Download or read book Neural Circuit Mechanisms Underlying Skill Learning Adaptation and Maintenance written by Timothy Matthew Otchy and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mastering a motor skill, such as a playing the guitar, requires precisely controlling both spatial and temporal aspects of motor output - that is, what movements to perform when. While it is generally assumed that these aspects are acquired through the same learning processes and in the same circuits, there is also evidence that the brain can control them independently. But if that's true, how is such modularity in motor control and learning implemented in neural circuitry? To probe this question, we developed a paradigm that 'trains' songbirds to change either spatial or temporal aspects of their vocal output and showed that learning in the two domains is implemented in distinct neural circuits. This dissociation extended to premotor nucleus HVC, which we showed encodes changes to temporal but not spectral song structure. Such functional modularity, i.e. different circuits learning and implementing different aspects of motor control, could serve to overcome the limitations of reinforcement learning algorithms in dealing with large task domains.
Download or read book Cerebellar Learning written by and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2014-06-07 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Progress in Brain Research is the most acclaimed and accomplished series in neuroscience, firmly established as an extensive documentation of the advances in contemporary brain research. The volumes, some of which are derived from important international symposia, contain authoritative reviews and original articles by invited specialists. The rigorous editing of the volumes assures that they will appeal to all laboratory and clinical brain research workers in the various disciplines: neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, neuropharmacology, neuroendocrinology, neuropathology, basic neurology, biological psychiatry, and the behavioral sciences. This volume, The Cerebellum and Memory Formation: Structure, Computation and Function, covers topics including feedback control of cerebellar learning; cortico-cerebellar organization and skill acquisition; cerebellar plasticity and learning in the oculomotor system, and more. Leading authors review the state-of-the-art in their field of investigation, and provide their views and perspectives for future research The volume reflects current thinking about the ways in which the cerebellum can engage in learning, and the contributors come from a variety of research fields The chapters express perspectives from different levels of analysis that range from molecular and cellular mechanisms through to long-range systems that allow the cerebellum to communicate with other brain areas
Download or read book Discovering the Brain written by National Academy of Sciences and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1992-01-01 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The brain ... There is no other part of the human anatomy that is so intriguing. How does it develop and function and why does it sometimes, tragically, degenerate? The answers are complex. In Discovering the Brain, science writer Sandra Ackerman cuts through the complexity to bring this vital topic to the public. The 1990s were declared the "Decade of the Brain" by former President Bush, and the neuroscience community responded with a host of new investigations and conferences. Discovering the Brain is based on the Institute of Medicine conference, Decade of the Brain: Frontiers in Neuroscience and Brain Research. Discovering the Brain is a "field guide" to the brainâ€"an easy-to-read discussion of the brain's physical structure and where functions such as language and music appreciation lie. Ackerman examines: How electrical and chemical signals are conveyed in the brain. The mechanisms by which we see, hear, think, and pay attentionâ€"and how a "gut feeling" actually originates in the brain. Learning and memory retention, including parallels to computer memory and what they might tell us about our own mental capacity. Development of the brain throughout the life span, with a look at the aging brain. Ackerman provides an enlightening chapter on the connection between the brain's physical condition and various mental disorders and notes what progress can realistically be made toward the prevention and treatment of stroke and other ailments. Finally, she explores the potential for major advances during the "Decade of the Brain," with a look at medical imaging techniquesâ€"what various technologies can and cannot tell usâ€"and how the public and private sectors can contribute to continued advances in neuroscience. This highly readable volume will provide the public and policymakersâ€"and many scientists as wellâ€"with a helpful guide to understanding the many discoveries that are sure to be announced throughout the "Decade of the Brain."
Download or read book The Neural Circuit Basis of Learning written by and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chapter 5 then combines these techniques with optogenetic, pharmacogenetic, and pharmacological manipulations to uncover inhibitory circuit mechanisms underlying fear learning. The second part of this thesis focuses on the cerebellum-like electrosensory lobe in the weakly electric mormyrid fish Gnathonemus petersii, as a model system for non-declarative memory. In Chapter 6, we study how short-duration EOD motor commands are recoded into a complex temporal basis in the granule cell layer, which can be used to cancel Purkinje-like cell firing to the longer duration and temporally varying EOD-driven sensory responses. In Chapter 7, we consider not only the temporal aspects of the granule cell code, but also the encoding of body position provided from proprioceptive and efference copy sources. Together these studies clarify how the cerebellum-like circuitry of the electrosensory lobe combines information of different forms and then uses this combined information to predict the complex dependence of sensory responses on body position and timing relative to electric organ discharge.
Download or read book From Neurons to Neighborhoods written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2000-11-13 with total page 610 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How we raise young children is one of today's most highly personalized and sharply politicized issues, in part because each of us can claim some level of "expertise." The debate has intensified as discoveries about our development-in the womb and in the first months and years-have reached the popular media. How can we use our burgeoning knowledge to assure the well-being of all young children, for their own sake as well as for the sake of our nation? Drawing from new findings, this book presents important conclusions about nature-versus-nurture, the impact of being born into a working family, the effect of politics on programs for children, the costs and benefits of intervention, and other issues. The committee issues a series of challenges to decision makers regarding the quality of child care, issues of racial and ethnic diversity, the integration of children's cognitive and emotional development, and more. Authoritative yet accessible, From Neurons to Neighborhoods presents the evidence about "brain wiring" and how kids learn to speak, think, and regulate their behavior. It examines the effect of the climate-family, child care, community-within which the child grows.
Download or read book Visual Psychophysics written by Zhong-Lin Lu and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2013-10-11 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive treatment of the skills and techniques needed for visual psychophysics, from basic tools to sophisticated data analysis. Vision is one of the most active areas in biomedical research, and visual psychophysical techniques are a foundational methodology for this research enterprise. Visual psychophysics, which studies the relationship between the physical world and human behavior, is a classical field of study that has widespread applications in modern vision science. Bridging the gap between theory and practice, this textbook provides a comprehensive treatment of visual psychophysics, teaching not only basic techniques but also sophisticated data analysis methodologies and theoretical approaches. It begins with practical information about setting up a vision lab and goes on to discuss the creation, manipulation, and display of visual images; timing and integration of displays with measurements of brain activities and other relevant techniques; experimental designs; estimation of behavioral functions; and examples of psychophysics in applied and clinical settings. The book's treatment of experimental designs presents the most commonly used psychophysical paradigms, theory-driven psychophysical experiments, and the analysis of these procedures in a signal-detection theory framework. The book discusses the theoretical underpinnings of data analysis and scientific interpretation, presenting data analysis techniques that include model fitting, model comparison, and a general framework for optimized adaptive testing methods. It includes many sample programs in Matlab with functions from Psychtoolbox, a free toolbox for real-time experimental control. Once students and researchers have mastered the material in this book, they will have the skills to apply visual psychophysics to cutting-edge vision science.
Download or read book How People Learn II written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2018-09-27 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are many reasons to be curious about the way people learn, and the past several decades have seen an explosion of research that has important implications for individual learning, schooling, workforce training, and policy. In 2000, How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition was published and its influence has been wide and deep. The report summarized insights on the nature of learning in school-aged children; described principles for the design of effective learning environments; and provided examples of how that could be implemented in the classroom. Since then, researchers have continued to investigate the nature of learning and have generated new findings related to the neurological processes involved in learning, individual and cultural variability related to learning, and educational technologies. In addition to expanding scientific understanding of the mechanisms of learning and how the brain adapts throughout the lifespan, there have been important discoveries about influences on learning, particularly sociocultural factors and the structure of learning environments. How People Learn II: Learners, Contexts, and Cultures provides a much-needed update incorporating insights gained from this research over the past decade. The book expands on the foundation laid out in the 2000 report and takes an in-depth look at the constellation of influences that affect individual learning. How People Learn II will become an indispensable resource to understand learning throughout the lifespan for educators of students and adults.
Download or read book Cognitive Enhancement in Schizophrenia and Related Disorders written by Matcheri Keshavan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-21 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A practical guide on how to assess and treat schizophrenia and related disorders using cognitive rehabilitation.
Download or read book The Child s Path to Spoken Language written by John L. Locke and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How and why do children go from babbling to words? Locke's answer constitutes a journey through language development, taking in neurological, perceptual, social and linguistic aspects. He describes infant behaviour, as it elicits and structures the stimulation needed for learning meaningful speech.
Download or read book Mechanisms of Neural Activity Exploration and Consolidation Underlying Neuroprosthetic Skill Learning written by Vivek Athalye and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Brain-Machine Interface (BMI) is an emerging technology which directly translates neural activity into control signals for effectors such as computers, prosthetics, or even muscles. Work over the last decade has shown that high performance BMIs depend on machine learning to adapt parameters for decoding neural activity, but also on the brain learning to reliably produce desired neural activity patterns. How the brain learns neuroprosthetic skill de novo is not well-understood and could inform the design of next-generation BMIs in which both the brain and machine synergistically adapt. We view BMI learning from the brain's perspective as a reinforcement learning problem, as the brain must initially explore activity patterns, observe their consequences on the prosthetic, and finally consolidate activity patterns leading to desired outcomes. This thesis will address 3 questions about how the brain learns neuroprosthetic skill: 1) How do task-relevant neural populations coordinate during activity exploration and consolidation? 2) How can the brain select activity patterns to consolidate? Does the pairing of neural activity patterns with neural reinforcement signals drive activity consolidation? 3) Do the basal ganglia-dependent mechanisms of neural activity exploration and consolidation generalize across cortex, even to visual cortex? First, we present the use of Factor Analysis to analyze neural coordination during BMI control by partitioning neural activity variance arising from two sources: private inputs to each neuron which drive independent, high-dimensional variance, and shared inputs which drive multiple neurons simultaneously and produce low-dimensional covariance. We found that initially, each neuron explores activity patterns independently. Over days of learning, the population's covariance increases, and a manifold emerges which aligns to the decoder. Strikingly, this low-dimensional activity drives skillful control of the decoder. Next, we consider the role of reinforcement signals in the brain in driving neural activity consolidation. By performing experiments with a novel BMI that delivers reward through optogenetic stimulation, we found that cortical neural activity patterns which causally lead to midbrain dopaminergic neural reinforcement are consolidated. This provides evidence for a “neural law of effect,” following Thorndike's behavioral law of effect stating that behaviors leading to reinforcements are repeated. Previous work has shown that dopaminergic reinforcement signals contribute to plasticity between cortex and striatum, the input area to the subcortical basal ganglia, and that corticostriatal plasticity is necessary for BMI learning. Thus, we investigate whether the basal-ganglia dependent ability to explore and consolidate activity patterns generalizes across cortex. Indeed, we find that the brain can explore and consolidate activity patterns even in visual cortex, an area thought primarily to represent visual stimulus, and that learning requires the basal ganglia, as optogenetic inhibition of dorsomedial striatum blocks learning. Together, these results contribute to our understanding of how the brain solves the reinforcement learning problem of learning neuroprosthetic skill, suggesting a computational role for high-dimensional private neural variance and exploration, low-dimensional shared neural variance and consolidated control, and 1) dopaminergic midbrain and 2) striatum activity and neural reinforcement.
Download or read book Translational Research in Traumatic Brain Injury written by Daniel Laskowitz and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2016-04-21 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) remains a significant source of death and permanent disability, contributing to nearly one-third of all injury related deaths in the United States and exacting a profound personal and economic toll. Despite the increased resources that have recently been brought to bear to improve our understanding of TBI, the developme
Download or read book Neuroscience for Clinicians written by Eduardo E. Benarroch and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 833 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The aim of this book is to provide the clinician with a comprehensive and clinical relevant survey of emerging concepts on the organization and function of the nervous system and neurologic disease mechanisms, at the molecular, cellular and system levels. The content of is based on the review of information obtained from recent advances in genetic, molecular and cell biology techniques, electrophysiological recordings, brain mapping, and mouse models, emphasizing the clinical and possible therapeutic implications. Many chapters of this book contain information that will be relevant not only clinical neurologists but also to psychiatrists and physical therapists. The scope includes the mechanisms and abnormalities of DNA/RNA metabolism, proteostasis, vesicular biogenesis, and axonal transport and mechanisms of neurodegeneration; the role of the mitochondria in cell function and death mechanisms; ion channels, neurotransmission and mechanisms of channelopathies and synaptopathies; the functions of astrocytes, oligodendrocytes and microglia and their involvement in disease; the local circuits and synaptic interactions at the level of the cerebral cortex, thalamus, basal ganglia, cerebellum, brainstem and spinal cord transmission regulating sensory processing, behavioral state and motor functions; the peripheral and central mechanisms of pain and homeostasis; and networks involved in emotion, memory, language, and executive function"--
Download or read book Cellular CNS repair strategies technologies and therapeutic developments written by Jorg Dietrich and published by Frontiers Media SA. This book was released on 2023-06-29 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Textbook of Neural Repair and Rehabilitation Volume 1 Neural Repair and Plasticity written by Michael Selzer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-24 with total page 693 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In two freestanding volumes, the Textbook of Neural Repair and Rehabilitation provides comprehensive coverage of the science and practice of neurological rehabilitation. Revised throughout, bringing the book fully up to date, this volume, Neural Repair and Plasticity, covers the basic sciences relevant to recovery of function following injury to the nervous system, reviewing anatomical and physiological plasticity in the normal central nervous system, mechanisms of neuronal death, axonal regeneration, stem cell biology, and research strategies targeted at axon regeneration and neuron replacement. New chapters have been added covering pathophysiology and plasticity in cerebral palsy, stem cell therapies for brain disorders and neurotrophin repair of spinal cord damage, along with numerous others. Edited and written by leading international authorities, it is an essential resource for neuroscientists and provides a foundation for the work of clinical rehabilitation professionals.
Download or read book Textbook of Neural Repair and Rehabilitation written by Michael E. Selzer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 693 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In two freestanding volumes, the Textbook of Neural Repair and Rehabilitation provides comprehensive coverage of the science and practice of neurological rehabilitation. Revised throughout, bringing the book fully up to date, this volume, Neural Repair and Plasticity, covers the basic sciences relevant to recovery of function following injury to the nervous system, reviewing anatomical and physiological plasticity in the normal central nervous system, mechanisms of neuronal death, axonal regeneration, stem cell biology, and research strategies targeted at axon regeneration and neuron replacement. New chapters have been added covering pathophysiology and plasticity in cerebral palsy, stem cell therapies for brain disorders and neurotrophin repair of spinal cord damage, along with numerous others. Edited and written by leading international authorities, it is an essential resource for neuroscientists and provides a foundation for the work of clinical rehabilitation professionals.
Download or read book Innate written by Kevin J. Mitchell and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "What makes you the way you are--and what makes each of us different from everyone else? In Innate, leading neuroscientist and popular science blogger Kevin Mitchell traces human diversity and individual differences to their deepest level: in the wiring of our brains. Deftly guiding us through important new research, including his own groundbreaking work, he explains how variations in the way our brains develop before birth strongly influence our psychology and behavior throughout our lives, shaping our personality, intelligence, sexuality, and even the way we perceive the world. We all share a genetic program for making a human brain, and the program for making a brain like yours is specifically encoded in your DNA. But, as Mitchell explains, the way that program plays out is affected by random processes of development that manifest uniquely in each person, even identical twins. The key insight of Innate is that the combination of these developmental and genetic variations creates innate differences in how our brains are wired--differences that impact all aspects of our psychology--and this insight promises to transform the way we see the interplay of nature and nurture. Innate also explores the genetic and neural underpinnings of disorders such as autism, schizophrenia, and epilepsy, and how our understanding of these conditions is being revolutionized. In addition, the book examines the social and ethical implications of these ideas and of new technologies that may soon offer the means to predict or manipulate human traits. Compelling and original, Innate will change the way you think about why and how we are who we are."--Provided by the publisher.
Download or read book Coevolution written by William H. Durham and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 658 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charles Darwin's "On the Origins of Species" had two principal goals: to show that species had not been separately created and to show that natural selection had been the main force behind their proliferation and descent from common ancestors. In "Coevolution," the author proposes a powerful new theory of cultural evolution--that is, of the descent with modification of the shared conceptual systems we call "cultures"--that is parallel in many ways to Darwin's theory of organic evolution. The author suggests that a process of cultural selection, or preservation by preference, driven chiefly by choice or imposition depending on the circumstances, has been the main but not exclusive force of cultural change. He shows that this process gives rise to five major patterns or "modes" in which cultural change is at odds with genetic change. Each of the five modes is discussed in some detail and its existence confirmed through one or more case studies chosen for their heuristic value, the robustness of their data, and their broader implications. But "Coevolution" predicts not simply the existence of the five modes of gene-culture relations; it also predicts their relative importance in the ongoing dynamics of cultural change in particular cases. The case studies themselves are lucid and innovative reexaminations of an array of oft-pondered anthropological topics--plural marriage, sickle-cell anemia, basic color terms, adult lactose absorption, incest taboos, headhunting, and cannibalism. In a general case, the author's goal is to demonstrate that an evolutionary analysis of both genes and culture has much to contribute to our understanding of human diversity, particularly behavioral diversity, and thus to the resolution of age-old questions about nature and nurture, genes and culture.
