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Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews Apr 2015Recent neuropsychological theories emphasize the influence of maladaptive learning and memory processes on pain perception. However, the precise relationship between... (Review)
Review
Recent neuropsychological theories emphasize the influence of maladaptive learning and memory processes on pain perception. However, the precise relationship between these processes as well as the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood; especially the role of perceptual discrimination and its modulation by associative fear learning has received little attention so far. Experimental work with exteroceptive stimuli consistently points to effects of fear learning on perceptual discrimination acuity. In addition, clinical observations have revealed that in individuals with chronic pain perceptual discrimination is impaired, and that tactile discrimination training reduces pain. Based on these findings, we present a theoretical model of which the central tenet is that associative fear learning contributes to the development of chronic pain through impaired interoceptive and proprioceptive discrimination acuity.
Topics: Animals; Association Learning; Brain; Chronic Pain; Discrimination Learning; Discrimination, Psychological; Fear; Humans; Models, Psychological
PubMed: 25603316
DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2015.01.009 -
Journal of Visualized Experiments : JoVE Mar 2018Olfaction is the predominant sensory modality in mice and influences many important behaviors, including foraging, predator detection, mating, and parenting....
Olfaction is the predominant sensory modality in mice and influences many important behaviors, including foraging, predator detection, mating, and parenting. Importantly, mice can be trained to associate novel odors with specific behavioral responses to provide insight into olfactory circuit function. This protocol details the procedure for training mice on a Go/No-Go operant learning task. In this approach, mice are trained on hundreds of automated trials daily for 2-4 weeks and can then be tested on novel Go/No-Go odor pairs to assess olfactory discrimination, or be used for studies on how odor learning alters the structure or function of the olfactory circuit. Additionally, the mouse olfactory bulb (OB) features ongoing integration of adult-born neurons. Interestingly, olfactory learning increases both the survival and synaptic connections of these adult-born neurons. Therefore, this protocol can be combined with other biochemical, electrophysiological, and imaging techniques to study learning and activity-dependent factors that mediate neuronal survival and plasticity.
Topics: Animals; Discrimination Learning; Female; Male; Mice; Reproducibility of Results; Smell
PubMed: 29630042
DOI: 10.3791/57142 -
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of... Jan 1963Responses to S- ("errors") are not a necessary condition for the formation of an operant discrimination of color. Errors do not occur if discrimination training begins...
Responses to S- ("errors") are not a necessary condition for the formation of an operant discrimination of color. Errors do not occur if discrimination training begins early in conditioning and if S+ and S- initially differ with respect to brightness, duration and wavelength. After training starts, S-'s duration and brightness is progressively increased until S+ and S- differ only with respect to wavelength. Errors do occur if training starts after much conditioning in the presence of S+ has occurred or if S+ and S- differ only with respect to wavelength throughout training. Performance following discrimination learning without errors lacks three characteristics that are found following learning with errors. Only those birds that learned the discrimination with errors showed (1) "emotional" responses in the presence of S-, (2) an increase in the rate (or a decrease in the latency) of its response to S+, and (3) occasional bursts of responses to S-.
Topics: Conditioning, Classical; Discrimination Learning
PubMed: 13980667
DOI: 10.1901/jeab.1963.6-1 -
Journal of Experimental Psychology.... Oct 2022Considerable discussion has concerned the role of context in conditional discrimination learning. Some authors have proposed that contexts might operate hierarchically...
Considerable discussion has concerned the role of context in conditional discrimination learning. Some authors have proposed that contexts might operate hierarchically on CS-US associations, whereas others have proposed that the context plus the CS might be processed configurally. In the present article, we report the results of two experiments that assessed the role of context on pigeons' conditional discrimination learning. In Experiment 1, we found that our pigeons' responding was inconsistent with hierarchical processing; instead, they may have either relied on local features or on configural compounds comprising the context and the discriminative stimulus presented on each trial. In Experiment 2, we precluded the possibility of using local features by requiring the pigeons to attend to both of the compounds that were simultaneously presented on each trial to solve the task. Methodological and theoretical issues are discussed in light of this work. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
Topics: Animals; Discrimination Learning; Columbidae; Conditioning, Classical
PubMed: 36265025
DOI: 10.1037/xan0000342 -
Age (Dordrecht, Netherlands) Feb 2016In laboratory dogs, aging leads to a decline in various cognitive domains such as learning, memory and behavioural flexibility. However, much less is known about aging...
In laboratory dogs, aging leads to a decline in various cognitive domains such as learning, memory and behavioural flexibility. However, much less is known about aging in pet dogs, i.e. dogs that are exposed to different home environments by their caregivers. We used tasks on a touchscreen apparatus to detect differences in various cognitive functions across pet Border Collies aged from 5 months to 13 years. Ninety-five dogs were divided into five age groups and tested in four tasks: (1) underwater photo versus drawing discrimination, (2) clip art picture discrimination, (3) inferential reasoning by exclusion and (4) a memory test with a retention interval of 6 months. The tasks were designed to test three cognitive abilities: visual discrimination learning, logical reasoning and memory. The total number of sessions to reach criterion and the number of correction trials needed in the two discrimination tasks were compared across age groups. The results showed that both measures increased linearly with age, with dogs aged over 13 years displaying slower learning and reduced flexibility in comparison to younger dogs. Inferential reasoning ability increased with age, but less than 10 % of dogs showed patterns of choice consistent with inference by exclusion. No age effect was found in the long-term memory test. In conclusion, the discrimination learning tests used are suitable to detect cognitive aging in pet dogs, which can serve as a basis for comparison to help diagnose cognition-related problems and as a tool to assist with the development of treatments to delay cognitive decline.
Topics: Aging; Animals; Attention; Cognition; Cognition Disorders; Discrimination Learning; Disease Models, Animal; Dogs; Memory; Visual Perception
PubMed: 26728398
DOI: 10.1007/s11357-015-9866-x -
Journal of Vision 2015Visual perceptual learning has been traditionally characterized by its specificity. Namely, learning transfers little to many untrained stimulus attributes. This result...
Visual perceptual learning has been traditionally characterized by its specificity. Namely, learning transfers little to many untrained stimulus attributes. This result of specificity is the basis for the inference that perceptual learning takes place in low-level visual areas in the brain. Recently, however, Xiao and colleagues (2008) demonstrated a double training technique that enabled complete transfer of learning in all tasks that were tested. This technique has since been applied to motion direction discrimination learning. Learning along one average direction has been found to transfer completely to a new average direction, along which only dot number discrimination had been trained (J. Y. Zhang & Yang, 2014). In the current study, we first repeated the J. Y. Zhang and Yang (2014) experiment in exact procedure, stimuli, and task. We then continued the double training to examine transfer in longer-term perceptual learning. To our surprise, in both our exact replication attempt and in our longer-term learning study, we could not find complete transfer. In fact, the transfer to the dot number discrimination direction was no greater than to an untrained control direction. We suggest that individual differences and subtle differences in experimental setup between J. Y. Zhang and Yang (2014) and our studies are too strong and common to determine whether or not the new double training technique can bring about complete transfer in motion discrimination learning.
Topics: Adult; Discrimination Learning; Female; Humans; Individuality; Male; Motion Perception; Sensitivity and Specificity; Spatial Learning
PubMed: 26230918
DOI: 10.1167/15.10.3 -
Neuron Dec 2020Tactile shape recognition requires the perception of object surface angles. We investigate how neural representations of object angles are constructed from sensory input...
Tactile shape recognition requires the perception of object surface angles. We investigate how neural representations of object angles are constructed from sensory input and how they reorganize across learning. Head-fixed mice learned to discriminate object angles by active exploration with one whisker. Calcium imaging of layers 2-4 of the barrel cortex revealed maps of object-angle tuning before and after learning. Three-dimensional whisker tracking demonstrated that the sensory input components that best discriminate angles (vertical bending and slide distance) also have the greatest influence on object-angle tuning. Despite the high turnover in active ensemble membership across learning, the population distribution of object-angle tuning preferences remained stable. Angle tuning sharpened, but only in neurons that preferred trained angles. This was correlated with a selective increase in the influence of the most task-relevant sensory component on object-angle tuning. These results show how discrimination training enhances stimulus selectivity in the primary somatosensory cortex while maintaining perceptual stability.
Topics: Animals; Discrimination Learning; Female; Form Perception; Male; Mice; Mice, Transgenic; Microscopy, Fluorescence, Multiphoton; Touch; Touch Perception; Vibrissae
PubMed: 33002411
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2020.09.012 -
Vision Research Jul 2018Through same-different judgements, we can discriminate an immense variety of stimuli and consequently, they are critical in our everyday interaction with the...
Through same-different judgements, we can discriminate an immense variety of stimuli and consequently, they are critical in our everyday interaction with the environment. The quality of the judgements depends on familiarity with stimuli. A way to improve the discrimination is through learning, but to this day, we lack direct evidence of how learning shapes the same-different judgments with complex stimuli. We studied unsupervised visual discrimination learning in 42 participants, as they performed same-different judgments with two types of unfamiliar complex stimuli in the absence of labeling or individuation. Across nine daily training sessions with equiprobable same and different stimuli pairs, participants increased the sensitivity and the criterion by reducing the errors with both same and different pairs. With practice, there was a superior performance for different pairs and a bias for different response. To evaluate the process underlying this bias, we manipulated the proportion of same and different pairs, which resulted in an additional proportion-induced bias, suggesting that the bias observed with equal proportions was a stimulus processing bias. Overall, these results suggest that unsupervised discrimination learning occurs through changes in the stimulus processing that increase the sensory evidence and/or the precision of the working memory. Finally, the acquired discrimination ability was fully transferred to novel exemplars of the practiced stimuli category, in agreement with the acquisition of a category specific perceptual expertise.
Topics: Adult; Analysis of Variance; Attention; Bias; Discrimination Learning; Female; Humans; Male; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Photic Stimulation
PubMed: 29775623
DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2018.05.002 -
The Journal of Physiology Jun 2009The visual cortex retains the capacity for experience-dependent changes, or plasticity, of cortical function and cortical circuitry, throughout life. These changes... (Review)
Review
The visual cortex retains the capacity for experience-dependent changes, or plasticity, of cortical function and cortical circuitry, throughout life. These changes constitute the mechanism of perceptual learning in normal visual experience and in recovery of function after CNS damage. Such plasticity can be seen at multiple stages in the visual pathway, including primary visual cortex. The manifestation of the functional changes associated with perceptual learning involve both long term modification of cortical circuits during the course of learning, and short term dynamics in the functional properties of cortical neurons. These dynamics are subject to top-down influences of attention, expectation and perceptual task. As a consequence, each cortical area is an adaptive processor, altering its function in accordance to immediate perceptual demands.
Topics: Adult; Animals; Cerebral Cortex; Discrimination Learning; Form Perception; Humans; Learning; Neuronal Plasticity; Perception
PubMed: 19525560
DOI: 10.1113/jphysiol.2009.171488 -
The Journal of Neuroscience : the... Mar 2022Functional hemispheric lateralization is a basic principle of brain organization. In the auditory domain, the right auditory cortex (AC) determines the pitch direction...
Selective Interruption of Auditory Interhemispheric Cross Talk Impairs Discrimination Learning of Frequency-Modulated Tone Direction But Not Gap Detection and Discrimination.
Functional hemispheric lateralization is a basic principle of brain organization. In the auditory domain, the right auditory cortex (AC) determines the pitch direction of continuous auditory stimuli whereas the left AC discriminates gaps in these stimuli. The involved functional interactions between the two sides, mediated by commissural connections, are poorly understood. Here, we selectively disrupted the interhemispheric cross talk from the left to the right primary AC and vice versa using chromophore-targeted laser-induced apoptosis of the respective projection neurons, which make up 6-17% of all AC neurons in Layers III, V, and VI. Following photolysis, male gerbils were trained in a first experimental set to discriminate between rising and falling frequency-modulated (FM) tone sweeps. The acquisition of the task was significantly delayed in lesioned animals of either lesion direction. However, the final discrimination performance and hit rate was lowest for animals with left-side lesioned commissural neurons, demonstrating that also information from the left AC is relevant for FM direction learning. Photolysis after successful learning did not affect the retrieval of the learned task, indicating that the disruption during learning was not because of a general functional impairment. In a second experimental set, the gerbil's ability to detect and discriminate small silent gaps of varying length within FM sweeps was tested. This ability was also preserved after interhemispheric disruption. Taken together, interhemispheric communication between the left and right AC is important for the acquisition of FM tone direction learning but not for its retrieval and for gap detection and gap duration discrimination. Hemispheric lateralization of neuronal functions such as speech and music processing in humans are common throughout the brain; however, the involved interhemispheric interactions are ill-defined. Here, we show that the selective photolytic disruption of auditory cortical commissural connections in rodents impairs the acquisition but not retrieval of a frequency-modulated tone direction discrimination task. The final discrimination performance and hit rate was lowest for animals with lesioned left-to-right-side projections; thus, although right auditory cortex is dominant, left auditory cortex is also relevant for learning this task. The detection and discrimination of small gaps within the tone sweeps remain intact, suggesting a pathway for the processing of these temporal structures, which could be independent from the lesioned interhemispheric cross talk.
Topics: Acoustic Stimulation; Animals; Auditory Cortex; Discrimination Learning; Gerbillinae; Male; Pitch Discrimination
PubMed: 35064004
DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0216-21.2022