Search results for "Stimulus"

Fiscal Adjustment and Business Cycle Synchronization

2013

Using a panel of annual data for 20 countries we show that synchronized fiscal consolidation (stimulus) programmes in different countries make their business cycles more closely linked, especially in the case of fiscal adjustments lasting 2 or 3 years. We also find: (i) little evidence of decoupling when an inflation targeting regime is unilaterally adopted; (ii) an increase in business cycle synchronization when countries fix their exchange rates and become members of a monetary union; (iii) a positive effect of bilateral trade on the synchronization of business cycles.

Interference in Dutch–French Bilinguals : Stimulus and Response Conflict in Intra- and Interlingual Stroop

2018

Abstract. In the present manuscript, we investigate the source of congruency effects in a group of Dutch–French bilinguals. In particular, participants performed a color-identification Stroop task, in which both (first language) Dutch and (second language) French distracting color words were presented in colors. The typical finding is impaired responding when the word and color are incongruent (e.g., “red” in blue) relative to congruent (e.g., “red” in red). This congruency effect is observed for both first and second language distracting color words. The current experiment used a 2-to-1 keypress mapping manipulation, which allows one to separate stimulus conflict (i.e., conflict between w…

2014

The face inversion effect is regarded as a hallmark of face-specific processing, and can be observed in a large variety of visual tasks. Face inversion effects are also reported in binocular rivalry. However, it is unclear whether these effects are face-specific, and distinct from the general tendency of visual awareness to privilege upright objects. We studied continuous rivalry across more than six hundred dominance epochs for each observer, having faces and houses rival against their inverted counterparts, and letting faces rival against houses in both upright and inverted orientation. We found strong inversion effects for faces and houses in both the frequency of dominance epochs and th…

2017

In continuous flash suppression (CFS), a dynamic noise masker, presented to one eye, suppresses conscious perception of a test stimulus, presented to the other eye, until the suppressed stimulus comes to awareness after few seconds. But what do we see breaking the dominance of the masker in the transition period? We addressed this question with a dual-task in which observers indicated (i) whether the test object was left or right of the fixation mark (localization) and (ii) whether it was a face or a house (categorization). As done recently (Stein et al., 2011), we used two experimental varieties to rule out confounds with decisional strategy. In the terminated mode, stimulus and masker wer…

Physiological and agonistic behavioural response of Procambarus clarkii to an acoustic stimulus

2012

Summary This study examined the effects of an acoustic stimulus on the haemolymph and agonistic behaviour of the red swamp crayfish Procambarus clarkii. The experiment was conducted in a tank equipped with a video recording system using 6 groups (3 control and 3 test groups) of five adult crayfish (30 specimens in total). After one hour of habituation, the behaviour of the crayfish was monitored for two hours. During the second hour, the animals in the test groups were exposed to a linear sweep (frequency range 0.1-25 kHz; peak amplitude 148 dBrms re 1 µPa at 12 kHz) acoustic stimulus for 30 minutes. Exposure to the noise produced significant variations in haemato-immunological parameters a…

Brightness and contrast do not affect visually induced motion sickness in a passively-flown fixed-base flight simulator

2016

Abstract Background Visually Induced Motion Sickness (VIMS) or simulator sickness is often elicited by a visual stimulus that lacks the appropriate vestibular or proprioceptive feedback. In this study, we chose to investigate the effects of brightness and contrast of the visual scene on VIMS. Hypothesis We hypothesized that visual environments differing in brightness or contrast would differentially induce VIMS. The symptoms of VIMS should be most severe for the combination of high brightness and high contrast and conversely lowest for the low brightness and low contrast condition. Methods 33 healthy subjects were tested in a fixed-base flight simulator. Each subject flew in four consecutiv…

The effect of social information from live demonstrators compared to video playback on blue tit foraging decisions.

2019

Video playback provides a promising method to study social interactions, and the number of video playback experiments has been growing in recent years. Using videos has advantages over live individuals as it increases the repeatability of demonstrations, and enables researchers to manipulate the features of the presented stimulus. How observers respond to video playback might, however, differ among species, and the efficacy of video playback should be validated by investigating if individuals’ responses to videos are comparable to their responses to live demonstrators. Here, we use a novel foraging task to compare blue tits’ (Cyanistes caeruleus) responses to social information from a live …

A Basis Set of Elementary Operations Captures Recombination of Neocortical Cell Assemblies During Basal Conditions and Learning

2019

Cell assemblies — subgroups within neuronal networks — are believed to serve as functional entities underlying cognitive capabilities such as categorical perception or memory formation and storage. However, little is known about their long-term dynamics. Using chronic in vivo calcium imaging in the mouse auditory cortex, we find that cell assemblies undergo continuous recombination, even under behaviorally stable conditions. We identify a basis set of elementary operations capturing the dynamics of cell assemblies, which involve plasticity of both the stimulus tuning of particular assemblies as well as the cellular composition of an assembly. Auditory fear conditioning introduces biases in …

Ion conductance changes associated with spike adaptation in the rapidly adapting stretch receptor of the crayfish.

1975

The time course of the repetitive impulse discharges has been investigated for two high intensities of maintained depolarizing currents, 30 nA and 50 nA, for which the receptor adaptation was complete within 70 msec. The changes in sodium and potassium conductance associated with the decline in spike activity have been analyzed at different instances of time by interrupting in successive experiments the various action potentials in the pulse trains either at the early phase by holding the potential at about -60 mV and recording the inward current (upstroke-gNa) or by evaluating the delayed outward current flowing as the result of a depolarizing voltage pulse which at the end of the action p…

Interpositus nucleus inactivation reduces unconditioned response amplitude after paired but not explicitly unpaired treatment in rabbit eyeblink cond…

2001

The amplitude of unconditioned responses (URs) in unconditioned stimulus (US) alone presentations were measured in six rabbits during explicitly unpaired and classical conditioning treatments. After both phases of the experiment, the interpositus nucleus (IPN) was reversibly inactivated by a cold probe. URs after unpaired treatment were unaffected by inactivation but after acquisition of a robust level of conditioned responses (CRs), URs in US-alone test trials were reduced in amplitude compared with URs immediately before and after inactivation. The results suggest that the IPN has a role in CR-related reflex modification.