scholarly journals Monkeys exhibit a paradoxical decrease in performance in high-stakes scenarios

2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (35) ◽  
pp. e2109643118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam L. Smoulder ◽  
Nicholas P. Pavlovsky ◽  
Patrick J. Marino ◽  
Alan D. Degenhart ◽  
Nicole T. McClain ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Animal Model ◽  
Rhesus Monkeys ◽  
High Performance ◽  
Psychological Theory ◽  
Successful Completion ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Choking Under Pressure ◽  
Reaching Task

In high-stakes situations, people sometimes exhibit a frustrating phenomenon known as “choking under pressure.” Usually, we perform better when the potential payoff is larger. However, once potential rewards get too high, performance paradoxically decreases—we “choke.” Why do we choke under pressure? An animal model of choking would facilitate the investigation of its neural basis. However, it could be that choking is a uniquely human occurrence. To determine whether animals also choke, we trained three rhesus monkeys to perform a difficult reaching task in which they knew in advance the amount of reward to be given upon successful completion. Like humans, monkeys performed worse when potential rewards were exceptionally valuable. Failures that occurred at the highest level of reward were due to overly cautious reaching, in line with the psychological theory that explicit monitoring of behavior leads to choking. Our results demonstrate that choking under pressure is not unique to humans, and thus, its neural basis might be conserved across species.

scholarly journals BrainIAK: The Brain Imaging Analysis Kit

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manoj Kumar ◽  
Michael Anderson ◽  
James Antony ◽  
Christopher Baldassano ◽  
Paula Pacheco Brooks ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Brain Imaging ◽  
High Performance ◽  
Markov Models ◽  
Real Data ◽  
Matrix Analysis ◽  
Imaging Analysis ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Noise Characteristics ◽  
Fmri Analysis ◽  
The Brain

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) offers a rich source of data for studying the neural basis of cognition. Here, we describe the Brain Imaging Analysis Kit (BrainIAK), an open-source, free Python package that provides computationally-optimized solutions to key problems in advanced fMRI analysis. A variety of techniques are presently included in BrainIAK: intersubject correlation (ISC) and intersubject functional connectivity (ISFC), functional alignment via the shared response model (SRM), full correlation matrix analysis (FCMA), a Bayesian version of representational similarity analysis (BRSA), event segmentation using hidden Markov models, topographic factor analysis (TFA), inverted encoding models (IEM), an fMRI data simulator that uses noise characteristics from real data (fmrisim), and some emerging methods. These techniques have been optimized to leverage the efficiencies of high performance compute (HPC) clusters, and the same code can be seamlessly transferred from a laptop to a cluster. For each of the aforementioned techniques, we describe the data analysis problem that the technique is meant to solve, and how it solves that problem; we also include an example Jupyter notebook for each technique and an annotated bibliography of papers that have used and/or described that technique. In addition to the sections describing various analysis techniques in BrainIAK, we have included sections describing the future applications of BrainIAK to real-time fMRI, tutorials that we have developed and shared online to facilitate learning the techniques in BrainIAK, computational innovations in BrainIAK, and how to contribute to BrainIAK. We hope that this manuscript helps readers to understand how BrainIAK might be useful in their research.

Toward a living soft microrobot through optogenetic locomotion control of Caenorhabditis elegans

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (55) ◽  
pp. eabe3950 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xianke Dong ◽  
Sina Kheiri ◽  
Yangning Lu ◽  
Zhaoyi Xu ◽  
Mei Zhen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Caenorhabditis Elegans ◽  
Phase Difference ◽  
High Performance ◽  
Nematode Species ◽  
Movement Direction ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Seamless Integration ◽  
C Elegans ◽  
Worm Body ◽  
Living Tissues

Learning from the locomotion of natural organisms is one of the most effective strategies for designing microrobots. However, the development of bioinspired microrobots is still challenging because of technical bottlenecks such as design and seamless integration of high-performance actuation mechanism and high-density energy source for untethered locomotion. Directly harnessing the activation energy and intelligence of living tissues in synthetic micromachines provides an alternative route to developing biohybrid microrobots. Here, we propose an approach to engineering the genetic and nervous systems of a nematode worm, Caenorhabditis elegans, and creating an untethered, highly controllable living soft microrobot (called “RoboWorm”). A living worm is engineered through optogenetic and biochemical methods to shut down the signal transmissions between its neuronal and muscular systems while its muscle cells still remain optically excitable. Through dynamic modeling and experimental verification of the worm crawling, we found that the phase difference between the worm body curvature and the muscular activation pattern generates the thrust force for crawling locomotion. By reproducing the phase difference via optogenetic excitation of the worm body muscles, we emulated the major worm crawling behaviors in a controllable manner. Furthermore, with real-time visual feedback of the worm crawling, we realized closed-loop regulation of the movement direction and destination of single worms. This technology may facilitate scientific studies on the biophysics and neural basis of crawling locomotion of C. elegans and other nematode species.

scholarly journals Automatic comparison of stimulus durations in the primate prefrontal cortex: the neural basis of across-task interference

2015 ◽  
Vol 114 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aldo Genovesio ◽  
Rossella Cirillo ◽  
Satoshi Tsujimoto ◽  
Sara Mohammad Abdellatif ◽  
Steven P. Wise
Keyword(s):  
Stimulus Duration ◽  
Rhesus Monkeys ◽  
Matching To Sample ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Task Interference ◽  
Choice Phase ◽  
Duration Task ◽  
Dependent Model ◽  
The One ◽  
Blue Circle

Rhesus monkeys performed two tasks, both requiring a choice between a red square and a blue circle. In the duration task, the two stimuli appeared sequentially on each trial, for varying durations, and, later, during the choice phase of the task, the monkeys needed to choose the one that had lasted longer. In the matching-to-sample task, one of the two stimuli appeared twice as a sample, with durations matching those in the duration task, and the monkey needed to choose that stimulus during the choice phase. Although stimulus duration was irrelevant in the matching-to-sample task, the monkeys made twice as many errors when the second stimulus was shorter. This across-task interference supports an order-dependent model of the monkeys' choice and reveals something about their strategy in the duration task. The monkeys tended to choose the second stimulus when its duration exceeded the first and to choose the alternative stimulus otherwise. For the duration task, this strategy obviated the need to store stimulus-duration conjunctions for both stimuli, but it generated errors on the matching-to-sample task. We examined duration coding in prefrontal neurons and confirmed that a population of cells encoded relative duration during the matching-to-sample task, as expected from the order-dependent errors.

scholarly journals The Doctor’s Heart: A Qualitative Study Exploring Physicians’ Views on Their Professional Performance in Light of Excellence, Humanistic Practice and Accountability

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Myra van den Goor ◽  
Benjamin Boerebach ◽  
Elisa Bindels ◽  
Maas Jan Heineman ◽  
Kiki Lombarts
Keyword(s):  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
High Performance ◽  
Daily Practice ◽  
Market Forces ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Professional Performance ◽  
The Core ◽  
Good Medical Practice ◽  
Clinical Burden ◽  
Ability To Act

Abstract Background In a field as high-stakes as health care, professional values have long been recognized as an essential mediating force for good medical practice. In the current era of changing market forces, anchoring these values in the professional performance of daily practice can be challenging. In this study we explored how physicians reflect upon their own professional performance and whether they feel they are performing to their best ability in light of excellence, humanistic practice and accountability. Methods We conducted a thematic analysis of written reflections from 786 hospital-based physicians, representing 35 specialties and 18 hospitals. Results When reflecting on their professional performance, physicians differentiated between (i) their calling for being a doctor, (ii) the translation of this calling into daily practice, and (iii) threats to their performance. Reflecting on humanistic practice triggered thoughts about the essence of being a physician in terms of calling, meaning and purpose. Physicians described concrete actions regarding pursuit of excellence and accountability. Furthermore, they suggested that their ability to perform optimally was put under pressure, mainly by heavy workloads and collaboration issues. This pressure negatively affected their calling for being a doctor and hampered the ability to be a humanistic practitioner. Conclusions In this large inventory of reflections, humanistic practice was recognized as the core value of being a physician. However, physicians feel high performance and the ability to act as a humanistic practitioner is hindered by heavy workloads and collaboration issues. Decreasing the clinical burden and reinforcing humanistic and relational aspects of care could foster an environment where physicians can perform optimally.

scholarly journals Recording from the same neurons chronically in motor cortex

2012 ◽  
Vol 107 (7) ◽  
pp. 1970-1978 ◽  
Author(s):  
George W. Fraser ◽  
Andrew B. Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Motor Cortex ◽  
Firing Rate ◽  
Neural Activity ◽  
Rhesus Monkeys ◽  
Single Units ◽  
Reaching Task ◽  
Firing Properties ◽  
Silicon Arrays ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Similarity Scores

Two rhesus monkeys were implanted with silicon arrays of 96 microelectrodes. Neural activity was recorded periodically over a period of weeks to months. We have developed a method to determine whether single units in two separate recording sessions represent the same neuron. Pairwise cross-correlograms, the autocorrelogram, waveform shape, and mean firing rate were used together as identifying features of a neuron. When two units recorded on separate days were compared using these features, their similarity scores tended to be either high, indicating two recordings from the same neuron, or low, indicating different neurons. Although these metrics are individually weak, together they produce a strong classifier. Some neurons were recorded for >100 days. These monkeys performed a center-out reaching task, and we found that the firing properties of chronically recorded neurons were stable over time.

scholarly journals OUTLINING PARTICIPATION IN THE FIRST MOOC OF THE UNIVERSITY OF THE AEGEAN: A CASE STUDY

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefanos Giasiranis ◽  
Alivizos Sofos
Keyword(s):  
Instructional Design ◽  
High Performance ◽  
Instructional Material ◽  
Completion Rate ◽  
Successful Completion ◽  
Doctoral Research ◽  
The University ◽  
High Completion Rate

Twelve years after the advent of MOOCs, the University of the Aegean (Greece) implemented its first MOOC on “Violence and bullying in schools”, in which about 2,000 people showed interest in attending. Eventually, 1309 people started it and 1050 (80.21%) completed it successfully, achieving high performance. The present work, which is part of the doctoral research of the first researcher, outlines the participation of the learners in the program and the obstacles they encountered during it while identifying the reasons for its high completion rate with high performance. The results showed that mainly the quality of the instructional material, the instructional design of the program, and its organization, as well as the timely support provided to learners, contributed significantly to the successful completion of the program achieving high performance. These findings can be considered by future MOOC program designers, in order to design and implement programs that meet the requirements and facilitate the participation of those who attend. Δώδεκα χρόνια μετά την εμφάνιση των MOOCs, το Πανεπιστήμιο Αιγαίου υλοποίησε το πρώτο του MOOC με θέμα την Ενδοσχολική βία και τον εκφοβισμό, στο οποίο εκδήλωσαν ενδιαφέρον για να το παρακολουθήσουν περίπου 2000 άτομα. Τελικά, το ξεκίνησαν 1309 άτομα και το ολοκλήρωσαν επιτυχώς 1050 (80,21%), πετυχαίνοντας υψηλές επιδόσεις. Η παρούσα εργασία, που αποτελεί τμήμα της διδακτορικής έρευνας του πρώτου ερευνητή, σκιαγραφεί τη συμμετοχή των εκπαιδευομένων στο πρόγραμμα και τα εμπόδια που αντιμετώπισαν κατά τη διάρκειά του, ενώ εντοπίζει τους λόγους του υψηλού ποσοστού ολοκλήρωσης του με υψηλές επιδόσεις. Τα αποτελέσματα έδειξαν ότι κυρίως η ποιότητα του εκπαιδευτικού υλικού, ο εκπαιδευτικός σχεδιασμός του προγράμματος και η οργάνωσή του, καθώς και η έγκαιρη υποστήριξη που παρεχόταν στους εκπαιδευόμενους, συνέβαλαν σημαντικά στην επίτευξη των συγκεκριμένων αποτελεσμάτων. Τα ευρήματα αυτά, μπορούν να ληφθούν υπόψη από τους σχεδιαστές μελλοντικών προγραμμάτων MOOCs, ώστε να σχεδιάζουν και να υλοποιούν προγράμματα που θα ικανοποιούν τις απαιτήσεις και θα διευκολύνουν τη συμμετοχή, όσων τα παρακολουθούν. <p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0727/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

scholarly journals Amygdala lesions eliminate viewing preferences for faces in rhesus monkeys

2018 ◽  
Vol 115 (31) ◽  
pp. 8043-8048 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Taubert ◽  
Molly Flessert ◽  
Susan G. Wardle ◽  
Benjamin M. Basile ◽  
Aidan P. Murphy ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movements ◽  
Social Communication ◽  
Rhesus Monkeys ◽  
Natural Images ◽  
Facial Features ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Everyday Objects ◽  
Free Viewing ◽  
Amygdala Lesions ◽  
Socially Relevant

In free-viewing experiments, primates orient preferentially toward faces and face-like stimuli. To investigate the neural basis of this behavior, we measured the spontaneous viewing preferences of monkeys with selective bilateral amygdala lesions. The results revealed that when faces and nonface objects were presented simultaneously, monkeys with amygdala lesions had no viewing preference for either conspecific faces or illusory facial features in everyday objects. Instead of directing eye movements toward socially relevant features in natural images, we found that, after amygdala loss, monkeys are biased toward features with increased low-level salience. We conclude that the amygdala has a role in our earliest specialized response to faces, a behavior thought to be a precursor for efficient social communication and essential for the development of face-selective cortex.

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