Cognitive Advantage Performance And Brain Basis Of GO Experts

GO experts can quickly and accurately memorize chess manual,just as other memory experts can memorize domain-specific materials.To explain this advantage,cognitive psychologists believe that memory experts learn to combine different materials,and then through long-term training,their memory skills are constantly improved(such as template theory,long-term working memory theory).Correspondingly,cognitive neuroscientists believe that this enhanced ability may be related to activation of specific brain regions(such as hippocampus),especially functional networks in brain regions(such as decreased activation of prefrontal cortex in working memory area and increased activation of medial temporal structure in long-term memory area).Based on the above research orientation,this study will continue to explore more cognitive advantages of GO experts.More importantly,this study holds that the cognitive advantages of GO experts are not only embodied in individual cognition,but also in interaction with others,which is embodied in the dynamics and flexibility of cognition.These cognitive characteristics can be found in the brain activities of experts and brain-to-brain related activities of opponents.In order to study the cognitive characteristics and brain basis of GO experts,five experiments were designed in this study.The two previous experiments mainly used the experimental paradigm of expert-novice comparison from the perspective of individual cognition to explore the memory and computational characteristics and brain basis of GO experts.The latte three experiments used the experimental paradigm of two people play GO game from the perspective of interactive cognition to explore the decision-making characteristics and brain basis of GO experts.Near infrared brain imaging technology was used in all experiments.This technology can not only collect the data of the individual brain activity of GO players in the task,but also the data of the brain communication and interaction activities of two GO playersin the same task at the same time.From the perspective of individual cognition,it is found that GO experts do have an advantage in memorizing the meaningful domain-specific materials,which is related to the activity of the brain region(dorsolateral prefrontal cortex,DLPFC)in encoding and extraction stage(Experiment 1).Similarly,GO experts have an advantage in calculating related tasks(calculating their own situation and points on the GO board),and this advantage is related to the enhancement of brain activation in the right inferior parietal lobe cortex(located in the temporal parietal junction,TPJ).Brain activation plays a complete mediating role between expert training years and computational efficiency(experiment 2).From the perspective of interactive cognition,the average response speed of each step is fast when both players use the same mode,and there is significant inter-brain synchronization in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.The inter-brain synchronization is related to the difference of experience level between experts(experiment 3).Experts have significant inter-brain synchronization in the temporal parietal junction in the opening stage,especially in the fixed pattern game stage.The number of the opening stage accelerates the speed of interaction between players,and the level of experience of matching experts is negatively correlated with the difference of inter-brain synchronization between the two stages.The direction of brain information flow is the state of “highly experienced low experienced”(experiment 4).In the course of playing the whole GO game,there are significant inter-brain synchronization in the temporal parietal junction in the opening stage and the ending stage of Go game.There are significant differences in response time and inter-brain synchronization in the three stages of the GO game.In the opening stage,response time is the fastest and the inter-brain synchronization is the highest,followed by the ending stage.The middle stage has the longest response time and there is no inter-brain synchronization.The direction of brain information flow in the opening and ending stage is from “winner to loser”(experiment 5).The results show that the cognitive advantage of Go experts is closely related to the activities of two brain regions: one is the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex,which is related to memory(GO board position;experiment 1)and situation judgment(dead or live question: experiment 3);the other is the temporal parietal junction area,which is related to GO game calculation(experiment 2),GO decision-making(experiment 4,5).This brain region may be related to the dynamic cognitive process of Go game.These brain activities reflect some differences in different cognitive stages,such as encoding and extraction,making decision process,and so on,which confirm the dynamics and flexibility of GO expertise.This study is helpful to further reveal the essence and causes of GO expertise by discussing the cognitive advantage of GO experts in various aspects and their brain basis.At the same time,it provides a new way in research methods(multi-person interaction research paradigm),in order to understand the essence of human Go ability,and provide some inspiration for future Go artificial intelligence.