Preferred Stimuli Research Articles

Sensory experience steers representational drift in mouse visual cortex

Representational drift—the gradual continuous change of neuronal representations—has been observed across many brain areas. It is unclear whether drift is caused by synaptic plasticity elicited by sensory experience, or by the intrinsic volatility of synapses. Here, using chronic two-photon calcium imaging in primary visual cortex of female mice, we find that the preferred stimulus orientation of individual neurons slowly drifts over the course of weeks. By using cylinder lens goggles to limit visual experience to a narrow range of orientations, we show that the direction of drift, but not its magnitude, is biased by the statistics of visual input. A network model suggests that drift of preferred orientation largely results from synaptic volatility, which under normal visual conditions is counteracted by experience-driven Hebbian mechanisms, stabilizing preferred orientation. Under deprivation conditions these Hebbian mechanisms enable adaptation. Thus, Hebbian synaptic plasticity steers drift to match the statistics of the environment.

Using a Group Stimulus Preference Assessment to Design an Effective Group Contingency

Using a Group Stimulus Preference Assessment to Design an Effective Group Contingency

Perceptual assessment of urban park audio-visual stimuli a comparison between Italian and Chinese groups

Previous research demonstrated a preference for natural auditory stimuli over human-made sounds in urban park environments. However, little attention has been given to the perceived dimensions of these sounds and their consistency across diverse cultural groups. The present study aimed at revealing possible culture differences among visual (Green, Square, Color) and auditory (Nature, Music, Anthropic) elements in urban parks. Eighty participants from both Chinese and Italian groups were administered a questionnaire to emotionally assess the stimuli. The differences in emotional salience were found across both sensory inputs. For the visual inputs, Green parks were perceived as more pleasant than Colorful parks, and the latter were more pleasant than Square parks, indicating the more natural the setting, the more restorative the effects. An important finding refers to the cross-culture consistency of the preferences. For the auditory inputs in urban parks, although both components of emotional salience were cross-culture consistent, some specific differences emerged.

Motor-evoked potentials as biomarkers for sexual arousal?

Motor cortex excitability may represent the neuronal endpoint of motivational processes and was shown to be modulated by both sexual arousal and deceptive behavior. This is the first study to investigate the influence of lying and sex in heterosexual women and men based on motor-evoked potentials (MEPs) measured while viewing sexually arousing pictures. Sixteen heterosexual couples were shown 360 trials consisting of pictures displaying both almost naked females and males and neutral control images. In a subsequent forced-choice question about wanting to see the respective pictures fully naked, they were instructed to either answer in agreement with or opposite to their sexual preference. Participants went through 2 blocks of answering truthfully and 2 blocks of lying, with these 4 blocks being shown in a randomized alternating order. To measure cortical excitability, MEPs were used, evoked by single transcranial magnetic stimulation pulses between image presentation and response. In normalized MEPs, women and men showed higher amplitudes for preferred over non-preferred sexual stimuli, but only on a descriptive level. Planned contrasts showed higher non-normalized MEPs for lying in all picture categories. Direct comparisons to a preliminary study showed overall lower effect sizes. Both sexes tend to show higher MEPs in response to their sexually preferred stimuli. MEPs are not stable markers for willful volitionally controlled deception although lying does increase cortical excitability. The present experimental design does not seem valid enough to serve as a diagnostic marker for sexual preference or paraphilia and malingering. This is the first study investigating whether sexual motivational stimuli modulate MEPs in women, while also examining the influence of lying for both sexes. The sample was too small for some found effects to be significant. Also, the experimental setup may have been less suited for female participants in comparison to male ones. The operationalization of sexual motivation via MEPs seems to highly depend on different experimental factors including the sex of the participants, induced motivation, and lying.

Assessing preferences for adult versus juvenile features in young animals: Newly hatched chicks spontaneously approach red and large stimuli.

Young precocial birds benefit from staying close to both their mother and their siblings, while prioritising adults, which provide better care. Which features of the stimuli are used by young birds to prioritise approach and eventually attachment to adults over siblings is unknown. We started to address this question in newly hatched domestic chicks (Gallus gallus), focusing on their spontaneous preferences for visual features that systematically vary between adult and juvenile chickens, and that had previously been identified as attractive: size (larger in adults than in juveniles) and colour (darker and redder in adults than in juveniles). Overall, chicks at their first visual experience, that had never seen a conspecific beforehand, were most attracted to the red and large stimuli (two adult features) and spent more time in close proximity with red stimuli than with yellow stimuli. When tested with red large versus small objects (Exp. 1), chicks preferred the large shape. When tested with yellow large and small objects (Exp. 2), chicks did not show a preference. Chicks had a stronger preference for large red stimuli (vs. small yellow objects) than for small red stimuli (vs. a large yellow object) (Exp. 3). These results suggest that the combination of size and colour form the predisposition that helps chicks to spontaneously discriminate between adult and juvenile features from the first stages of life, in the absence of previous experience, exhibiting a preference to approach stimuli with features associated with the presence of adult conspecifics.

Both mOTS-words and pOTS-words prefer emoji stimuli over text stimuli during a lexical judgment task.

The visual word form area in the occipitotemporal sulcus (here OTS-words) is crucial for reading and shows a preference for text stimuli. We hypothesized that this text preference may be driven by lexical processing. Hence, we performed three fMRI experiments (n = 15), systematically varying participants' task and stimulus, and separately evaluated middle mOTS-words and posterior pOTS-words. Experiment 1 contrasted text with other visual stimuli to identify both OTS-words subregions. Experiment 2 utilized an fMRI adaptation paradigm, presenting compound words as texts or emojis. In experiment 3, participants performed a lexical or color judgment task on compound words in text or emoji format. In experiment 2, pOTS-words, but not mOTS-words, showed fMRI adaptation for compound words in both formats. In experiment 3, both subregions showed higher responses to compound words in emoji format. Moreover, mOTS-words showed higher responses during the lexical judgment task and a task-stimulus interaction. Multivariate analyses revealed that distributed responses in pOTS-words encode stimulus and distributed responses in mOTS-words encode stimulus and task. Together, our findings suggest that the function of the OTS-words subregions goes beyond the specific visual processing of text and that these regions are flexibly recruited whenever semantic meaning needs to be assigned to visual input.

Jointly efficient encoding and decoding in neural populations.

The efficient coding approach proposes that neural systems represent as much sensory information as biological constraints allow. It aims at formalizing encoding as a constrained optimal process. A different approach, that aims at formalizing decoding, proposes that neural systems instantiate a generative model of the sensory world. Here, we put forth a normative framework that characterizes neural systems as jointly optimizing encoding and decoding. It takes the form of a variational autoencoder: sensory stimuli are encoded in the noisy activity of neurons to be interpreted by a flexible decoder; encoding must allow for an accurate stimulus reconstruction from neural activity. Jointly, neural activity is required to represent the statistics of latent features which are mapped by the decoder into distributions over sensory stimuli; decoding correspondingly optimizes the accuracy of the generative model. This framework yields in a family of encoding-decoding models, which result in equally accurate generative models, indexed by a measure of the stimulus-induced deviation of neural activity from the marginal distribution over neural activity. Each member of this family predicts a specific relation between properties of the sensory neurons-such as the arrangement of the tuning curve means (preferred stimuli) and widths (degrees of selectivity) in the population-as a function of the statistics of the sensory world. Our approach thus generalizes the efficient coding approach. Notably, here, the form of the constraint on the optimization derives from the requirement of an accurate generative model, while it is arbitrary in efficient coding models. Moreover, solutions do not require the knowledge of the stimulus distribution, but are learned on the basis of data samples; the constraint further acts as regularizer, allowing the model to generalize beyond the training data. Finally, we characterize the family of models we obtain through alternate measures of performance, such as the error in stimulus reconstruction. We find that a range of models admits comparable performance; in particular, a population of sensory neurons with broad tuning curves as observed experimentally yields both low reconstruction stimulus error and an accurate generative model that generalizes robustly to unseen data.

A meta-analysis comparing the performance of narrowband CE-Chirp and 500 Hz tone burst stimuli in recording cervical vestibular evoked myogenic potential (cVEMP)

Due to contradictory outcomes in the literature, the aim of this meta-analysis is to verify whether the narrowband (NB) CE-Chirp stimulus (centred at 500 Hz) would produce more robust cervical vestibular evoked myogenic potential (cVEMP) responses relative to the conventional 500 Hz tone burst. The literature search was conducted using PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science databases and the terms used were “vestibular evoked myogenic potential” and “chirp”. The cVEMP parameters to be analysed were P1 latency, N1 latency, and P1–N1 amplitude. A total of 59 potential articles were obtained from the database search. Eventually, five articles were found to be eligible for the meta-analysis (with n = 222). As found, P1 and N1 latencies of cVEMP were significantly shorter for the chirp stimulus (p < 0.001), with substantially large effect sizes. On the other hand, P1–N1 amplitude values were found to be not statistically different between the two stimuli (p = 0.189), with a small effect size. It appears that there is no indication to support the superiority of the NB CE-Chirp stimulus (centred at 500 Hz) in the cVEMP testing (relative to the conventional 500 Hz tone burst). In particular, both stimuli produce comparable P1–N1 amplitude values. Even though P1 and N1 latencies are statistically shorter for the chirp stimulus, this may not reflect that it should be the preferred stimulus for recording cVEMP responses (and the reasons for this are discussed accordingly).

Preference for social stimuli: A comparison of stimulus modes used in preference assessments

AbstractSocial stimuli are some of the most commonly used reinforcers. Previous research shows that preference for social stimuli can be identified using paired‐stimulus preference assessments (PSPA) employing various stimulus modes (e.g., pictures of the actual social stimuli). To date, no study has evaluated the correspondence in preference for social stimuli identified via PSPAs completed using three differing stimulus modes. Therefore, this study compared the correspondence in preference hierarchy identified via PSPAs completed using video of the social stimuli (VSM), pictures of the actual social stimuli (PSM‐A), and drawings of the social stimuli (PSM‐D) and whether preference hierarchy remained stable over repeated administration of the PSPAs (i.e., 1 month). Moreover, we assessed participants' preference for the three types of stimulus modes. Results demonstrated that during the initial PSPAs, preference hierarchies were most similar across the PSPAs completed using VSM and PSM‐A, that preference was most stable across repeated administration of the PSPAs completed using the VSM, and that participants' preference for differing stimulus modes was idiosyncratic. Moreover, the PSPAs completed using the VSM required the longest amount of time to create materials and administer the assessment.

Assessing stimulus preference using response force in a conjugate preparation: A replication and extension.

The current study examined 98 participants' preferences for five pictorial stimuli. The researchers used a verbal multiple-stimulus-without-replacement (VMSWO) preference assessment with each participant to identify high-preference and low-preference pictorial stimuli. Next, participants viewed each pictorial stimulus in a randomized order on a computer while using a hand dynamometer that measured the amount of force they exerted to increase or maintain the visual clarity of each image. The results indicate that over 75% of participants' force response ranks corresponded with participants' VMSWO high-preference stimuli, VMSWO low-preference stimuli, or both. The results of the current study provide further evidence for the use of conjugate schedules in the assessment of stimulus preference with potential for use as a reinforcer assessment. Implications along with directions for future research and limitations of the findings are discussed.

Noncortical coding of biological motion in newborn chicks' brain.

Biological motion, the typical movement of vertebrates, is perceptually salient for many animal species. Newly hatched domestic chicks and human newborns show a spontaneous preference for simple biological motion stimuli (point-light displays) at birth prior to any visual learning. Despite evidence of such preference at birth, neural studies performed so far have focused on a specialized neural network involving primarily cortical areas. Here, we presented newly hatched visually naïve domestic chicks to either biological or rigid motion stimuli and measured for the first time their brain activation. Immediate Early Gene (c-Fos) expression revealed selective activation in the preoptic area of the hypothalamus and the nucleus taeniae of the amygdala. These results suggest that subpallial/subcortical regions play a crucial role in biological motion perception at hatching, paving the way for future studies on adult animals, including humans.

Conveying depression: Is a reduced relative preference for happiness a way depressed people convince themselves of their depressed identity?

Introduction: Individuals who are more depressed show a reduced preference for happy over sad stimuli. Researchers have proffered various features of depression that might produce a genuine reduced preference for happy vs. sad stimuli. Here, in line with an identity maintenance perspective on depression, we posited that this reduced relative preference is, in part, used to communicate a more depressed identity. Method: In a preregistered experiment, nonclinical participants (N = 508) completed a dimensional measure of depression and rated their preferences for happy and sad images. We manipulated the extent to which a relative preference for happy (vs. sad) images could be used to seem depressed (happy-preference-is-depressed preference framing) or vice versa (sad-preference-is-depressed preference framing). Results: People with elevated depression showed a reduced preference for happy over sad images in the sad-vs. happy-preference-is-depressed preference framing, and people with low depression showed the opposite effect. These effects persisted after controlling for sex and could not be attributed to demand. Depression also related positively to rating oneself as being depressed, and mediation evidence suggested that the strategic alteration of preferences on the image viewing task partly drove these judgments. Discussion: Consistent with an identity maintenance perspective, the data suggest that hedonic preferences associated with depression may be driven, in part, by the desire to signal one's own depression levels.

Different Effects of Behavioral-Based Strategies for Sustaining Attention of an Elementary Student with Intellectual Disability

&lt;p&gt;智能障礙學生常伴隨注意力缺陷等問題，導致學習歷程困難，影響學習表現和成就。根據國內外文獻和實務報告，為改善注意力與學習問題，兩個常見的行為策略為：（一）增加專注口語提示策略，及（二）暫時移除偏好的教材刺激。然而，國內研究鮮少比較行為策略對於注意力的成效，也缺乏融合應用多媒體動畫影片教材，因此，本研究旨在針對智能障礙伴隨注意力缺陷學生在學習多媒體動畫影片教材時，這兩種行為策略對於學生注意力時間之影響，並比較兩種策略的成效差異。&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;本研究採用單一受試實驗研究法之交替比較設計，針對一位就讀於國小集中式特教班，並經醫療診斷為智能障礙伴隨注意力缺陷的學生，藉由交替設計比較教學者於自然情境中執行上述兩種行為策略時學生注意力維持時間的變化，以呈現自然教學場域中的真實樣貌。研究過程分為基線期、交替介入期，以及最佳介入期，研究數據採取單一受試研究法之視覺分析探究成效。&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;研究結果顯示，研究對象在交替介入期間，無論使用哪種行為策略，注意力維持時間皆高於基線期不使用任何介入策略的情境，並達六次成效複製，顯示兩者對於改善注意力的維持皆具有功能關係，其中，暫時移除偏好的教材刺激策略優於增加專注口語提示策略之成效，為該研究對象之最佳介入策略。&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Attention function is a multi-facet concept that is critical for learning. Students with intellectual disability (ID) are often accompanied by problems such as attention deficit, which leads to difficulties in the learning process and affects academic performance and achievement. According to related studies, in order to improve attention and learning problems, two common behavioral strategies are: (a) using verbal prompt for on-task attention, and (b) removing preferred stimulus. However, there are few domestic studies that compare the effectiveness of behavioral strategies on attention, and there is also a lack of integrated application of multimedia video teaching materials. Therefore, this study aims to explore the impact of these two behavioral strategies on sustaining attention time when ID students with attention deficit learn multimedia animation video teaching materials, and to compare the effectiveness of the two strategies.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;This was a single subject research using alternating treatment design to compare the two behavioral-based strategies implemented by the student&amp;rsquo;s teacher in natural educational setting. It focuses on a participant who is studying in a self-contained special education class in an elementary school and has been medically diagnosed with intellectual disability and attention deficit. The research process is divided into baseline, intervention, and better intervention phases. The research data adopts visual analysis of single subject research method to explore the effectiveness.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The results of the study showed that during the alternating intervention phases, no matter which behavioral strategies was used, the attention maintenance time of the research participant was higher than that of the baseline phases when no intervention strategy was used, and the effect was replicated six times, showing that both are effective in improving attention. There is a functional relationship between them. Among them, the strategy of temporarily removing the preferred teaching material stimulus is more effective than adding the strategy of focusing on verbal prompts, and is the best intervention strategy for this research participant. Social validity survey also indicated that teachers and parent were satisfied with the intervention outcome.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;

Applying a Dance Pad and Proximity Switch Combined with Positive Reinforcement to Excite Children with Intellectual Disability to Jump in Situ: A Preliminary Study

ABSTRACT This was a preliminary study to apply a dance pad and proximity switch in combination with positive reinforcement to excite three children with intellectual disability to jump in situ. In this study, the dance pad was used to detect whether the participants performed jumping actions, and the proximity switch was used to detect whether the participants’ jumping height met the target height. At the same time, the computer control system would automatically record the number of valid jumps by the participants. During the intervention phase, the positive reinforcement was used to provide the participants’ preferred stimulus if and when the participants performed target jumps. This study adopted a single subject research design with reversal and used A-B-A-B as the research method. The experimental results showed that the three participants performed a greater number of jumps in situ during the intervention phases, compared to the baseline phases. The findings demonstrate that a dance pad and proximity switch combined with positive reinforcement was a feasible method by which to excite participants’ jumping motivation and improve their jumping ability.

Comparing stimulus preference and response force in a conjugate preparation: A replication with auditory stimulation.

This study examined a conjugate approach for evaluating auditory stimulus preference for 81 participants using force as a continuous response dimension. First, the researchers used a verbal preference assessment to evaluate each participant's preference for listening to five genres of music. This process identified high-preference and low-preference music for each participant. Thereafter, the researchers exposed each participant to the five music genres in a randomized order while using a hand dynamometer to measure their response force to increase the auditory clarity of the music. The results indicate (a) 63% of the participants' high-preference music genres corresponded to the genre for which they exerted the highest mean force and (b) most participants' low-preference music genres corresponded to the genre for which they exerted the lowest mean force. These findings are consistent with those from Davis et al. (2021) and further support using conjugate preparations for measuring the relative value of some stimulus events.

Speech perception: Auditory and visual cue integration in children with and without phonological disorder in voiceless fricatives

ABSTRACT The literature reports contradictory results regarding the influence of visual cues on speech perception tasks in children with phonological disorder (PD). This study aimed to compare the performance of children with (n = 15) and without PD (n = 15) in audiovisual perception task in voiceless fricatives. Assuming that PD could be associated with an inability to integrate phonological information from two sensory sources, we presumed that children with PD would present difficulties in integrating auditory and visual cues compared to typical children. A syllable identification task was conducted. The stimuli were presented according to four conditions: auditory-only (AO); visual-only (VO); audiovisual congruent (AV+); and audiovisual incongruent (AV-). The percentages of correct answers and the respective reaction times in the AO, VO, and AV+ conditions were considered for the analysis. The correct percentage of auditory stimuli was considered for the AV- condition, as well as the percentage of perceptual preference: auditory, visual, and/or illusion (McGurk effect), with the respective reaction time. In comparing the four conditions, children with PD presented a lower number of correct answers and longer reaction time than children with typical development, mainly for the VO. Both groups showed a preference for auditory stimuli for the AV- condition. However, children with PD showed higher percentages for visual perceptual preference and the McGurk effect than typical children. The superiority of typical children over PD children in auditory-visual speech perception depends on type of stimuli and condition of presentation.

Evaluating preference displacement of edible stimuli and social interactions for typically developing preschool children

AbstractEdible and leisure items are often used in behavioral intervention to teach skills or reduce problem behavior. Social interactions, however, have also been shown to function as reinforcers for both typically developing children and children diagnosed with autism. Previous research has been conducted investigating preference displacement between edible, leisure and social items. The current study included edible stimuli and social interactions to evaluate whether patterns of displacement would appear with typically developing children. Multiple stimulus without replacement preference assessments were conducted to identify highly preferred stimuli from both edible item and social interaction classes to use in combined assessments to evaluate displacement. Three of six participants showed complete displacement of social interactions by edible items and three participants showed patterns of partial displacement. Two of the participants demonstrating patterns of partial displacement showed a disproportionate preference for social interactions.

Continuous Rotation Group Equivariant Network Inspired by Neural Population Coding

Neural population coding can represent continuous information by neurons with a series of discrete preferred stimuli, and we find that the bell-shaped tuning curve plays an important role in this mechanism. Inspired by this, we incorporate a bell-shaped tuning curve into the discrete group convolution to achieve continuous group equivariance. Simply, we modulate group convolution kernels by Gauss functions to obtain bell-shaped tuning curves. Benefiting from the modulation, kernels also gain smooth gradients on geometric dimensions (e.g., location dimension and orientation dimension). It allows us to generate group convolution kernels from sparse weights with learnable geometric parameters, which can achieve both competitive performances and parameter efficiencies. Furthermore, we quantitatively prove that discrete group convolutions with proper tuning curves (bigger than 1x sampling step) can achieve continuous equivariance. Experimental results show that 1) our approach achieves very competitive performances on MNIST-rot with at least 75% fewer parameters compared with previous SOTA methods, which is efficient in parameter; 2) Especially with small sample sizes, our approach exhibits more pronounced performance improvements (up to 24%); 3) It also has excellent rotation generalization ability on various datasets such as MNIST, CIFAR, and ImageNet with both plain and ResNet architectures.

Predation without direction selectivity

Across the animal kingdom, visual predation relies on motion-sensing neurons in the superior colliculus (SC) and its orthologs. These neurons exhibit complex stimulus preferences, including direction selectivity, which is thought to be critical for tracking the unpredictable escape routes of prey. The source of direction selectivity in the SC is contested, and its contributions to predation have not been tested experimentally. Here, we use type-specific cell removal to show that narrow-field (NF) neurons in the mouse SC guide predation. In vivo recordings demonstrate that direction-selective responses of NF cells are independent of recently reported stimulus-edge effects. Monosynaptic retrograde tracing reveals that NF cells receive synaptic input from direction-selective ganglion cells. When we eliminate direction selectivity in the retina of adult mice, direction-selective responses in the SC, including in NF cells, are lost. However, eliminating retinal direction selectivity does not affect the hunting success or strategies of mice, even when direction selectivity is removed after mice have learned to hunt, and despite abolishing the gaze-stabilizing optokinetic reflex. Thus, our results identify the retinal source of direction selectivity in the SC. They show that NF cells in the SC guide predation, an essential spatial orienting task, independent of their direction selectivity, revealing behavioral multiplexing of complex neural feature preferences and highlighting the importance of feature-selective manipulations for neuroethology.

Deployment of attention to facial expressions varies as a function of emotional quality-but not in alexithymic individuals.

Alexithymia is a risk factor for emotional disorders and is characterized by differences in automatic and controlled emotion processing. The multi-stimulus free-viewing task has been used to detect increased negative and reduced positive attentional biases in depression and anxiety. In the present eye-tracking study, we examined whether lexical emotional priming directs attention toward emotion-congruent facial expressions and whether alexithymia is related to impairments in lexical priming and spontaneous attention deployment during multiple face perception. A free-viewing task with happy, fearful, angry, and neutral faces shown simultaneously was administered to 32 alexithymic and 46 non-alexithymic individuals along with measures of negative affect and intelligence. Face presentation was preceded by masked emotion words. Indices of initial orienting and maintenance of attention were analyzed as a function of prime or target category and study group. Time to first fixation was not affected by prime category or study group. Analysis of fixation duration yielded a three-way interaction. Alexithymic individuals exhibited no prime or target category effect, whereas non-alexithymic individuals showed a main effect of target condition, fixating happy faces longer than neutral and angry faces and fearful faces longer than angry faces. Our results show evidence of attentional biases for positive and fearful social information in non-alexithymic individuals, but not in alexithymic individuals. The lack of spontaneous attentional preference for these social stimuli in alexithymia might contribute to a vulnerability for developing emotional disorders. Our data also suggest that briefly presented emotion words may not facilitate gaze orientation toward emotion-congruent stimuli.