Have you seen the movie Inception? If not you should. It is all about a group of people high jacking the dreams of company bosses to steal useful information from their memory to sell them to their rivals. Anyway the Holy Grail of these “being in other peoples head and manipulating things” – trips is […]
Archiv der Kategorie 'Neurophysiology'
Perceptual decision making in less than 30 milliseconds
Perceptual decision making is formalized as the accumulation of (noisy) sensory evidence until a decision threshold is crossed. Much understanding has been gained from studies of monkey neurophysiology and human neuroimaging as well as by computational modeling but there are still fascinating open questions about mechanisms of perceptual decision making. Perceptual decisions can be made […]
Critical role for protein kinase A in the acquisition of gregarious behavior in the desert locust
Posted on behalf of Hans-Joachim Pflüger: In the article by Ott et al. the role of two protein kinases (PK) in the population density dependent transition from solitarious to gregarious animals is investigated. Only gregarious locusts form large swarms that are harmful for agriculture. The foraging gene product, a cGMP-dependent PK (PKG), implicated in foraging, […]
Reading the mind’s eye: Online detection of visuo-spatial working memory and visual imagery in the inferior temporal lobe
Posted on behalf of Jaime Martinez: The authors of the present work studied the extent to which visual brain regions participate in non-sensory cognitive processes of visual representation. To this end, they evaluated the role of ventral visual pathway areas in visual imagery and working memory by analyzing intracerebral EEG recordings from the left inferior […]
Identification of a genetic cluster influencing memory performance and hippocampal activity in humans
In this study the authors investigated molecular pathways associated with memory formation. They used the behavioral genetics approach to identify genetic variations related to memory performance. An additional fMRI-study was conducted to validate their genetic findings as well as to capture brain activity related to the genotype. Out of 336 healthy subjects that underwent an […]
Molecular computer models enhance learning and memory
Posted on behalf of Benjamin Paffhausen: The authors studied long term sensitization of the withdrawal reflex in Aplysia, which is an example of long term memory (LTM). Previous findings suggested that activation of protein kinase A (PKA) and extracellular signal regulated kinase (ERK) lead to long term facilitation (LTF), a form of LTM. PKA and […]
Operant and classical conditioning in the same neuron
The marine snail Aplysia is perhaps best known for its Nobel-award-winning learning ability. In the classic work, a small water jet to the body of the animal was paired with electric shock to accomplish classical (or Pavlovian) conditioning. Since about the 1930s, it has been a longstanding debate among psychologists whether classical and operant conditioning […]
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