scholarly journals A naturalistic environment to study visual cognition in unrestrained monkeys

eLife ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georgin Jacob ◽  
Harish Katti ◽  
Thomas Cherian ◽  
Jhilik Das ◽  
KA Zhivago ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Traditional Approach ◽  
Social Behaviors ◽  
Visual Cognition ◽  
Natural Setting ◽  
Trial And Error ◽  
Neural Recordings ◽  
Visual Tasks ◽  
Naturalistic Environment ◽  
Freely Moving

Macaque monkeys are widely used to study vision. In the traditional approach, monkeys are brought into a lab to perform visual tasks while they are restrained to obtain stable eye tracking and neural recordings. Here, we describe a novel environment to study visual cognition in a more natural setting as well as other natural and social behaviors. We designed a naturalistic environment with an integrated touchscreen workstation that enables high-quality eye tracking in unrestrained monkeys. We used this environment to train monkeys on a challenging same-different task. We also show that this environment can reveal interesting novel social behaviors. As proof of concept, we show that two naïve monkeys were able to learn this complex task through a combination of socially observing trained monkeys and through solo trial-and-error. We propose that such naturalistic environments can be used to rigorously study visual cognition as well as other natural and social behaviors in freely moving monkeys.

scholarly journals A naturalistic environment to study natural social behaviors and cognitive tasks in freely moving monkeys

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georgin Jacob ◽  
Harish Katti ◽  
Thomas Cherian ◽  
Jhilik Das ◽  
Zhivago KA ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Traditional Approach ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Cognitive Tasks ◽  
Task Structure ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Gaze Tracking ◽  
Neural Recordings ◽  
Naturalistic Environment ◽  
Task Training ◽  
Freely Moving

ABSTRACTMacaque monkeys are widely used to study the neural basis of cognition. In the traditional approach, the monkey is brought into a lab to perform tasks while it is restrained to obtain stable gaze tracking and neural recordings. This unnatural setting prevents studying brain activity during natural, social and complex behaviors. Here, we designed a naturalistic environment with an integrated behavioral workstation that enables complex task training with viable gaze tracking in freely moving monkeys. We used this facility to train monkeys on a challenging same-different task. Remarkably, this facility enabled a naïve monkey to learn the task merely by observing trained monkeys. This social training was faster primarily because the naïve monkey first learned the task structure and then the same-different rule. We propose that such hybrid environments can be used to study brain activity during natural behaviors as well as during controlled cognitive tasks.

scholarly journals Looking ahead: When do you find the next item in foraging visual search?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Kosovicheva ◽  
Abla Alaoui-Soce ◽  
Jeremy Wolfe
Keyword(s):  
Visual Search ◽  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Real World ◽  
Final Experiment ◽  
Color Wheel ◽  
Visual Tasks ◽  
Search Experiment ◽  
Fixation Locations

Many real-world visual tasks involve searching for multiple instances of a target (e.g., picking ripe berries). What strategies do observers use when collecting items in this type of search? Do they wait to finish collecting the current item before starting to look for the next target, or do they search ahead for future targets? We utilized behavioral and eye tracking measures to distinguish between these two possibilities in foraging search. Experiment 1 used a color wheel technique in which observers searched for T shapes among L shapes while all items independently cycled through a set of colors. Trials were abruptly terminated, and observers reported both the color and location of the next target that they intended to click. Using observers’ color reports to infer target-finding times, we demonstrate that observers found the next item before the time of the click on the current target. We validated these results in Experiment 2 by recording fixation locations around the time of each click. Experiment 3 utilized a different procedure, in which all items were intermittently occluded during the trial. We then calculated a distribution of when targets were visible around the time of each click, allowing us to infer when they were most likely found. In a fourth and final experiment, observers indicated the locations of multiple future targets after the search was abruptly terminated. Together, our results provide converging evidence to demonstrate that observers can find the next target before collecting the current target and can typically forage 1-2 items ahead.

scholarly journals An approach for long-term, multi-probe Neuropixels recordings in unrestrained rats

eLife ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Zhihao Luo ◽  
Adrian Gopnik Bondy ◽  
Diksha Gupta ◽  
Verity Alexander Elliott ◽  
Charles D Kopec ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cost Effective ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Neural Recordings ◽  
Chronic Recording ◽  
Long Term Stability ◽  
Multiple Cycles ◽  
Single Unit Recordings ◽  
Freely Moving ◽  
High Yields

The use of Neuropixels probes for chronic neural recordings is in its infancy and initial studies leave questions about long-term stability and probe reusability unaddressed. Here, we demonstrate a new approach for chronic Neuropixels recordings over a period of months in freely moving rats. Our approach allows multiple probes per rat and multiple cycles of probe reuse. We found that hundreds of units could be recorded for multiple months, but that yields depended systematically on anatomical position. Explanted probes displayed a small increase in noise compared to unimplanted probes, but this was insufficient to impair future single-unit recordings. We conclude that cost-effective, multi-region, and multi-probe Neuropixels recordings can be carried out with high yields over multiple months in rats or other similarly sized animals. Our methods and observations may facilitate the standardization of chronic recording from Neuropixels probes in freely moving animals.

scholarly journals Turning the body into a clock: Accurate timing is facilitated by simple stereotyped interactions with the environment

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (23) ◽  
pp. 13084-13093 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mostafa Safaie ◽  
Maria-Teresa Jurado-Parras ◽  
Stefania Sarno ◽  
Jordane Louis ◽  
Corane Karoutchi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Fixed Interval ◽  
The Body ◽  
Trial And Error ◽  
Time Intervals ◽  
Timing Accuracy ◽  
Comparable Level ◽  
Regular Time ◽  
Stereotyped Behaviors ◽  
Moving Direction ◽  
Freely Moving

How animals adapt their behavior according to regular time intervals between events is not well understood, especially when intervals last several seconds. One possibility is that animals use disembodied internal neuronal representations of time to decide when to initiate a given action at the end of an interval. However, animals rarely remain immobile during time intervals but tend to perform stereotyped behaviors, raising the possibility that motor routines improve timing accuracy. To test this possibility, we used a task in which rats, freely moving on a motorized treadmill, could obtain a reward if they approached it after a fixed interval. Most animals took advantage of the treadmill length and its moving direction to develop, by trial-and-error, the same motor routine whose execution resulted in the precise timing of their reward approaches. Noticeably, when proficient animals did not follow this routine, their temporal accuracy decreased. Then, naïve animals were trained in modified versions of the task designed to prevent the development of this routine. Compared to rats trained in the first protocol, these animals didn’t reach a comparable level of timing accuracy. Altogether, our results indicate that timing accuracy in rats is improved when the environment affords cues that animals can incorporate into motor routines.

scholarly journals Topology for gaze analyses - Raw data segmentation

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver Hein ◽  
Wolfgang H. Zangemeister
Keyword(s):  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Supplementary File ◽  
Tracking Data ◽  
Process Data ◽  
Raw Data ◽  
New Methods ◽  
Data Segmentation ◽  
Visual Tasks ◽  
Topological Argument ◽  
Topological Characteristics

Recent years have witnessed a remarkable growth in the way mathematics, informatics, and computer science can process data. In disciplines such as machine learning, pattern recognition, computer vision, computational neurology, molecular biology, information retrieval, etc., many new methods have been developed to cope with the ever increasing amount and complexity of the data. These new methods offer interesting possibilities for processing, classifying and interpreting eye-tracking data. The present paper exemplifies the application of topological arguments to improve the evaluation of eye-tracking data. The task of classifying raw eye-tracking data into saccades and fixations, with a single, simple as well as intuitive argument, described as coherence of spacetime, is discussed, and the hierarchical ordering of the fixations into dwells is shown. The method, namely identification by topological characteristics (ITop), is parameter-free and needs no pre-processing and post-processing of the raw data. The general and robust topological argument is easy to expand into complexsettings of higher visual tasks, making it possible to identify visual strategies. As supplementary file an interactive demonstration of the method can be downloaded,

scholarly journals Dynamic representation of 3D auditory space in the midbrain of the free-flying echolocating bat

eLife ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ninad B Kothari ◽  
Melville J Wohlgemuth ◽  
Cynthia F Moss
Keyword(s):  
Physical Environment ◽  
Auditory Space ◽  
Neural Recordings ◽  
Dynamic Representation ◽  
3D Space ◽  
Sensory Mapping ◽  
Freely Moving ◽  
And Shifts ◽  
Space Coding ◽  
First Time

Essential to spatial orientation in the natural environment is a dynamic representation of direction and distance to objects. Despite the importance of 3D spatial localization to parse objects in the environment and to guide movement, most neurophysiological investigations of sensory mapping have been limited to studies of restrained subjects, tested with 2D, artificial stimuli. Here, we show for the first time that sensory neurons in the midbrain superior colliculus (SC) of the free-flying echolocating bat encode 3D egocentric space, and that the bat’s inspection of objects in the physical environment sharpens tuning of single neurons, and shifts peak responses to represent closer distances. These findings emerged from wireless neural recordings in free-flying bats, in combination with an echo model that computes the animal’s instantaneous stimulus space. Our research reveals dynamic 3D space coding in a freely moving mammal engaged in a real-world navigation task.

scholarly journals Personalised approaches to pharmacotherapy for schizophrenia

2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 78-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Lally ◽  
James H. MacCabe
Keyword(s):  
Medical Treatment ◽  
Antipsychotic Medication ◽  
Traditional Approach ◽  
Personalised Medicine ◽  
Individual Characteristics ◽  
Response To Treatment ◽  
Individual Response ◽  
Trial And Error ◽  
Recent Advances ◽  
The Individual

SummaryThe traditional approach to selecting antipsychotic medication involves little more than trial and error. Recent advances in genetics and molecular science offer the hope of a ‘personalised medicine’ approach to antipsychotic development and prescribing in schizophrenia. Personalised medicine is the practice of tailoring medical treatment to the individual characteristics of each patient. In schizophrenia, this will involve the identification of more homogeneous subsets of patients through the application of genetics, epigenetics, proteomics and metabolomics, neuroimaging and other biomarkers, and the use of these findings to stratify patients according to their response to treatment. In this article, we focus on the emerging evidence in pharmacogenetics and biomarkers for assessing individual response and tolerability of antipsychotic medication in schizophrenia.

scholarly journals Framework for acquisition and automated sorting of neural spikes from multielectrode recordings in freely-moving mice

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua J. Strohl ◽  
Joseph T. Gallagher ◽  
Pedro N. Gomez ◽  
Joshua M. Glynn ◽  
Patricio T. Huerta
Keyword(s):  
Action Potentials ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Acquisition System ◽  
Spike Sorting ◽  
Prelimbic Cortex ◽  
Neural Recordings ◽  
Ca1 Region ◽  
Freely Moving ◽  
Multielectrode Recordings ◽  
Electrophysiological Technique

Abstract BackgroundExtracellular recording represents a crucial electrophysiological technique in neuroscience for studying the activity of single neurons and neuronal populations. The electrodes capture voltage traces that, with the help of analytical tools, reveal action potentials (‘spikes’) as well as local field potentials. The process of spike sorting is used for the extraction of action potentials generated by individual neurons. Until recently, spike sorting was performed with manual techniques, which are laborious and unreliable due to inherent operator bias. As neuroscientists add multiple electrodes to their probes, the high-density devices are able to record hundreds to thousands of neurons simultaneously, making the manual spike sorting process increasingly difficult. The advent of automated spike sorting software has offered a compelling solution to this issue. The purpose of this study is to provide a simple-to-execute framework for using MountainSort, an automated spike sorting pipeline, in conjunction with MATLAB and the acquisition system (Cheetah, Neuralynx). We validate this automated framework with neural recordings from the hippocampus and prelimbic cortex. MethodsMultielectrode recordings of freely-moving mice are obtained from the CA1 region of the hippocampus as they navigate a linear track. Multielectrode recordings are also acquired from the prelimbic cortex, a region of the medial prefrontal cortex, while the mice are tested in a T maze. All animals are implanted with custom-designed, 3D-printed microdrives that carry 16 electrodes, which are bundled in a 4-tetrode geometry. ResultsWe provide an overview of a framework for analyzing single-unit data in which we have concatenated the acquisition system (Cheetah, Neuralynx) with analytical software (MATLAB) and an automated spike sorting pipeline (MountainSort). We give precise instructions on how to implement the different steps of the framework, as well as explanations of our design logic. We validate this framework by comparing manually-sorted spikes against automatically-sorted spikes, using neural recordings of the hippocampus and prelimbic cortex in freely-moving mice. ConclusionsAutomated spike sorting is a necessity for medium and large-scale extracellular neural recordings. Here, we have smoothly integrated MountainSort-based spike sorting into a framework for acquisition and analysis of multielectrode brain recordings in mice.

scholarly journals An approach for long-term, multi-probe Neuropixels recordings in unrestrained rats

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Zhihao Luo ◽  
Adrian G. Bondy ◽  
Diksha Gupta ◽  
Verity A. Elliott ◽  
Charles D. Kopec ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cost Effective ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Neural Recordings ◽  
Chronic Recording ◽  
Long Term Stability ◽  
Multiple Cycles ◽  
Single Unit Recordings ◽  
Freely Moving ◽  
High Yields

AbstractThe use of Neuropixels probes for chronic neural recordings is in its infancy and initial studies leave questions about long-term stability and probe reusability unaddressed. Here we demonstrate a new approach for chronic Neuropixels recordings over a period of months in freely moving rats. Our approach allows multiple probes per rat and multiple cycles of probe reuse. We found that hundreds of units could be recorded for multiple months, but that yields depended systematically on anatomical position. Explanted probes displayed a small increase in noise compared to unimplanted probes, but this was insufficient to impair future single-unit recordings. We conclude that cost-effective, multi-region, and multi-probe Neuropixels recordings can be carried out with high yields over multiple months in rats or other similarly sized animals. Our methods and observations may facilitate the standardization of chronic recording from Neuropixels probes in freely moving animals.

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