Search results for "cognitive neuroscience"

Differential memory persistence of odor mixture and components in newborn rabbits: competition between the whole and its parts

2014

Interacting with the mother during the daily nursing, newborn rabbits experience her body odour cues. In particular, the mammary pheromone (MP) contained in rabbit milk triggers the typical behaviour which helps to localize and seize the nipples. It also promotes the very rapid appetitive learning of simple or complex stimuli (odorants or mixtures) through associative conditioning. We previously showed that 24h after MP-induced conditioning to odorants A (ethyl isobutyrate) or B (ethyl maltol), newborn rabbits perceive the AB mixture in a weak configural way, i.e. they perceive the odour of the AB configuration in addition to the odours of the elements. Moreover, after conditioning to the m…

Memory degradation induced by attention in recurrent neural architectures

2022

This paper studies the memory mechanisms in recurrent neural architectures when attention models are included. Pure-attention models like Transformers are more and more popular as they tend to outperform models with recurrent connections in many different tasks. Our conjecture is that attention prevents the recurrent connections from transferring information properly between consecutive next steps. This conjecture is empirically tested using five different models, namely, a model without attention, a standard Loung attention model, a standard Bahdanau attention model, and our proposal to add attention to the inputs in order to fill the gap between recurrent and parallel architectures (for b…

Auditory P3a response to native and foreign speech in children with or without attentional deficit

2023

The aim of this study was to investigate the attentional mechanism in speech processing of native and foreign language in children with and without attentional deficit. For this purpose, the P3a component, cognitive neuromarker of the attentional processes, was investigated in a two-sequence two-deviant oddball paradigm using Finnish and English speech items via event-related potentials (ERP) technique. The difference waves reflected the temporal brain dynamics of the P3a response in native and foreign language contexts. Cluster-based permutation tests evaluated the group differences over the P3a time window. A correlation analysis was conducted between the P3a response and the attention sc…

Evolution of vertebrate survival circuits

2018

Evolution selects those adaptive features that increase reproductive probabilities and facilitate survival. Analysing the brain circuits mediating risk-avoidance (e.g. defense) and those allowing reward-seeking (motivated) behaviours in different vertebrates leads to several main conclusions. First, circuits mediating risk-avoidance are similar in all studied vertebrates, where they include amygdala homologues located in the posterior half of the cerebral hemispheres, in close relationship with the chemosensory systems. Second, in all vertebrates, reward-seeking behaviours involve the activity of tegmento-striatal dopaminergic pathways, plus other inputs to the ventral striatum, including a…

Open science as a better gatekeeper for science and society: a perspective from neurolaw

2018

Results from cognitive neuroscience have been cited as evidence in courtrooms around the world, and their admissibility has been a challenge for the legal system. Unfortunately, the recent reproducibility crisis in cognitive neuroscience, showing that the published studies in cognitive neuroscience may not be as trustworthy as expected, has made the situation worse. Here we analysed how the irreproducible results in cognitive neuroscience literature could compromise the standards for admissibility of scientific evidence, and pointed out how the open science movement may help to alleviate these problems. We conclude that open science not only benefits the scientific community but also the le…

Understanding the Role of Sensorimotor Beta Oscillations

2021

Beta oscillations have been predominantly observed in sensorimotor cortices and basal\ud ganglia structures and they are thought to be involved in somatosensory processing\ud and motor control. Although beta activity is a distinct feature of healthy and pathological\ud sensorimotor processing, the role of this rhythm is still under debate. Here we review\ud recent findings about the role of beta oscillations during experimental manipulations (i.e.,\ud drugs and brain stimulation) and their alteration in aging and pathology. We show how\ud beta changes when learning new motor skills and its potential to integrate sensory input\ud with prior contextual knowledge. We conclude by discussing a n…

Corrigendum: Wired for motherhood: induction of maternal care but not maternal aggression in virgin female CD1 mice

2021

Modeling user preferences in content-based image retrieval: A novel attempt to bridge the semantic gap

2015

This paper is concerned with content-based image retrieval from a stochastic point of view. The semantic gap problem is addressed in two ways. First, a dimensional reduction is applied using the (pre-calculated) distances among images. The dimension of the reduced vector is the number of preferences that we allow the user to choose from, in this case, three levels. Second, the conditional probability distribution of the random user preference, given this reduced feature vector, is modeled using a proportional odds model. A new model is fitted at each iteration. The score used to rank the image database is based on the estimated probability function of the random preference. Additionally, so…

A principled approach to network-based classification and data representation

2013

Measures of similarity are fundamental in pattern recognition and data mining. Typically the Euclidean metric is used in this context, weighting all variables equally and therefore assuming equal relevance, which is very rare in real applications. In contrast, given an estimate of a conditional density function, the Fisher information calculated in primary data space implicitly measures the relevance of variables in a principled way by reference to auxiliary data such as class labels. This paper proposes a framework that uses a distance metric based on Fisher information to construct similarity networks that achieve a more informative and principled representation of data. The framework ena…

Spectral clustering with the probabilistic cluster kernel

2015

Abstract This letter introduces a probabilistic cluster kernel for data clustering. The proposed kernel is computed with the composition of dot products between the posterior probabilities obtained via GMM clustering. The kernel is directly learned from the data, is parameter-free, and captures the data manifold structure at different scales. The projections in the kernel space induced by this kernel are useful for general feature extraction purposes and are here exploited in spectral clustering with the canonical k-means. The kernel structure, informative content and optimality are studied. Analysis and performance are illustrated in several real datasets.