Recognition of stimulus received by recurrent neural network

The study is concerned with the comparison of two methods for identification of stimulus received by artificial neural network using neural activity pattern that corresponds to the period of storing information about this stimulus in the working memory. We used simple recurrent neural networks learned to pass the delayed matching-to-sample test. Neural activity was detected at the period of pause between receiving stimuli. The analysis of neural excitation patterns showed that neural networks encoded variables that were relevant for the task during the delayed matching-to-sample test, and their activity patterns were dynamic. The method of centroids allowed identifying the type of the received stimuli with efficiency up to 75% while the method of neural network-based decoder showed 100% efficiency. In addition, this method was applied to determine the minimal set of neurons whose activity was the most significant for stimulus recognition.

Use of temporal and colour cueing in a symbolic delayed matching task by honey bees

ABSTRACTHoney bees (Apis mellifera) are known for their capacity to learn arbitrary relationships between colours, odours and even numbers. However, it is not known whether bees can use temporal signals as cueing stimuli in a similar way during symbolic delayed matching-to-sample tasks. Honey bees potentially process temporal signals during foraging activities, but the extent to which they can use such information is unclear. Here, we investigated whether free-flying honey bees could use either illumination colour or illumination duration as potential context-setting cues to enable their subsequent decisions for a symbolic delayed matching-to-sample task. We found that bees could use the changing colour context of the illumination to complete the subsequent spatial vision task at a level significantly different from chance expectation, but could not use the duration of either a 1 or 3 s light as a cueing stimulus. These findings suggest that bees cannot use temporal information as a cueing stimulus as efficiently as other signals such as colour, and are consistent with previous field observations suggesting a limited interval timing capacity in honey bees.

Monolinguals and bilinguals respond differently to a delayed matching-to-sample task: An ERP study

Previous research examining whether bilinguals exhibit enhanced working memory (WM) compared to monolinguals has yielded mixed results. This inconsistency may be due to lack of sensitivity in behavioral and neuropsychological measures. The current study aimed to investigate the effects of bilingualism on WM by focusing on brain activity patterns (event-related potentials) in monolinguals and bilinguals during a WM task. We recorded brain activity while participants (26 monolingual English speakers and 28 English–French bilinguals) performed a delayed matching-to-sample task. Although performance measures were similar, electrophysiological differences were present across groups. Bilinguals exhibited larger P3b amplitudes than monolinguals, and smaller negative slow wave and N2b amplitudes during retrieval. These results suggest that bilinguals may have more cognitive resources available in WM to allocate to task completion, and that task completion may be less effortful for bilinguals than for monolinguals.