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Wagener L, Nieder A. Conscious Experience of Stimulus Presence and Absence Is Actively Encoded by Neurons in the Crow Brain. J Cogn Neurosci 2024; 36:508-521. [PMID: 38165732 DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_02101] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/04/2024]
Abstract
The emergence of consciousness from brain activity constitutes one of the great riddles in biology. It is commonly assumed that only the conscious perception of the presence of a stimulus elicits neuronal activation to signify a "neural correlate of consciousness," whereas the subjective experience of the absence of a stimulus is associated with a neuronal resting state. Here, we demonstrate that the two subjective states "stimulus present" and "stimulus absent" are represented by two specialized neuron populations in crows, corvid birds. We recorded single-neuron activity from the nidopallium caudolaterale of crows trained to report the presence or absence of images presented near the visual threshold. Because of the task design, neuronal activity tracking the conscious "present" versus "absent" percept was dissociated from that involved in planning a motor response. Distinct neuron populations signaled the subjective percepts of "present" and "absent" by increases in activation. The response selectivity of these two neuron populations was similar in strength and time course. This suggests a balanced code for subjective "presence" versus "absence" experiences, which might be beneficial when both conscious states need to be maintained active in the service of goal-directed behavior.
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Noda K, Soda T, Yamashita Y. Emergence of number sense through the integration of multimodal information: developmental learning insights from neural network models. Front Neurosci 2024; 18:1330512. [PMID: 38298912 PMCID: PMC10828047 DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2024.1330512] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/03/2023] [Accepted: 01/02/2024] [Indexed: 02/02/2024] Open
Abstract
Introduction Associating multimodal information is essential for human cognitive abilities including mathematical skills. Multimodal learning has also attracted attention in the field of machine learning, and it has been suggested that the acquisition of better latent representation plays an important role in enhancing task performance. This study aimed to explore the impact of multimodal learning on representation, and to understand the relationship between multimodal representation and the development of mathematical skills. Methods We employed a multimodal deep neural network as the computational model for multimodal associations in the brain. We compared the representations of numerical information, that is, handwritten digits and images containing a variable number of geometric figures learned through single- and multimodal methods. Next, we evaluated whether these representations were beneficial for downstream arithmetic tasks. Results Multimodal training produced better latent representation in terms of clustering quality, which is consistent with previous findings on multimodal learning in deep neural networks. Moreover, the representations learned using multimodal information exhibited superior performance in arithmetic tasks. Discussion Our novel findings experimentally demonstrate that changes in acquired latent representations through multimodal association learning are directly related to cognitive functions, including mathematical skills. This supports the possibility that multimodal learning using deep neural network models may offer novel insights into higher cognitive functions.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | - Yuichi Yamashita
- Department of Information Medicine, National Institute of Neuroscience, National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry, Kodaira, Japan
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Kirschhock ME, Nieder A. Numerical Representation for Action in Crows Obeys the Weber-Fechner Law. Psychol Sci 2023; 34:1322-1335. [PMID: 37883792 DOI: 10.1177/09567976231201624] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/28/2023] Open
Abstract
The psychophysical laws governing the judgment of perceived numbers of objects or events, called the number sense, have been studied in detail. However, the behavioral principles of equally important numerical representations for action are largely unexplored in both humans and animals. We trained two male carrion crows (Corvus corone) to judge numerical values of instruction stimuli from one to five and to flexibly perform a matching number of pecks. Our quantitative analysis of the crows' number production performance shows the same behavioral regularities that have previously been demonstrated for the judgment of sensory numerosity, such as the numerical distance effect, the numerical magnitude effect, and the logarithmical compression of the number line. The presence of these psychophysical phenomena in crows producing number of pecks suggests a unified sensorimotor number representation system underlying the judgment of the number of external stimuli and internally generated actions.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Andreas Nieder
- Animal Physiology Unit, Institute of Neurobiology, University of Tübingen
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Wencheng W, Ge Y, Zuo Z, Chen L, Qin X, Zuxiang L. Visual number sense for real-world scenes shared by deep neural networks and humans. Heliyon 2023; 9:e18517. [PMID: 37560656 PMCID: PMC10407052 DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e18517] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/26/2023] [Revised: 07/17/2023] [Accepted: 07/19/2023] [Indexed: 08/11/2023] Open
Abstract
Recently, visual number sense has been identified from deep neural networks (DNNs). However, whether DNNs have the same capacity for real-world scenes, rather than the simple geometric figures that are often tested, is unclear. In this study, we explore the number perception of scenes using AlexNet and find that numerosity can be represented by the pattern of group activation of the category layer units. The global activation of these units increases with the number of objects in the scene, and the variations in their activation decrease accordingly. By decoding the numerosity from this pattern, we reveal that the embedding coefficient of a scene determines the likelihood of potential objects to contribute to numerical perception. This was demonstrated by the more optimized performance for pictures with relatively high embedding coefficients in both DNNs and humans. This study for the first time shows that a distinct feature in visual environments, revealed by DNNs, can modulate human perception, supported by a group-coding mechanism.
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Affiliation(s)
- Wu Wencheng
- AHU-IAI AI Joint Laboratory, Anhui University, Hefei, 230601, China
- Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center, Hefei, 230088, China
| | - Yingxi Ge
- State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 15 Datun Road, Beijing, 100101, China
- CAS Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, China
- University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 19A Yuquan Road, Beijing, 100049, China
| | - Zhentao Zuo
- Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center, Hefei, 230088, China
- State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 15 Datun Road, Beijing, 100101, China
- CAS Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, China
- University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 19A Yuquan Road, Beijing, 100049, China
| | - Lin Chen
- Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center, Hefei, 230088, China
- State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 15 Datun Road, Beijing, 100101, China
- CAS Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, China
- University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 19A Yuquan Road, Beijing, 100049, China
| | - Xu Qin
- Key Laboratory of Intelligent Computing and Signal Processing of Ministry of Education, Hefei, 230601, China
- Anhui Provincial Key Laboratory of Multimodal Cognitive Computation, Anhui University, Hefei, 230601, China
- School of Computer Science and Technology, Anhui University, Hefei 230601, China
| | - Liu Zuxiang
- Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center, Hefei, 230088, China
- State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 15 Datun Road, Beijing, 100101, China
- CAS Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, China
- University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 19A Yuquan Road, Beijing, 100049, China
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Wagener L, Nieder A. Categorical representation of abstract spatial magnitudes in the executive telencephalon of crows. Curr Biol 2023; 33:2151-2162.e5. [PMID: 37137309 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.04.013] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/21/2022] [Revised: 04/03/2023] [Accepted: 04/07/2023] [Indexed: 05/05/2023]
Abstract
The ability to group abstract continuous magnitudes into meaningful categories is cognitively demanding but key to intelligent behavior. To explore its neuronal mechanisms, we trained carrion crows to categorize lines of variable lengths into arbitrary "short" and "long" categories. Single-neuron activity in the nidopallium caudolaterale (NCL) of behaving crows reflected the learned length categories of visual stimuli. The length categories could be reliably decoded from neuronal population activity to predict the crows' conceptual decisions. NCL activity changed with learning when a crow was retrained with the same stimuli assigned to more categories with new boundaries ("short", "medium," and "long"). Categorical neuronal representations emerged dynamically so that sensory length information at the beginning of the trial was transformed into behaviorally relevant categorical representations shortly before the crows' decision making. Our data show malleable categorization capabilities for abstract spatial magnitudes mediated by the flexible networks of the crow NCL.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lysann Wagener
- Animal Physiology Unit, Institute of Neurobiology, University of Tübingen, 72076 Tübingen, Germany
| | - Andreas Nieder
- Animal Physiology Unit, Institute of Neurobiology, University of Tübingen, 72076 Tübingen, Germany.
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Cai Y, Hofstetter S, Harvey BM, Dumoulin SO. Attention drives human numerosity-selective responses. Cell Rep 2022; 39:111005. [PMID: 35767956 DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2022.111005] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/19/2021] [Revised: 04/18/2022] [Accepted: 06/03/2022] [Indexed: 11/03/2022] Open
Abstract
Numerosity, the set size of a group of items, helps guide behavior and decisions. Previous studies have shown that neural populations respond selectively to numerosities. How numerosity is extracted from the visual scene is a longstanding debate, often contrasting low-level visual with high-level cognitive processes. Here, we investigate how attention influences numerosity-selective responses. The stimuli consisted of black and white dots within the same display. Participants' attention was focused on either black or white dots, while we systematically changed the numerosity of black, white, and total dots. Using 7 T fMRI, we show that the numerosity-tuned neural populations respond only when attention is focused on their preferred numerosity, irrespective of the unattended or total numerosities. Without attention, responses to preferred numerosity are suppressed. Unlike traditional effects of attention in the visual cortex, where attention enhances already existing responses, these results suggest that attention is required to drive numerosity-selective responses.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yuxuan Cai
- Spinoza Centre for Neuroimaging, Meibergdreef 75, 1105BK Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Computational Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Experimental and Applied Psychology, Vrije University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
| | - Shir Hofstetter
- Spinoza Centre for Neuroimaging, Meibergdreef 75, 1105BK Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Computational Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
| | - Ben M Harvey
- Experimental Psychology, Helmholtz Institute, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands
| | - Serge O Dumoulin
- Spinoza Centre for Neuroimaging, Meibergdreef 75, 1105BK Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Computational Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Experimental and Applied Psychology, Vrije University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Experimental Psychology, Helmholtz Institute, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands.
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Jenks KR, Tsimring K, Ip JPK, Zepeda JC, Sur M. Heterosynaptic Plasticity and the Experience-Dependent Refinement of Developing Neuronal Circuits. Front Neural Circuits 2021; 15:803401. [PMID: 34949992 PMCID: PMC8689143 DOI: 10.3389/fncir.2021.803401] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/27/2021] [Accepted: 11/15/2021] [Indexed: 01/01/2023] Open
Abstract
Neurons remodel the structure and strength of their synapses during critical periods of development in order to optimize both perception and cognition. Many of these developmental synaptic changes are thought to occur through synapse-specific homosynaptic forms of experience-dependent plasticity. However, homosynaptic plasticity can also induce or contribute to the plasticity of neighboring synapses through heterosynaptic interactions. Decades of research in vitro have uncovered many of the molecular mechanisms of heterosynaptic plasticity that mediate local compensation for homosynaptic plasticity, facilitation of further bouts of plasticity in nearby synapses, and cooperative induction of plasticity by neighboring synapses acting in concert. These discoveries greatly benefited from new tools and technologies that permitted single synapse imaging and manipulation of structure, function, and protein dynamics in living neurons. With the recent advent and application of similar tools for in vivo research, it is now feasible to explore how heterosynaptic plasticity contribute to critical periods and the development of neuronal circuits. In this review, we will first define the forms heterosynaptic plasticity can take and describe our current understanding of their molecular mechanisms. Then, we will outline how heterosynaptic plasticity may lead to meaningful refinement of neuronal responses and observations that suggest such mechanisms are indeed at work in vivo. Finally, we will use a well-studied model of cortical plasticity—ocular dominance plasticity during a critical period of visual cortex development—to highlight the molecular overlap between heterosynaptic and developmental forms of plasticity, and suggest potential avenues of future research.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kyle R Jenks
- Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States
| | - Katya Tsimring
- Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States
| | - Jacque Pak Kan Ip
- School of Biomedical Sciences, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China
| | - Jose C Zepeda
- Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States
| | - Mriganka Sur
- Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States
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