Papers in this group
-
The nigrostriatal dopaminergic system is implicated in action control and learning. A large body of work has focused on the contribution of this system to modulation of the corticostriatal synapse, the predominant synapse type in the striatum.…
-
-
In 1894, Ramón y Cajal first proposed that memory is stored as an anatomical change in the strength of neuronal connections. For the following 60 years, little evidence was recruited in support of this idea. This situation changed in the middle of…
-
Changes in synaptic strength are believed to underlie learning and memory. We explore the idea that norepinephrine is an essential modulator of memory through its ability to regulate synaptic mechanisms. Emotional arousal leads to activation of the…
-
According to the Hebb rule, the change in the strength of a synapse depends only on the local interaction of presynaptic and postsynaptic events. Studies at many types of synapses indicate that the early phase of long-term potentiation (LTP) has…
-
The dorsal striatum is a large forebrain region involved in action initiation, timing, control, learning and memory. Learning and remembering skilled movement sequences requires the dorsal striatum, and striatal subregions participate in both…
-
Near coincidental pre- and postsynaptic action potentials induce associative long-term potentiation (LTP) or long-term depression (LTD), depending on the order of their timing. Here, we show that in visual cortex the rules of this…
-
-
Reinforcement learning (RL) provides an influential characterization of the brain's mechanisms for learning to make advantageous choices. An important problem, though, is how complex tasks can be represented in a way that enables efficient learning.…
-
The manner in which drug-evoked synaptic plasticity affects reward circuits remains largely elusive. We found that cocaine reduced NMDA receptor excitatory postsynaptic currents and inserted GluA2-lacking AMPA receptors in dopamine neurons of mice.…
-
Visually guided behavior often involves decisions that are based on evaluating stimuli in the context of those observed previously. Such decisions are made by monkeys comparing two consecutive stimuli, sample and test, moving in the same or opposite…
-
For decades, rods and cones were thought to be the only photoreceptors in the mammalian retina. However, a population of atypical photoreceptive retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) expresses the photopigment melanopsin and is intrinsically photosensitive…
-
In this paper, we propose a new information-theoretic method, called "selective information enhancement learning," to explicitly interpret final representations created by learning. More specifically, we aim to make class boundaries obtained by…
-
The endocannabinoid system consists of G-protein-coupled cannabinoid receptors that can be activated by cannabis-derived drugs and small lipids termed endocannabinoids (eCBs) plus associated biochemical machinery (precursors, synthetic and…
-
We continuously face the dilemma of choosing between actions that gather new information or actions that exploit existing knowledge. This "exploration-exploitation" trade-off depends on the environment: stability favors exploiting knowledge to…
-
Measuring sensitivity is at the heart of psychophysics. Often, sensitivity is derived from estimates of the psychometric function. This function relates response probability to stimulus intensity. In estimating these response probabilities, most…
-
The temporal difference (TD) learning framework is a major paradigm for understanding value-based decision making and related neural activities (e.g., dopamine activity). The representation of time in neural processes modeled by a TD framework,…
-
Auditory temporal processing is essential for sound discrimination and speech comprehension. Under normal developmental conditions, temporal processing acuity improves with age. As recent animal studies have shown that the functional development of…
-
Since the discovery in 1996 that a region within caudal parahippocampal cortex subserves learning and recall of topographical information, numerous studies aimed at elucidating the structures and pathways involved in scene recognition have been…
-
The striatum has important roles in motor control and action learning and, like many brain regions, receives multiple monoaminergic inputs. We have examined serotonergic modulation of rat and mouse corticostriatal neurotransmission and find that…