τ=5ms，输入数=8），与标准锥体神经元（τ=20ms，输入数=80）并行，在社交辨别任务上训练。评估三种临床相关条件：典型（2% VENs）、自闭症样（0.4% VENs）和FTD样（训练后移除VENs），共10组随机种子。所有配置最终分类准确率相当（约99.4%），表明VENs调节决策速度而非表征能力。VENs的中位首次放电延迟比锥体神经元早4毫秒，直接证明存在快速信号通路。在固定阈值θ=3下，典型条件显著快于FTD样（t=-23.31, p<0.0001），自闭症样条件居中（平均反应时间26.91±9.01ms vs. 典型20.70±2.02ms；p=0.078，呈趋势）。此为首个探究VEN实际计算功能的计算模型。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
von Economo neurons (VENs) are large bipolar projection neurons found exclusively in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and frontal insula of species with complex social cognition, including humans, great apes, cetaceans, and elephants. Their selective depletion in frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and altered development in autism implicate them in rapid social decision-making, yet no computational model of VEN function has previously existed. We introduce the Fast Lane Hypothesis: VENs implement a biological speed-accuracy tradeoff (SAT) by providing a sparse, fast projection pathway that enables rapid social decisions at the cost of deliberate processing accuracy. We model VENs as fast leaky integrate-and-fire (LIF) neurons (tau=5ms, fan-in=8) alongside standard pyramidal neurons (tau=20ms, fan-in=80) within a spiking cortical circuit (N_pyr=2,000) trained on a social discrimination task. Networks are evaluated under three clinically motivated conditions across 10 independent random seeds: typical (2% VENs), autism-like (0.4% VENs), and FTD-like (post-training VEN ablation). All configurations achieve equivalent asymptotic classification accuracy (~99.4%), consistent with the prediction that VENs modulate decision speed rather than representational capacity. VENs produce median first-spike latencies 4ms earlier than pyramidal neurons, providing direct evidence of a fast signalling pathway. At a fixed decision threshold of theta=3, the typical condition is significantly faster than FTD-like (t=-23.31, p<0.0001), while the autism-like condition is intermediate (mean RT=26.91+/-9.01ms vs. typical 20.70+/-2.02ms; p=0.078, trending). To our knowledge, this is the first computational model that asks what a von Economo neuron actually computes.
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