来源：《新科学家》
原文刊登日期：2022年4月11日
Rhesus macaques appear to be as sensitive to their own heartbeats as human babies are, suggesting the monkeys have an awareness of their own bodily systems.
恒河猴似乎和人类婴儿一样对自己的心跳敏感，这表明猕猴对自己的身体系统有意识。
The findings could open doors to a better scientific understanding of certain neurological and mental conditions in humans, says Eliza Bliss-Moreau at the University of California, Davis.
加州大学戴维斯分校的伊莉莎·布利斯-莫罗说，这些发现可能为更好地科学理解人类某些神经和精神疾病打开大门。
Sensing one’s own heartbeat is one of the components of interoception, the capacity to detect the internal state of the body. Previous studies have suggested that, at least in humans, individual variations in our sensitivity to internal signals and how they are interpreted in the brain might be linked to our emotions, as well as to certain mental and neurological conditions.
感知自己的心跳是内感受的组成部分之一，内感受是一种检测身体内部状态的能力。此前的研究表明，至少在人类中，我们对内部信号的敏感性以及大脑对这些信号的解读方式的个体变化可能与我们的情绪以及某些精神和神经疾病有关。
Rhesus macaques have certain structures in the brain and nervous system that suggest they are capable of interoception, but this hasn’t previously been experimentally tested, says Bliss-Moreau.
布利斯-莫罗说，恒河猴的大脑和神经系统中有某些结构表明它们有内感知能力，但这一点以前没有经过实验测试。
She and her team came up with a way to test the hypothesis after hearing about a study that found evidence that human babies are sensitive to interoceptive signals.
她和她的团队在听到一项研究发现人类婴儿对内感知信号敏感的证据后，想出了一种方法来检验这一假设。
They monitored the heartbeat of four captive-born adult rhesus macaques while they watched videos that showed a blob-like image bouncing with a rhythm that was either slower, faster or the same as each monkey’s own heartbeat. The team repeated the tests until each monkey had voluntarily completed 100 trials in exchange for sips of fruit juice.
他们监测了四只圈养出生的成年恒河猴的心跳，研究人员让这些猴子观看一段视频，视频中有一个斑点状的图像，图像以慢于、快于或等于每只猴子心跳速率的速度跳动。研究小组重复这些试验，以换取小口果汁的方式，让每只猴子自愿完成100次试验。
Eye-tracking technology revealed that the monkeys watched the images for significantly longer when the blob’s beat was out of sync with their heartbeat – suggesting they found it surprising, says Bliss-Moreau. On average, the monkeys watched for long enough to see more than twice as many bounces when the beat was faster than their own heartbeat, and about one-and-a-half times as many when the beat was slower.
眼球追踪技术显示，当斑点的跳动与猴子的心跳不同步时，猴子看图像的时间明显更长——这表明它们感到惊讶，布利斯-莫罗说。平均而言，猴子观察的时间足够长时，当斑点跳动速度快于自己心跳时，它们观看的跳动次数是斑点跳动速度等于自己心跳时的两倍多，而当斑点跳动速度较慢时，它们观看的跳动次数是斑点跳动速度等于自己心跳时的1.5倍。
Like humans, there were individual differences, she says. “All the animals showed their own very consistent patterns and the magnitude of the patterns was totally consistent with what’s been seen with human babies,” she says. “That’s pretty exciting.”
她说，和人类一样，猴子间也存在个体差异。她说：“所有的动物都展示了他们自身非常一致的模式，模式的大小与人类婴儿的情况完全一致。这太令人兴奋了。”
Research has suggested that people’s responses to interoceptive signals may have a role in mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression and panic disorder, as well as neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer’s disease. Such responses may also have a role in autism. Bliss-Moreau suggests rhesus macaques might serve as useful models for further research into these conditions or forms of development.
研究表明，人们对内感受信号的反应可能与焦虑、抑郁和恐慌障碍等心理健康状况以及阿尔茨海默病等神经退行性疾病有关。这种反应可能在自闭症中也有作用。布利斯-莫罗认为恒河猴可以作为进一步研究这些疾病或发展形式的有用模型。
The findings add to a growing level of understanding with regard to the capacity of rhesus macaques for self-awareness, says Joey Charbonneau, another member of the team at the University of California, Davis. “There’s strong evidence already that they have these sorts of feelings of knowing things in the most psychological sense, and now we’re adding sort of a physiological component to that,” he says.
加州大学戴维斯分校研究小组的另一名成员乔伊·夏博诺说，这些发现增加了人们对恒河猴自我意识能力的理解。他说:“已经有强有力的证据表明，恒河猴有这种从心理上了解事物的感觉，现在我们在其中加入了某种生理学证据。”