Broca’s area is one of language-related brain areas that typically locates in the posterior part ... more Broca’s area is one of language-related brain areas that typically locates in the posterior part of the inferior frontal region of the left hemisphere. Broca’s area plays an important role in the perception and production of sequential/hierarchical structures of language. A contribution of two major frontotemporal fiber bundles connected to Broca’s area also supports our language faculty: the dorsal and ventral pathways. The dorsal pathway supports syntactics, while the ventral pathway supports semantic processes and local phrase structure.
The posterior parietal cortex is included in the dorsal cortical visual pathway underlying the th... more The posterior parietal cortex is included in the dorsal cortical visual pathway underlying the three-dimensional (3-D) visual recognition of space and objects. The neurons in the lateral intraparietal area (LIP) respond visually to the three-dimensional objects, whereas those in the anterior intraparietal area (AIP) respond to hand movements to grasp them. LIP receives visual inputs from V3A, whereas AIP projects to the premotor areas; however, it is not known whether the neurons in LIP project to AIP. We herein investigated the connectional substrates that underlie the transformation of three-dimensional vision to prehensile hand movements in the Japanese monkey (Macaca fuscata). After identifying the three-dimensional visually responsive region in the posterior part of LIP by the unit recordings, we injected a bidirectional tracer, wheat germ agglutinin conjugated to horseradish peroxidase, into one of the recording sites. We found that LIP receives neuronal projections from V3A and sends axons to AIP. To confirm our findings, we injected several orthograde tracers into V3A and retrograde tracers into AIP in the same hemispheres. We found that the V3A neurons projecting to LIP terminate in the vicinity of the LIP neurons projecting to AIP. The results suggest that the cortical connections of V3A-LIP-AIP in the lateral bank of the intraparietal sulcus play an important role in the visuomotor transformation for prehensile hand movements.
This article is published in The Journal of Neuroscience, Rapid Communications Section, which pub... more This article is published in The Journal of Neuroscience, Rapid Communications Section, which publishes brief, peerreviewed papers online, not in print. Rapid Communications are posted online approximately one month earlier than they would appear if printed. They are listed in the Table of Contents of the next open issue of JNeurosci.
It has been previously reported that bilateral damage in the auditory cortex resulted in a severe... more It has been previously reported that bilateral damage in the auditory cortex resulted in a severe deficit in the acquisition of the auditory pattern discrimination if it was incurred at adulthood while animals with comparative lesion on the day of birth could learn the discrimination. In the present report, a critical period for sparing of auditory pattern discrimination was surveyed behaviorally in rats sustaining neonatal lesion in the auditory cortex. Consequently, rats with such lesions before weaning could learn the tasks as intact animals. On the contrary, rats who sustained comparative lesions after weaning could not learn this discrimination. These findings imply that auditory pattern discrimination was spared from early brain damage if the brain is injured before cortical function and circuitry are under development. 1307 Neuropsin is involved in epileptogenesis.
Observing another person's piano play and listening to a melody interact with the observer's exec... more Observing another person's piano play and listening to a melody interact with the observer's execution of piano play. This interaction is thought to occur because the execution of musical-action and the perception of both musical-action and musical-sound share a common representation in which the frontoparietal network is involved. However, it is unclear whether the perceptions of observed piano play and listened musical sound use a common neural resource. The present study used near-infrared spectroscopy to determine whether the interaction between the perception of musical-action and musical-sound sequences appear in the left prefrontal area. Measurements were obtained while participants watched videos that featured hands playing familiar melodies on a piano keyboard. Hand movements were paired with either a congruent or an incongruent melody. Two groups of participants (nine well-trained and nine less-trained) were instructed to identify the melody according to hand movements and to ignore the accompanying auditory track. Increased cortical activation was detected in the well-trained participants when hand movements were paired with incongruent melodies. Therefore, an interference effect was detected regarding the processing of action and sound sequences, indicating that musical-action sequences may be perceived with a representation that is also used for the perception of musical-sound sequences. However, in less-trained participants, such a contrast was not detected between conditions despite both groups featuring comparable key-touch reading abilities. Therefore, the current results imply that the left prefrontal area is involved in translating temporally structured sequences between domains. Additionally, expertise may be a crucial factor underlying this translation.
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2015
Whistle-like high-pitched “phee” calls are often used as long-distance vocal advertisements by sm... more Whistle-like high-pitched “phee” calls are often used as long-distance vocal advertisements by small-bodied marmosets and tamarins in the dense forests of South America. While the source-filter theory proposes that vibration of the vocal fold is modified independently from the resonance of the supralaryngeal vocal tract (SVT) in human speech, a source-filter coupling that constrains the vibration frequency to SVT resonance effectively produces loud tonal sounds in some musical instruments. Here, a combined approach of acoustic analyses and simulation with helium-modulated voices was used to show that phee calls are produced principally with the same mechanism as in human speech. The animal keeps the fundamental frequency (f0) close to the first formant (F1) of the SVT, to amplify f0. Although f0 and F1 are primarily independent, the degree of their tuning can be strengthened further by a flexible source-filter interaction, the variable strength of which depends upon the cross-sectio...
Broca's area has been suggested as the area responsible for the domain-general hierarchical p... more Broca's area has been suggested as the area responsible for the domain-general hierarchical processing of language and music. Although meaningful action shares a common hierarchical structure with language and music, the role of Broca's area in this domain remains controversial. To address the involvement of Broca's area in the processing action hierarchy, the activation of Broca's area was measured using near-infrared spectroscopy. Measurements were taken while participants watched silent movies that featured hand movements playing familiar and unfamiliar melodies. The unfamiliar melodies were reversed versions of the familiar melodies. Additionally, to investigate the effect of a motor experience on the activation of Broca's area, the participants were divided into well-trained and less-trained groups. The results showed that Broca's area in the well-trained participants demonstrated a significantly larger activation in response to the hand motion when an u...
Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) has been used extensively for functional neuroimaging over the ... more Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) has been used extensively for functional neuroimaging over the past decade, in part because it is considered a powerful tool for investigating brain function in human infants and young children, for whom other neuroimaging techniques are not suitable. In particular, several studies have measured hemodynamic responses in the occipital region in infants upon exposure to visual stimuli. In the present study, we used a multi-channel NIRS to measure neuronal activity in a macaque monkey who was trained to watch videos showing various circus animals performing acrobatic activities without fixing the head position of the monkey. Cortical activity from the occipital region was measured first by placing a probe comprising a 3 x 5 array of emitters and detectors (2 x 4 cm) on the area (area 17), and the robustness and stability of the results were confirmed across sessions. Cortical responses were then measured from the dorsofrontal region. The oxygenated hem...
Behavioral economics is useful for understanding the influence of environmental manipulation on a... more Behavioral economics is useful for understanding the influence of environmental manipulation on a variety of behaviors, including drug self-administration, food intake, and stock behavior. The present study employed behavioral economics to investigate the psychologically satisfying amount of water intake in a laboratory rhesus macaque. Our institutional guidelines set a minimum amount of daily water intake. However, no study to date has determined whether that minimum amount is psychologically sufficient. In the present experiment, a monkey lived in an individual cage in which the only water available was delivered by chain pulling. A fixed number of responses was required for water delivery. This fixed ratio (FR) of responses per water delivery was progressively increased from FR 2 to FR 10. The study findings showed that during the FR 2 condition, demand for water was saturated at 131.3 ml/kg body weight (BW) (ranging from 95.1 to 211.2). The monkey's daily intake of water dec...
Binocular visual responsiveness of neurons in visual cortex of the cat can be changed by monocula... more Binocular visual responsiveness of neurons in visual cortex of the cat can be changed by monocular visual deprivation in the critical period of postnatal development. It is hypothesized that afferents from each eye compete with one another for synaptic connections with cortical neurons so that less active afferents from the deprived eye fail to maintain the connections. This hypothesis predicts that an increase in inputs from one eye instead of decrease due to deprivation should also change binocular responsiveness of cortical neurons. However, the hypothesis has not successfully been tested with experimental activation of afferents from one eye. In the present study, we activated one of the optic nerves by chronic electrical stimulation of theta-burst type in behaving kittens for 2 days. After such a monocular activation, visual cortical neurons showed a significant ocular dominance shift in favor of the electrically activated eye, although neurons in the activated and nonactivated...
localization of such specialized neuronal networks has not been investigated. Furthermore, most o... more localization of such specialized neuronal networks has not been investigated. Furthermore, most of these neurons have been classified from the signatures they leave in multiunit activity (MUA), but the relationships that neuronal spiking holds with the underlying sub/supra-threshold postsynaptic activities have not been clarified yet. We used extracellular potentials recorded simultaneously from 64 sites inside the A1 of adult Wistar rats to evaluate neuronal codifiers for fundamental attributes, which were selected from their particular MUA dose-response curves. We demonstrated that the underlying neuronal populations were sparsely and heterogeneously distributed along the A1, even though they complied with the tonotopic organization. Codifying neurons were majorly PCs which showed laminar profiles. MUA was correlated to Beta (12-25 Hz) postsynaptic oscillations in the infragranular layers, while the supragranular layers revealed a better correlation between MUA and Gamma range postsynaptic oscillations (70-170 Hz). We concluded that, for rats, sounds are codified in A1 by a sparsely segregated network involving specialized PCs and that their postsynaptic activity may create the proper conditions for the emergence of sparse and dense spiking patterns.
Binocular responsiveness of most neurons in the primary visual cortex of cats can be changed by m... more Binocular responsiveness of most neurons in the primary visual cortex of cats can be changed by monocular visual deprivation during the critical period of early postnatal life. These results suggest that impulse activity from both optic nerves is important for the formation of ocular dominance of cortical neurons. A form of synaptic plasticity, long-term potentiation (LTP), has been hypothesized to be involved in such an experience-dependent change in the cortex. However, there has been no direct experimental demonstration of the hypothesized link between LTP and ocular dominance plasticity of cortical neurons. In kittens at postnatal 23-47days, we activated one of the optic nerves with tetanic stimulation of the 0-burst type (4 trains at 100 Hz given at 5 Hz for 2 s at an interval of 10 s for 48 hours) which is known to induce LTP in the visual cortex and analyzed possible changes in visual response of neurons in the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) and the visual cortex. After this tetanic stimulation, most of the cortical neurons (n = 224) had normal orientation selectivity to moving light bar stimulus from both eyes. Also, most LGN neurons had normal responses to visual stimuli. On the other hand, the ocular dominance of most cortical neurons shifted toward the eye at the tetanized side in all the animals (n = 7). These results indicate that chronic electrical stimulation of the LTP-inducing type changes the ocular dominance of cortical neurons.
Optical recording of cortical activity in awake monkeys has enhanced our understanding of the fun... more Optical recording of cortical activity in awake monkeys has enhanced our understanding of the functional anatomy of the primary visual cortex (V1). However, cortical representation of visual cognition has not been studied by optical recording, even though the greatest merit of using awake animals is that they can offer advantages in studying cognitive function that anesthetized animals cannot. Thus far, the optical recording method has not been combined with tasks that accompany body movements because of concern about movement noise, although behavioral tasks are helpful in the study of animal cognition. Here, I tested the influence of body movements during the signal acquisition period on the resultant images. I recorded the intrinsic signals associating with different orientations from V1 of a monkey who was emitting behavior during the signal acquisition period. Although the monkey's behavior was maintained on a variable-interval schedule that typically induces a high rate of response, orientation maps were consistently obtained. Therefore, a successful recording under this operant regimen implies the applicability of the optical recording method to other behavioral tasks. Several constraints in applying optical recording to studies using behaving animals are also discussed.
s / Neuroscience Research 68S (2010) e335–e446 e407 The modulation seems to reflect dynamic alter... more s / Neuroscience Research 68S (2010) e335–e446 e407 The modulation seems to reflect dynamic alternation of the network itself in addition to the modulation at the interconnected cortex. doi:10.1016/j.neures.2010.07.1803 P3-l26 Learning variation of deterministic chaos in auditory signals Ryota Horie 1,2,3,4 , Reiko Mazuka 2,5 1 Department of Electrical Communications Engineering, College of Engineering, Shibaura Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan 2 Lab. for Language Development, Brain Science Institute, RIKEN, Wako-shi, Japan 3 Lab. for Behavior and Dynamic Cognition, Brain Science Institute, RIKEN, Wako-shi, Japan 4 Theoretical Biology Lab., Advanced Science Institute, RIKEN, Wakoshi, Japan 5 Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, USA Behavioral research in speech science and cognitive neurosicience has shown that humans as well as some animals are capable of learning dynamical and statistical properties. However, the learnability of deterministic chaos, which mathematically provides a dynamical basis for a statistical view, has not been explored experimentally using auditory signals. In a series of five behavior experiments, we showed that humans are capable of learning onedimensional deterministic chaos embedded in auditory signals. We used a judgment task in which participants discriminated between variation due to chaotic dynamics from random variation that mimicked statistical properties after the participants was familiarized to a chaotic sequence. Learning occurred only when chaotic, not random, sequences were used for the familiarization. A robust learning effect was observed even when the random items were generated by a surrogate time series. These results suggest that subjects must have extracted chaotic dynamics from the quasi-stochastic variation rather than learned statistical properties of the variation. With the tone stimuli, the learning was immediate and was maintained across a change of distribution. The learning was observed with variations in either tone or formant-like parameters, showing the robustness of the learning. At the same time, the data showed intricate interactions between the nature of the stimuli in which chaotic dynamics is embedded and the ease with which participants are able to extract its properties. Our finding offers evidence for a dynamical basis for the statistical view in speech science and cognitive neuroscience. doi:10.1016/j.neures.2010.07.1804 P3-l27 An event-related potential study of stutterers’ language processing Shinobu Murase 1,2 , Takashi Kawashima 3, Hirotaka Satake 3, Seiichi Era 1 1 Department of Physiol. & Biophysics, Gifu University Grad. School of Med., Gifu 2 Faculy of Ed., Gifu University, Gifu 3 Department of Neurobiol., Gifu University Grad. School of Med., Gifu Though stuttering characterized by abnormal speech sound production, some recent studies suggest that underlying language processing mechanisms among stutterers operate atypically even without overt language production. Since it is known that the linguistic factors such as syntactic complexity and length of utterance play a role in stuttering frequency, abnormal manifestation of the P600 and/or the N400 would be expected for stutterers. Five (2 males and 3 females) adult fluent speakers and four (2males and 2 females) adult stutterers were selected for the ERP recordings. All were native Japanese speakers without any history of neurological or psychiatric disorders. Visual stimuli were composed of 60 correct Japanese sentences and 60 incorrect sentences. Each incorrect sentence contained a semantic-thematic violating verb at the end and the corresponding correct sentence contained a correct verb in the same position. Each word was delivered one by one in every 1.2 s (0.6 s duration) on the computer screen. Subjects were required to press a key switch for the incorrect sentences to keep constant attention. ERPs were recorded from 13 scalp electrodes from both hemispheres for the last word stimuli in each sentence, and the P600 and N400 components from stutterers’ correct and incorrect stimuli were compared with those from fluent speakers. Results were as follows; fluent speakers evoked both N400 and P600 in incorrect sentences, but stutterers showed different patterns of N400 or P600. N400 was reduced in one stutterer, and P600 was reduced or eliminated in three other stutterers. Since some recent studies revealed that the basal ganglia dysfunction closely related to disappearance of P600, our results might indicate the basal ganglia dysfunction in stutterers. doi:10.1016/j.neures.2010.07.1805 P3-l28 Left inferior frontal region is essential for temporal control of action Masumi Wakita Department of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University Inferior frontal region (IFA) including Broca’s area is involved in hierarchical processing in language and music domains. In addition, bilateral IFA is known to be involved in…
counting figure placement directions) characters including spaces in the body of the text, 3 figu... more counting figure placement directions) characters including spaces in the body of the text, 3 figures, 25 references and 1 supplementary video.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 1995
Pigeons successfully learned to discriminate color slides of paintings by Monet and Picasso. Foll... more Pigeons successfully learned to discriminate color slides of paintings by Monet and Picasso. Following this training, they discriminated novel paintings by Monet and Picasso that had never been presented during the discrimination training. Furthermore, they showed generalization from Monet's to Cezanne's and Renoir's paintings or from Picasso's to Braque's and Matisse's paintings. These results suggest that pigeons' behavior can be controlled by complex visual stimuli in ways that suggest categorization. Upside-down images of Monet's paintings disrupted the discrimination, whereas inverted images of Picasso's did not. This result may indicate that the pigeons' behavior was controlled by objects depicted in impressionists' paintings but was not controlled by objects in cubists' paintings.
The ventral part of the third visual cortical complex, the ventral posterior area (VP) or V3v, is... more The ventral part of the third visual cortical complex, the ventral posterior area (VP) or V3v, is located between the ventral half of visual areas V2 and V4. Because of its location and the physiological properties of its neurons, VP has been considered to be involved in the ventral stream visual areas. The ventral stream visual areas such as V4 and TEO receive projections from the cytochrome oxidase (CO)-rich thin stripes and CO-poor interstripe regions of V2; however, which CO-modules project to VP remains unclear. Moreover, it is not clear whether V1 projects to VP. We injected retrograde tracers into VP and found that VP receives projections from V2 neurons not only in the CO-rich thin stripes and CO-poor interstripe regions but also in the CO-rich thick stripes. We also confirmed the virtual absence of inputs from V1 to VP. These results support the hypothesis that VP constitutes a distinct extrastriate visual area and also suggest that, in addition to color and shape information, VP may also process visual information related to space and disparity.
Broca’s area is one of language-related brain areas that typically locates in the posterior part ... more Broca’s area is one of language-related brain areas that typically locates in the posterior part of the inferior frontal region of the left hemisphere. Broca’s area plays an important role in the perception and production of sequential/hierarchical structures of language. A contribution of two major frontotemporal fiber bundles connected to Broca’s area also supports our language faculty: the dorsal and ventral pathways. The dorsal pathway supports syntactics, while the ventral pathway supports semantic processes and local phrase structure.
The posterior parietal cortex is included in the dorsal cortical visual pathway underlying the th... more The posterior parietal cortex is included in the dorsal cortical visual pathway underlying the three-dimensional (3-D) visual recognition of space and objects. The neurons in the lateral intraparietal area (LIP) respond visually to the three-dimensional objects, whereas those in the anterior intraparietal area (AIP) respond to hand movements to grasp them. LIP receives visual inputs from V3A, whereas AIP projects to the premotor areas; however, it is not known whether the neurons in LIP project to AIP. We herein investigated the connectional substrates that underlie the transformation of three-dimensional vision to prehensile hand movements in the Japanese monkey (Macaca fuscata). After identifying the three-dimensional visually responsive region in the posterior part of LIP by the unit recordings, we injected a bidirectional tracer, wheat germ agglutinin conjugated to horseradish peroxidase, into one of the recording sites. We found that LIP receives neuronal projections from V3A and sends axons to AIP. To confirm our findings, we injected several orthograde tracers into V3A and retrograde tracers into AIP in the same hemispheres. We found that the V3A neurons projecting to LIP terminate in the vicinity of the LIP neurons projecting to AIP. The results suggest that the cortical connections of V3A-LIP-AIP in the lateral bank of the intraparietal sulcus play an important role in the visuomotor transformation for prehensile hand movements.
This article is published in The Journal of Neuroscience, Rapid Communications Section, which pub... more This article is published in The Journal of Neuroscience, Rapid Communications Section, which publishes brief, peerreviewed papers online, not in print. Rapid Communications are posted online approximately one month earlier than they would appear if printed. They are listed in the Table of Contents of the next open issue of JNeurosci.
It has been previously reported that bilateral damage in the auditory cortex resulted in a severe... more It has been previously reported that bilateral damage in the auditory cortex resulted in a severe deficit in the acquisition of the auditory pattern discrimination if it was incurred at adulthood while animals with comparative lesion on the day of birth could learn the discrimination. In the present report, a critical period for sparing of auditory pattern discrimination was surveyed behaviorally in rats sustaining neonatal lesion in the auditory cortex. Consequently, rats with such lesions before weaning could learn the tasks as intact animals. On the contrary, rats who sustained comparative lesions after weaning could not learn this discrimination. These findings imply that auditory pattern discrimination was spared from early brain damage if the brain is injured before cortical function and circuitry are under development. 1307 Neuropsin is involved in epileptogenesis.
Observing another person's piano play and listening to a melody interact with the observer's exec... more Observing another person's piano play and listening to a melody interact with the observer's execution of piano play. This interaction is thought to occur because the execution of musical-action and the perception of both musical-action and musical-sound share a common representation in which the frontoparietal network is involved. However, it is unclear whether the perceptions of observed piano play and listened musical sound use a common neural resource. The present study used near-infrared spectroscopy to determine whether the interaction between the perception of musical-action and musical-sound sequences appear in the left prefrontal area. Measurements were obtained while participants watched videos that featured hands playing familiar melodies on a piano keyboard. Hand movements were paired with either a congruent or an incongruent melody. Two groups of participants (nine well-trained and nine less-trained) were instructed to identify the melody according to hand movements and to ignore the accompanying auditory track. Increased cortical activation was detected in the well-trained participants when hand movements were paired with incongruent melodies. Therefore, an interference effect was detected regarding the processing of action and sound sequences, indicating that musical-action sequences may be perceived with a representation that is also used for the perception of musical-sound sequences. However, in less-trained participants, such a contrast was not detected between conditions despite both groups featuring comparable key-touch reading abilities. Therefore, the current results imply that the left prefrontal area is involved in translating temporally structured sequences between domains. Additionally, expertise may be a crucial factor underlying this translation.
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2015
Whistle-like high-pitched “phee” calls are often used as long-distance vocal advertisements by sm... more Whistle-like high-pitched “phee” calls are often used as long-distance vocal advertisements by small-bodied marmosets and tamarins in the dense forests of South America. While the source-filter theory proposes that vibration of the vocal fold is modified independently from the resonance of the supralaryngeal vocal tract (SVT) in human speech, a source-filter coupling that constrains the vibration frequency to SVT resonance effectively produces loud tonal sounds in some musical instruments. Here, a combined approach of acoustic analyses and simulation with helium-modulated voices was used to show that phee calls are produced principally with the same mechanism as in human speech. The animal keeps the fundamental frequency (f0) close to the first formant (F1) of the SVT, to amplify f0. Although f0 and F1 are primarily independent, the degree of their tuning can be strengthened further by a flexible source-filter interaction, the variable strength of which depends upon the cross-sectio...
Broca's area has been suggested as the area responsible for the domain-general hierarchical p... more Broca's area has been suggested as the area responsible for the domain-general hierarchical processing of language and music. Although meaningful action shares a common hierarchical structure with language and music, the role of Broca's area in this domain remains controversial. To address the involvement of Broca's area in the processing action hierarchy, the activation of Broca's area was measured using near-infrared spectroscopy. Measurements were taken while participants watched silent movies that featured hand movements playing familiar and unfamiliar melodies. The unfamiliar melodies were reversed versions of the familiar melodies. Additionally, to investigate the effect of a motor experience on the activation of Broca's area, the participants were divided into well-trained and less-trained groups. The results showed that Broca's area in the well-trained participants demonstrated a significantly larger activation in response to the hand motion when an u...
Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) has been used extensively for functional neuroimaging over the ... more Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) has been used extensively for functional neuroimaging over the past decade, in part because it is considered a powerful tool for investigating brain function in human infants and young children, for whom other neuroimaging techniques are not suitable. In particular, several studies have measured hemodynamic responses in the occipital region in infants upon exposure to visual stimuli. In the present study, we used a multi-channel NIRS to measure neuronal activity in a macaque monkey who was trained to watch videos showing various circus animals performing acrobatic activities without fixing the head position of the monkey. Cortical activity from the occipital region was measured first by placing a probe comprising a 3 x 5 array of emitters and detectors (2 x 4 cm) on the area (area 17), and the robustness and stability of the results were confirmed across sessions. Cortical responses were then measured from the dorsofrontal region. The oxygenated hem...
Behavioral economics is useful for understanding the influence of environmental manipulation on a... more Behavioral economics is useful for understanding the influence of environmental manipulation on a variety of behaviors, including drug self-administration, food intake, and stock behavior. The present study employed behavioral economics to investigate the psychologically satisfying amount of water intake in a laboratory rhesus macaque. Our institutional guidelines set a minimum amount of daily water intake. However, no study to date has determined whether that minimum amount is psychologically sufficient. In the present experiment, a monkey lived in an individual cage in which the only water available was delivered by chain pulling. A fixed number of responses was required for water delivery. This fixed ratio (FR) of responses per water delivery was progressively increased from FR 2 to FR 10. The study findings showed that during the FR 2 condition, demand for water was saturated at 131.3 ml/kg body weight (BW) (ranging from 95.1 to 211.2). The monkey's daily intake of water dec...
Binocular visual responsiveness of neurons in visual cortex of the cat can be changed by monocula... more Binocular visual responsiveness of neurons in visual cortex of the cat can be changed by monocular visual deprivation in the critical period of postnatal development. It is hypothesized that afferents from each eye compete with one another for synaptic connections with cortical neurons so that less active afferents from the deprived eye fail to maintain the connections. This hypothesis predicts that an increase in inputs from one eye instead of decrease due to deprivation should also change binocular responsiveness of cortical neurons. However, the hypothesis has not successfully been tested with experimental activation of afferents from one eye. In the present study, we activated one of the optic nerves by chronic electrical stimulation of theta-burst type in behaving kittens for 2 days. After such a monocular activation, visual cortical neurons showed a significant ocular dominance shift in favor of the electrically activated eye, although neurons in the activated and nonactivated...
localization of such specialized neuronal networks has not been investigated. Furthermore, most o... more localization of such specialized neuronal networks has not been investigated. Furthermore, most of these neurons have been classified from the signatures they leave in multiunit activity (MUA), but the relationships that neuronal spiking holds with the underlying sub/supra-threshold postsynaptic activities have not been clarified yet. We used extracellular potentials recorded simultaneously from 64 sites inside the A1 of adult Wistar rats to evaluate neuronal codifiers for fundamental attributes, which were selected from their particular MUA dose-response curves. We demonstrated that the underlying neuronal populations were sparsely and heterogeneously distributed along the A1, even though they complied with the tonotopic organization. Codifying neurons were majorly PCs which showed laminar profiles. MUA was correlated to Beta (12-25 Hz) postsynaptic oscillations in the infragranular layers, while the supragranular layers revealed a better correlation between MUA and Gamma range postsynaptic oscillations (70-170 Hz). We concluded that, for rats, sounds are codified in A1 by a sparsely segregated network involving specialized PCs and that their postsynaptic activity may create the proper conditions for the emergence of sparse and dense spiking patterns.
Binocular responsiveness of most neurons in the primary visual cortex of cats can be changed by m... more Binocular responsiveness of most neurons in the primary visual cortex of cats can be changed by monocular visual deprivation during the critical period of early postnatal life. These results suggest that impulse activity from both optic nerves is important for the formation of ocular dominance of cortical neurons. A form of synaptic plasticity, long-term potentiation (LTP), has been hypothesized to be involved in such an experience-dependent change in the cortex. However, there has been no direct experimental demonstration of the hypothesized link between LTP and ocular dominance plasticity of cortical neurons. In kittens at postnatal 23-47days, we activated one of the optic nerves with tetanic stimulation of the 0-burst type (4 trains at 100 Hz given at 5 Hz for 2 s at an interval of 10 s for 48 hours) which is known to induce LTP in the visual cortex and analyzed possible changes in visual response of neurons in the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) and the visual cortex. After this tetanic stimulation, most of the cortical neurons (n = 224) had normal orientation selectivity to moving light bar stimulus from both eyes. Also, most LGN neurons had normal responses to visual stimuli. On the other hand, the ocular dominance of most cortical neurons shifted toward the eye at the tetanized side in all the animals (n = 7). These results indicate that chronic electrical stimulation of the LTP-inducing type changes the ocular dominance of cortical neurons.
Optical recording of cortical activity in awake monkeys has enhanced our understanding of the fun... more Optical recording of cortical activity in awake monkeys has enhanced our understanding of the functional anatomy of the primary visual cortex (V1). However, cortical representation of visual cognition has not been studied by optical recording, even though the greatest merit of using awake animals is that they can offer advantages in studying cognitive function that anesthetized animals cannot. Thus far, the optical recording method has not been combined with tasks that accompany body movements because of concern about movement noise, although behavioral tasks are helpful in the study of animal cognition. Here, I tested the influence of body movements during the signal acquisition period on the resultant images. I recorded the intrinsic signals associating with different orientations from V1 of a monkey who was emitting behavior during the signal acquisition period. Although the monkey's behavior was maintained on a variable-interval schedule that typically induces a high rate of response, orientation maps were consistently obtained. Therefore, a successful recording under this operant regimen implies the applicability of the optical recording method to other behavioral tasks. Several constraints in applying optical recording to studies using behaving animals are also discussed.
s / Neuroscience Research 68S (2010) e335–e446 e407 The modulation seems to reflect dynamic alter... more s / Neuroscience Research 68S (2010) e335–e446 e407 The modulation seems to reflect dynamic alternation of the network itself in addition to the modulation at the interconnected cortex. doi:10.1016/j.neures.2010.07.1803 P3-l26 Learning variation of deterministic chaos in auditory signals Ryota Horie 1,2,3,4 , Reiko Mazuka 2,5 1 Department of Electrical Communications Engineering, College of Engineering, Shibaura Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan 2 Lab. for Language Development, Brain Science Institute, RIKEN, Wako-shi, Japan 3 Lab. for Behavior and Dynamic Cognition, Brain Science Institute, RIKEN, Wako-shi, Japan 4 Theoretical Biology Lab., Advanced Science Institute, RIKEN, Wakoshi, Japan 5 Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, USA Behavioral research in speech science and cognitive neurosicience has shown that humans as well as some animals are capable of learning dynamical and statistical properties. However, the learnability of deterministic chaos, which mathematically provides a dynamical basis for a statistical view, has not been explored experimentally using auditory signals. In a series of five behavior experiments, we showed that humans are capable of learning onedimensional deterministic chaos embedded in auditory signals. We used a judgment task in which participants discriminated between variation due to chaotic dynamics from random variation that mimicked statistical properties after the participants was familiarized to a chaotic sequence. Learning occurred only when chaotic, not random, sequences were used for the familiarization. A robust learning effect was observed even when the random items were generated by a surrogate time series. These results suggest that subjects must have extracted chaotic dynamics from the quasi-stochastic variation rather than learned statistical properties of the variation. With the tone stimuli, the learning was immediate and was maintained across a change of distribution. The learning was observed with variations in either tone or formant-like parameters, showing the robustness of the learning. At the same time, the data showed intricate interactions between the nature of the stimuli in which chaotic dynamics is embedded and the ease with which participants are able to extract its properties. Our finding offers evidence for a dynamical basis for the statistical view in speech science and cognitive neuroscience. doi:10.1016/j.neures.2010.07.1804 P3-l27 An event-related potential study of stutterers’ language processing Shinobu Murase 1,2 , Takashi Kawashima 3, Hirotaka Satake 3, Seiichi Era 1 1 Department of Physiol. & Biophysics, Gifu University Grad. School of Med., Gifu 2 Faculy of Ed., Gifu University, Gifu 3 Department of Neurobiol., Gifu University Grad. School of Med., Gifu Though stuttering characterized by abnormal speech sound production, some recent studies suggest that underlying language processing mechanisms among stutterers operate atypically even without overt language production. Since it is known that the linguistic factors such as syntactic complexity and length of utterance play a role in stuttering frequency, abnormal manifestation of the P600 and/or the N400 would be expected for stutterers. Five (2 males and 3 females) adult fluent speakers and four (2males and 2 females) adult stutterers were selected for the ERP recordings. All were native Japanese speakers without any history of neurological or psychiatric disorders. Visual stimuli were composed of 60 correct Japanese sentences and 60 incorrect sentences. Each incorrect sentence contained a semantic-thematic violating verb at the end and the corresponding correct sentence contained a correct verb in the same position. Each word was delivered one by one in every 1.2 s (0.6 s duration) on the computer screen. Subjects were required to press a key switch for the incorrect sentences to keep constant attention. ERPs were recorded from 13 scalp electrodes from both hemispheres for the last word stimuli in each sentence, and the P600 and N400 components from stutterers’ correct and incorrect stimuli were compared with those from fluent speakers. Results were as follows; fluent speakers evoked both N400 and P600 in incorrect sentences, but stutterers showed different patterns of N400 or P600. N400 was reduced in one stutterer, and P600 was reduced or eliminated in three other stutterers. Since some recent studies revealed that the basal ganglia dysfunction closely related to disappearance of P600, our results might indicate the basal ganglia dysfunction in stutterers. doi:10.1016/j.neures.2010.07.1805 P3-l28 Left inferior frontal region is essential for temporal control of action Masumi Wakita Department of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University Inferior frontal region (IFA) including Broca’s area is involved in hierarchical processing in language and music domains. In addition, bilateral IFA is known to be involved in…
counting figure placement directions) characters including spaces in the body of the text, 3 figu... more counting figure placement directions) characters including spaces in the body of the text, 3 figures, 25 references and 1 supplementary video.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 1995
Pigeons successfully learned to discriminate color slides of paintings by Monet and Picasso. Foll... more Pigeons successfully learned to discriminate color slides of paintings by Monet and Picasso. Following this training, they discriminated novel paintings by Monet and Picasso that had never been presented during the discrimination training. Furthermore, they showed generalization from Monet's to Cezanne's and Renoir's paintings or from Picasso's to Braque's and Matisse's paintings. These results suggest that pigeons' behavior can be controlled by complex visual stimuli in ways that suggest categorization. Upside-down images of Monet's paintings disrupted the discrimination, whereas inverted images of Picasso's did not. This result may indicate that the pigeons' behavior was controlled by objects depicted in impressionists' paintings but was not controlled by objects in cubists' paintings.
The ventral part of the third visual cortical complex, the ventral posterior area (VP) or V3v, is... more The ventral part of the third visual cortical complex, the ventral posterior area (VP) or V3v, is located between the ventral half of visual areas V2 and V4. Because of its location and the physiological properties of its neurons, VP has been considered to be involved in the ventral stream visual areas. The ventral stream visual areas such as V4 and TEO receive projections from the cytochrome oxidase (CO)-rich thin stripes and CO-poor interstripe regions of V2; however, which CO-modules project to VP remains unclear. Moreover, it is not clear whether V1 projects to VP. We injected retrograde tracers into VP and found that VP receives projections from V2 neurons not only in the CO-rich thin stripes and CO-poor interstripe regions but also in the CO-rich thick stripes. We also confirmed the virtual absence of inputs from V1 to VP. These results support the hypothesis that VP constitutes a distinct extrastriate visual area and also suggest that, in addition to color and shape information, VP may also process visual information related to space and disparity.
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