Keeping time and rhythm by replaying a sensory-motor engram

Imagine practicing a piece of music, or a speech, solely within the mind, without any sensory input or motor output. Our ability to implement dynamic internal representations is key for successful behavior, yet how the brain achieves this is not fully understood. Here we trained primates to perceive, and internally maintain, rhythms of different tempos and performed large-scale recordings of neuronal activity across multiple areas spanning the sensory-motor processing hierarchy. Results show that perceiving and maintaining rhythms engage multiple brain areas, including visual, parietal, premotor, prefrontal, and hippocampal regions. Each area displayed oscillatory activity that reflected the temporal and spatial characteristics of an internal metronome which flexibly encoded fast, medium, and slow tempos on a trial-by-trial basis. The presence of widespread metronome-related activity across the brain, in the absence of stimuli and overt actions, is consistent with the idea that time and rhythm are maintained by a mechanism that internally replays the stimuli and actions that define well-timed behavior.

Overcoming “The Language Rubicon": Versions, Steps and Evolutionary Mechanisms

The most plausible hypotheses explaining the breakthrough of our distant ancestors to articulate speech and consciousness include: rituals of solidarity (singing, grooming, facial expressions, gestures), the role of "labor", teaching children, changes in gender relations, recruiting (mobilization for collective action), laryngeal transformation, brain growth, mirror neurons, neuronal overlap; dominance of coalitions over loners, self-domestication, the need to coordinate decisions; joint intentionality, development of normativity. The concretization of the principle of "cultural drive" leads to the following concept: new environmental, social and communicative challenges and concerns lead to multiple trials; successful behavior is consolidated in group practices, mental structures of participants, and hereditary inclinations with multilevel selection and change of many generations. Overcoming the "language Rubicon" took place in several steps, or stages, in which the structures that have developed to provide concerns lead to new concerns that require new structures. Such concerns as pacifying social order in the group, signaling general discontent, coordinating actions, etc., the following structures emerged: egalitarian coalitions with collective practices of intimidation, sound signals uttered in unison, training and self-training, self-domestication, shared intentionality, and normative rituals. The most plausible versions supplement this concept. Сhoral singing as a ritual of solidarity promoted the ability to imitate and articulate. Mirror neurons and neural overlaps have played the role of providing mechanisms for imitation and association processes. The connection between "labor" and speech was complex and interdependent, mediated by normativity. Recruiting as signals of mobilization for collective action also made its contribution but only under the already established normative order. Social learning is in fact a special ritual of constant trial and adjustment which has grown out of a normative ritual. The establishment of a new order of sexual relations also played a role: under the prohibition of violence and rape it was necessary to involve partners. Speech replaced grooming, and those who spoke clearly, convincingly and/or sang beautifully received benefits in sexual selection. The totality of all these processes reinforced the concerns of mutual understanding which were provided by the rituals of naming with the following multiplication of protowords and further growth of linguistic complexity.

Contribution of linear and nonlinear mechanisms to predictive motion estimation

Successful behavior relies on the ability to use information obtained from past experience to predict what is likely to occur in the future. A salient example of predictive encoding comes from the vertebrate retina, where neural circuits encode information that can be used to estimate the trajectory of a moving object. Predictive computations should be a general property of sensory systems, but the features needed to identify these computations across neural systems are not well understood. Here, we identify several properties of predictive computations in the primate retina that likely generalize across sensory systems. These features include calculating the derivative of incoming signals, sparse signal integration, and delayed response suppression. These findings provide a deeper understanding of how the brain carries out predictive computations and identify features that can be used to recognize these computations throughout the brain.

Accumulation of continuously time-varying sensory evidence constrains neural and behavioral responses in human collision threat detection

Evidence accumulation models provide a dominant account of human decision-making, and have been particularly successful at explaining behavioral and neural data in laboratory paradigms using abstract, stationary stimuli. It has been proposed, but with limited in-depth investigation so far, that similar decision-making mechanisms are involved in tasks of a more embodied nature, such as movement and locomotion, by directly accumulating externally measurable sensory quantities of which the precise, typically continuously time-varying, magnitudes are important for successful behavior. Here, we leverage collision threat detection as a task which is ecologically relevant in this sense, but which can also be rigorously observed and modelled in a laboratory setting. Conventionally, it is assumed that humans are limited in this task by a perceptual threshold on the optical expansion rate–the visual looming–of the obstacle. Using concurrent recordings of EEG and behavioral responses, we disprove this conventional assumption, and instead provide strong evidence that humans detect collision threats by accumulating the continuously time-varying visual looming signal. Generalizing existing accumulator model assumptions from stationary to time-varying sensory evidence, we show that our model accounts for previously unexplained empirical observations and full distributions of detection response. We replicate a pre-response centroparietal positivity (CPP) in scalp potentials, which has previously been found to correlate with accumulated decision evidence. In contrast with these existing findings, we show that our model is capable of predicting the onset of the CPP signature rather than its buildup, suggesting that neural evidence accumulation is implemented differently, possibly in distinct brain regions, in collision detection compared to previously studied paradigms.

The Human Cognitive System Corrects Traces of Error Commission on the Fly

Human perception and action rely on a fundamental binding mechanism that forges integrated event representations from distributed features. Encountering any one of these features later on can retrieve the whole event, thus expediting cognitive processing. The traditional view on binding confines it to successful action episodes, however, holding that the human cognitive system does not leverage errors for optimizing corresponding event representations. Here we explore through sequential analyses of erroneous action episodes whether binding promotes future successful behavior even when actions go awry. Results indicate that the processes leading to binding integrate different aspects of the action episode in a highly efficient and flexible manner to privilege future correct actions and prepare the ground for error-based learning.

Executive Functions of Swedish Counterterror Intervention Unit Applicants and Police Officer Trainees Evaluated With Design Fluency Test

Executive functions (EF) represent higher order top-down mechanisms regulating information processing. While suboptimal EF have been studied in various patient groups, their impact on successful behavior is still not well described. Previously, it has been suggested that design fluency (DF)—a test including several simultaneous EF components mainly related to fluency, cognitive flexibility, and creativity—predicts successful behavior in a quickly changing environment where fast and dynamic adaptions are required, such as ball sports. We hypothesized that similar behaviors are of importance in the selection process of elite police force applicants. To test this hypothesis, we compared elite police force applicants (n = 45) with a control group of police officer trainees (n = 30). Although both groups were better than the norm, the elite police force applicants had a significantly better performance in DF total correct when adjusting for sex and age [F(1,71) = 18.98, p < 0.001]. To understand how this capacity was altered by stress and tiredness, we re-tested the elite police force applicants several days during an extreme field assessment lasting 10 days. The results suggested that there was a lower than expected improvement in DF total correct and a decline in the DF3-subtest that includes a larger component of cognitive flexibility than the other subtests (DF1 and DF2). Although there was a positive correlation between the baseline session and the re-test in DF3 [r(40) = 0.49, p = 0.001], the applicants having the highest scores in the baseline test also displayed the largest percentage decline in the re-test [r(40) = −0.46, p = 0.003]. In conclusion, our result suggests that higher order EF (HEF) that include cognitive flexibility and creativity are of importance in the application for becoming an elite police officer but relatively compromised in a stressful situation. Moreover, as the decline is different between the individuals, the results suggest that applicants should be tested during baseline conditions and during stressful conditions to describe their cognitive capacity fully.

Global Temporal Movement Control

Complex movements require the fine-tuned temporal interplay of several effectors. If the temporal properties of one of these effectors were distorted, all other movement plans would need to be updated in order to produce successful behavior. This requirement of a global motor time stands in direct contrast to the multiple duration-channels in visual time. We explored whether time-critical and goal-oriented movements are indeed globally affected by temporal recalibration. In a ready-set-go paradigm, participants reproduced the interval between ready- and set-signals by performing different movements in Virtual Reality (VR). Halfway through the experiments, movements in VR were artificially slowed down, so that participants had to adapt their behavior. In three experiments, we found that these adaptation effects were not affected by movement type, interval range, location, or environmental context. We conclude that the temporal planning of motor actions is recalibrated globally, suggesting the presence of a global temporal movement controller.

Formation of "Soft Skills" of university students as a prospective direction of improving the quality of higher education

The subject of the study is the formation of «soft skills» in future service professionals. The purpose of the article is to consider the main determinants of the development of «soft skills» in future service professionals. The task of the research is to analyze the professional training of service specialists, expand the educational and methodological support of tourism specialist training, highlight the essence and main differences of professional training of tourism specialists in different universities of Ukraine, suggest ways to form "soft" skills training. Research methods. The following general and specific scientific research methods were used in the research process: system approach, methods of logical generalization and comparison, scientific abstraction, methods of synthesis, logical generalization and analogies. The methodological basis of the study consisted of scientific works of domestic and foreign scientists and leading experts, analytical materials on the research problem. Results of work. The analysis of professional training of service specialists is carried out, the educational and methodical support of tourism specialist training is expanded, the essence and main differences of professional training of tourism specialists in different universities of Ukraine are highlighted. Field of application of results. The obtained results of the research can be used by the educational departments of the Free Economic Zone of Ukraine to expand educational and professional programs, educational complexes, curricula and work programs. Conclusions. Based on the analysis of the process of professional training of future specialists in the field of tourism, the essence of the concept and its structure, the main methods of developing "soft skills" for students in the field of service were established: independent study of information about models of successful behavior (reading literature, independent study of various materials, trainings); finding feedback – getting feedback from classmates, teachers, mentors and employers about the success of their behavior in terms of developing specific experiences; learning from the experience of others and mentoring – selection and study of models successful behavior of someone who has a high level of development of this competence, work with a mentor; case studies - the study of specific situations with a proposal for optimal solutions; "learning through the development of story lines based on binary thematic oppositions" – Inclusion in the study of the material through its presentation in the form of a story, a story by revealing its emotional and personal significance.

Maintenance of Health Behaviors: Exploring the Construct and Its Implications on Research, Education, and Practice

Modifying health behaviors, including diet, physical activity, sleep, and/or medication adherence, can have a range of positive effects on older adults’ overall health, function, and well-being. Although many evidence-based programs exist to support the initiation of health behavior changes, few address longterm maintenance. Emerging research suggests initiation and maintenance are distinct constructs, each requiring unique skills. Furthermore, maintaining health behaviors depends upon health promotion programs that are sustained, or continually delivered with high fidelity, at community and population levels. The objective of this symposium is to present findings from a series of research projects designed to investigate the concept of behavior change maintenance. Activities were supported by NIA Research Centers Collaborative Network (RCCN) funding and included community listening sessions plus an interdisciplinary think tank of national thought leaders. This symposium will begin with an overview of health behavior change, including the rationale for studying maintenance as a critical yet overlooked phase of successful behavior change (J. Hughes). A proposed conceptual model of maintenance will then be discussed, including constructs distinguishing maintenance from initiation (Raj). These introductory presentations will be followed by a discussion of multi-level barriers and facilitators related to maintenance on individual, community, and population levels (S. Hughes). The session will close with implications for research, education, and practice (Bettger).