Subsequent Scene Research Articles

Individual differences in internal models explain idiosyncrasies in scene perception

According to predictive processing theories, vision is facilitated by predictions derived from our internal models of what the world should look like. However, the contents of these models and how they vary across people remains unclear. Here, we use drawing as a behavioral readout of the contents of the internal models in individual participants. Participants were first asked to draw typical versions of scene categories, as descriptors of their internal models. These drawings were converted into standardized 3d renders, which we used as stimuli in subsequent scene categorization experiments. Across two experiments, participants' scene categorization was more accurate for renders tailored to their own drawings compared to renders based on others' drawings or copies of scene photographs, suggesting that scene perception is determined by a match with idiosyncratic internal models. Using a deep neural network to computationally evaluate similarities between scene renders, we further demonstrate that graded similarity to the render based on participants' own typical drawings (and thus to their internal model) predicts categorization performance across a range of candidate scenes. Together, our results showcase the potential of a new method for understanding individual differences – starting from participants' personal expectations about the structure of real-world scenes.

From vision to memory: How scene-sensitive regions support episodic memory formation during child development

Previous brain imaging studies have identified three brain regions that selectively respond to visual scenes, the parahippocampal place area (PPA), the occipital place area (OPA), and the retrosplenial cortex (RSC). There is growing evidence that these visual scene-sensitive regions process different types of scene information and may have different developmental timelines in supporting scene perception. How these scene-sensitive regions support memory functions during child development is largely unknown. We investigated PPA, OPA and RSC activations associated with episodic memory formation in childhood (5–7 years of age) and young adulthood, using a subsequent scene memory paradigm and a functional localizer for scenes. PPA, OPA, and RSC subsequent memory activation and functional connectivity differed between children and adults. Subsequent memory effects were found in activations of all three scene regions in adults. In children, however, robust subsequent memory effects were only found in the PPA. Functional connectivity during successful encoding was significant among the three regions in adults, but not in children. PPA subsequently memory activations and PPA-RSC subsequent memory functional connectivity correlated with accuracy in adults, but not children. These age-related differences add new evidence linking protracted development of the scene-sensitive regions to the protracted development of episodic memory.

Ivo van Hove and Almodóvar: Remixing The Human Voice

Ivo van Hove and Almodóvar: Remixing <i>The Human Voice</i>

Study on 3-dimensional stereoscopic image model in intelligent coal mine

This paper briefly describes the image analysis technology needed in the construction of intelligent coal mine, mainly for the reconstruction process of 3-dimensional (3D) image model in coal mine. If all the pixel points are concerned to calculate in whole picture, it should ask for higher computing processing equipment and large amount of computation. Therefore, this paper proposes a method which is firstly carried out target detection or image segmentation to get object to be recognized on the image, then taken image registration of target area according to the detected or segmented pixels, and the dense point matrix is diffused and fused according to the sparse point matrix, and then the 3D model is generated. In the 3D model, the length, depth and angle are easier to get accurate results, which plays a very important role in the subsequent scene analysis. In image 3D reconstruction, the region of registration has been greatly reduced due to image recognition or segmentation, and the number of registration points found by the improved registration using swarm intelligence algorithm is 6 times than algorithm without improvement, and the depth data obtained in the subsequent 3D reconstruction is basically consistent with that in the actual scene. In the future production monitoring, it is the judgement that can meet the corresponding business logic and production requirements.

An fMRI investigation of neural activation predicting memory formation in children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders

Prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) is associated with physical anomalies, growth restriction, and a range of neurobehavioral deficits. Although declarative memory impairment has been documented extensively in individuals with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD), this cognitive process has been examined in only one functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, and mechanisms underlying this impairment are not well understood. We used an event-related fMRI design to examine neural activations during visual scene encoding that predict subsequent scene memory in 51 right-handed children (age range = 10–14 years, M = 11.3, SD = 1.3) whose mothers had been recruited and interviewed prospectively about their alcohol use during pregnancy. Following examination by expert dysmorphologists, children were assigned to one of three FASD diagnostic groups: FAS/PFAS (nFAS = 7; nPFAS = 4), nonsyndromal heavily exposed (HE; n = 14), and Controls (n = 26). Subsequent memory was assessed in a post-scan recognition test, and subsequent memory activations were examined by contrasting activations during encoding of scenes that were subsequently remembered (hits) to those for incorrectly judged as ‘new’ (misses). Recognition accuracy did not differ between groups. Pooled across groups, we observed extensive bilateral subsequent memory effects in regions including the hippocampal formation, posterior parietal cortex, and occipital cortex—a pattern consistent with previous similar studies of typically developing children. Critically, in the group of children with FAS or PFAS, we observed activations in several additional regions compared to HE and Control groups. Given the absence of between-group differences in recognition accuracy, these data suggest that in achieving similar memory compared to children in the HE and Control groups, children with FAS and PFAS recruit more extensive neural resources to achieve successful memory formation.

Gendered Violence as Revelation in John le Carré’s &lt;em&gt;The Night Manager&lt;/em&gt;

Gendered Violence as Revelation in John le Carré’s &lt;em&gt;The Night Manager&lt;/em&gt;

UAV MISSION PLANNING FOR AUTOMATIC EXPLORATION AND SEMANTIC MAPPING

Abstract. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are used for the inspection of areas which are otherwise difficult to access. Autonomous monitoring and navigation requires a background knowledge on the surroundings of the vehicle. Most mission planing systems assume collision-free pre-defined paths and do not tolerate a GPS signal outage. Our approach makes weaker assumptions. This paper introduces a mission planing platform allowing for the integration of environmental prior knowledge such as 3D building and terrain models. This prior knowledge is integrated to pre-compute an octomap for collision detection. The semantically rich building models are used to specify semantic user queries such as roof or facade inspection. A reasoning process paves the way for semantic mission planing of hidden and a-priori unknown objects. Subsequent scene interpretation is performed by an incremental parsing process.

Fixation-related Brain Potentials during Semantic Integration of Object-Scene Information.

In vision science, a particularly controversial topic is whether and how quickly the semantic information about objects is available outside foveal vision. Here, we aimed at contributing to this debate by coregistering eye movements and EEG while participants viewed photographs of indoor scenes that contained a semantically consistent or inconsistent target object. Linear deconvolution modeling was used to analyze the ERPs evoked by scene onset as well as the fixation-related potentials (FRPs) elicited by the fixation on the target object (t) and by the preceding fixation (t - 1). Object-scene consistency did not influence the probability of immediate target fixation or the ERP evoked by scene onset, which suggests that object-scene semantics was not accessed immediately. However, during the subsequent scene exploration, inconsistent objects were prioritized over consistent objects in extrafoveal vision (i.e., looked at earlier) and were more effortful to process in foveal vision (i.e., looked at longer). In FRPs, we demonstrate a fixation-related N300/N400 effect, whereby inconsistent objects elicit a larger frontocentral negativity than consistent objects. In line with the behavioral findings, this effect was already seen in FRPs aligned to the pretarget fixation t - 1 and persisted throughout fixation t, indicating that the extraction of object semantics can already begin in extrafoveal vision. Taken together, the results emphasize the usefulness of combined EEG/eye movement recordings for understanding the mechanisms of object-scene integration during natural viewing.

Setting Artificial Neural Network Hyperparameters for Mobile Platform Navigation

Purpose of reseach. The main purpose of this work is to increase the efficiency of a neural network model when navigating a mobile robotic platform in static and dynamically generated environments. Methods. To solve this problem, precise setting and optimization of neural network hyperparameters were proposed. In order to encourage agents to explore the environment, the reward system was adjusted to increase the reward when the distance from the agent to the target point was reduced, and the penalty increased when moving in the opposite direction to the end point and passing each subsequent scene. This distribution of rewards and penalties encourages agents to learn actively and helps to reduce the total number of scenes. In order to reduce the amount of data processed by a neural network, normalization of input vectors was introduced. The learning time of the neural network model was reduced due to the parallel training of agents and, consequently, increased experience as a result of the environmental research. Results. The proposed approach reduced the learning time by 30% and improved the navigation efficiency of the mobile platform by 10% in a dynamically generated environment and by 22% in a static environment compared to the non-optimized model. Conclusion. The proposed solution can be used in conjunction with other methods of tracing and navigation, when the taught neural network works simultaneously with the already developed and proven navigation algorithms, for example, if the mobile platform connects a taught neural network only to adjust the position in space and to prevent collisions with other objects.

Spatiotemporal road scene reconstruction using superpixel-based Markov random field

Scene reconstruction based on image rendering is an indispensable but challenging task in computer vision and intelligent transportation systems. We propose a framework for reconstructing road scenes as 3D corridor models and consisting of two stages: road detection and scene reconstruction. Road detection is realized by the novel superpixel-based Markov random field. The data fidelity term in the energy function is jointly computed according to superpixel features of color, texture and location. The smoothness term is established from the interaction of spatiotemporally adjacent superpixels. In the subsequent scene reconstruction, the foreground and background regions are modeled independently. Experiments on road detection demonstrate that our proposal outperforms state-of-the-art methods in both accuracy and computation speed. Scene reconstruction experiments further confirm that the scene models retrieved by the proposed method have higher correctness ratio, and can support several applications.

To search or to like: Mapping fixations to differentiate two forms of incidental scene memory.

We employed eye-tracking to investigate how performing different tasks on scenes (e.g., intentionally memorizing them, searching for an object, evaluating aesthetic preference) can affect eye movements during encoding and subsequent scene memory. We found that scene memorability decreased after visual search (one incidental encoding task) compared to intentional memorization, and that preference evaluation (another incidental encoding task) produced better memory, similar to the incidental memory boost previously observed for words and faces. By analyzing fixation maps, we found that although fixation map similarity could explain how eye movements during visual search impairs incidental scene memory, it could not explain the incidental memory boost from aesthetic preference evaluation, implying that implicit mechanisms were at play. We conclude that not all incidental encoding tasks should be taken to be similar, as different mechanisms (e.g., explicit or implicit) lead to memory enhancements or decrements for different incidental encoding tasks.

Assessment of Multi-Temporal Image Fusion for Remote Sensing Application

Image fusion and subsequent scene analysis are important for studying Earth surface conditions from remotely sensed imagery. The fusion of the same scene using satellite data taken with different sensors or acquisition times is known as multi-sensor or multi-temporal fusion, respectively. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of misalignments the multi-sensor, multi-temporal fusion process when a pan-sharpened scene is produced from low spatial resolution multispectral (MS) images and a high spatial resolution panchromatic (PAN) image. It is found that the component substitution (CS) fusion method provides better performance than the multi-resolution analysis (MRA) scheme. Quantitative analysis shows that the CS-based method gives a better result in terms of spatial quality (sharpness), whereas the MRA-based method yields better spectral quality, i.e., better color fidelity to the original MS images .

Multi-Feature Segmentation for High-Resolution Polarimetric SAR Data Based on Fractal Net Evolution Approach

Segmentation techniques play an important role in understanding high-resolution polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) images. PolSAR image segmentation is widely used as a preprocessing step for subsequent classification, scene interpretation and extraction of surface parameters. However, speckle noise and rich spatial features of heterogeneous regions lead to blurred boundaries of high-resolution PolSAR image segmentation. A novel segmentation algorithm is proposed in this study in order to address the problem and to obtain accurate and precise segmentation results. This method integrates statistical features into a fractal net evolution algorithm (FNEA) framework, and incorporates polarimetric features into a simple linear iterative clustering (SLIC) superpixel generation algorithm. First, spectral heterogeneity in the traditional FNEA is substituted by the G0 distribution statistical heterogeneity in order to combine the shape and statistical features of PolSAR data. The statistical heterogeneity between two adjacent image objects is measured using a log likelihood function. Second, a modified SLIC algorithm is utilized to generate compact superpixels as the initial samples for the G0 statistical model, which substitutes the polarimetric distance of the Pauli RGB composition for the CIELAB color distance. The segmentation results were obtained by weighting the G0 statistical feature and the shape features, based on the FNEA framework. The validity and applicability of the proposed method was verified with extensive experiments on simulated data and three real-world high-resolution PolSAR images from airborne multi-look ESAR, spaceborne single-look RADARSAT-2, and multi-look TerraSAR-X data sets. The experimental results indicate that the proposed method obtains more accurate and precise segmentation results than the other methods for high-resolution PolSAR images.

Editing for Performance or Documenting Performance?: Exploring the Relationship Between Early Modern Text and Clowning

Editing for Performance or Documenting Performance?:Exploring the Relationship Between Early Modern Text and Clowning Stephen Purcell The complexity of the relationship between writing and performance on the early modern stage is particularly evident in its scenes of clowning. A performance tradition that relied upon a combination of scripted and unscripted speech, clowning resists documentation in printed form: indeed, printing turns it into something else entirely. As Richard Preiss has noted in his recent book on early modern clowning, [a] playbook is not a performance: it is the retrospective fantasy of one, abstracted from the play’s synchronic and diachronic stage lives, privileging certain voices over others, retroactively framing playgoing as a continuous, monological, readerly experience. (6) It might be helpful to think of the printed record of clowning scenes (and indeed of early modern drama more broadly) along the lines of the “geological metaphor” used by Michael Keefer in his 2007 edition of the play to describe the 1616 text of Doctor Faustus: as “the product of distinct phases of sedimentation and partial subduction” (20). Unlike those of a geological specimen, of course, the layers of sedimentation in a printed text are impossible to separate from one another. The metaphor is nonetheless useful to describe the multiple processes of scripting, performing, transcribing, copying, remembering, rescripting and reperforming that underlie the composition of an early modern playbook. In 2012, I undertook an exploration of the Doctor Faustus clown scenes in an open workshop with actors from The Pantaloons theater company. This was not an “excavation” of the text: there was no attempt to recover original practice. It was, rather, an attempt to gain an insight into the [End Page 5] structures underpinning such scenes, and to explore the ways in which layers of textual sedimentation might build up through a new process of scripting, improvisation, remembering, and rescripting. The workshop explored the differences between the clowning scenes of the two surviving texts of Doctor Faustus (1604 and 1616), and encouraged the actors to analyze the structure of one scene in particular before generating their own semi-improvised version of it. In order to approximate the process of memorial reconstruction and gain a practical sense of the differences between semi-improvised performance and textual accounts of it, I then asked the workshop audience to take notes and translate the resulting performance back into text. This article gives an overview of some of the ways in which the scene travelled through its various performative and textual forms, and speculates as to the relationship between clowning and text on the early modern stage and page. The texts of Doctor Faustus bear the traces of the play’s early performance history. The 1616 text, or B-text, is considerably longer than the earlier version, containing 676 additional lines. Recent scholarship has tended to conclude that the 1604 A-text is probably closest to the version of the play that was performed towards the end of Marlowe’s life (c. 1588), and that the B-text represents William Birde and Samuel Rowley’s revised version (for which Philip Henslowe recorded a payment in 1602). The B-text alone includes such episodes as Faustus’s rescue of Saxon Bruno from the Pope (3.1), and the three-scene sequence in which the knight humiliated by Faustus in 4.1, here named Benvolio, plots a revenge that subsequently backfires (4.1, 4.2, 4.3).1 The B-text also features two additional comic scenes, in which the clowns meet the horse-courser who was earlier cozened by Faustus (4.5), and then return in the subsequent scene to be humiliated at the court of the Duke of Vanholt (4.6). Curiously, though, despite the B-text’s greater overall length, the first clown scene, 1.4, is longer in the A-text. This first scene stages the meeting between the play’s primary clown, Robin, and Faustus’s servant Wagner. Wagner’s lines are substantially similar in both texts, but the A-text’s Clown is much more verbose than his equivalent in B. The second clown scene, 2.2, features a similar scenario in both texts—Robin has stolen one of Faustus’s books, and...

Pointing to Nothing? Empty Places Prime Infants' Attention to Absent Objects

People routinely point to empty space when referring to absent entities. These points to “nothing” are meaningful because they direct attention to places that stand in for specific entities. Typically, the meaning of places in terms of absent referents is established through preceding discourse and accompanying language. However, it is unknown whether nonlinguistic actions can establish locations as meaningful places, and whether infants have the capacity to represent a place as standing in for an object. In a novel eye-tracking paradigm, 18-month-olds watched objects being placed in specific locations. Then, the objects disappeared and a point directed infants' attention to an emptied place. The point to the empty place primed infants in a subsequent scene (in which the objects appeared at novel locations) to look more to the object belonging to the indicated place than to a distracter referent. The place–object expectations were strong enough to interfere when reversing the place–object associations. Findings show that infants comprehend nonlinguistic reference to absent entities, which reveals an ontogenetic early, nonverbal understanding of places as representations of absent objects.

How context information and target information guide the eyes from the first epoch of search in real-world scenes

This study investigated how the visual system utilizes context and task information during the different phases of a visual search task. The specificity of the target template (the picture or the name of the target) and the plausibility of target position in real-world scenes were manipulated orthogonally. Our findings showed that both target template information and guidance of spatial context are utilized to guide eye movements from the beginning of scene inspection. In both search initiation and subsequent scene scanning, the availability of a specific visual template was particularly useful when the spatial context of the scene was misleading and the availability of a reliable scene context facilitated search mainly when the template was abstract. Target verification was affected principally by the level of detail of target template, and was quicker in the case of a picture cue. The results indicate that the visual system can utilize target template guidance and context guidance flexibly from the beginning of scene inspection, depending upon the amount and the quality of the available information supplied by either of these high-level sources. This allows for optimization of oculomotor behavior throughout the different phases of search within a real-world scene.

Repetition Suppression and Multi-Voxel Pattern Similarity Differentially Track Implicit and Explicit Visual Memory

Repeated exposure to a visual stimulus is associated with corresponding reductions in neural activity, particularly within visual cortical areas. It has been argued that this phenomenon of repetition suppression is related to increases in processing fluency or implicit memory. However, repetition of a visual stimulus can also be considered in terms of the similarity of the pattern of neural activity elicited at each exposure--a measure that has recently been linked to explicit memory. Despite the popularity of each of these measures, direct comparisons between the two have been limited, and the extent to which they differentially (or similarly) relate to behavioral measures of memory has not been clearly established. In the present study, we compared repetition suppression and pattern similarity as predictors of both implicit and explicit memory. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we scanned 20 participants while they viewed and categorized repeated presentations of scenes. Repetition priming (facilitated categorization across repetitions) was used as a measure of implicit memory, and subsequent scene recognition was used as a measure of explicit memory. We found that repetition priming was predicted by repetition suppression in prefrontal, parietal, and occipitotemporal regions; however, repetition priming was not predicted by pattern similarity. In contrast, subsequent explicit memory was predicted by pattern similarity (across repetitions) in some of the same occipitotemporal regions that exhibited a relationship between priming and repetition suppression; however, explicit memory was not related to repetition suppression. This striking double dissociation indicates that repetition suppression and pattern similarity differentially track implicit and explicit learning.

Looking at Well-Crafted Objects

Looking at Well-Crafted Objects Translated by Andrew Schelling (bio) ramyāṇi vīkṣya madhurāṃś ca niśamya śabdānparyutsuko bhavati yat sukhito'pi jantuḥtac cetasā smarati nūnam abhodha pūrvaṃbhāvasthirāṇi jananāntarasauhṛdāni ramyāṇi. beauties, beautiful objects vīkṣya. having seen madhurāṃ. sweet, honeyed ca. and niśamya. having heard śabdān. sounds paryutsuko. (bv. cmpd.) restless, stricken bhavati. becomes yat. he who sukhito. content, happy 'pi. (api) even jantuḥ. man, person tat-cetasā. with his heart smarati. remembers nūnam. now (here: perhaps) abodha. without knowing pūrvaṃ. previously, long ago bhāva. emotions sthirāṇi. stationed, established janana-antara. (of a) former lifetime sauhṛdāni. loves, companions [End Page 42] Looking at well-crafted objectshearing sweet musiceven the contented persongrows edgypierced by unknown desires.Could it be deepin the heart one uncoversthe trace of a loverfrom lifetimes ago? This poem occurs in Kālidāsa’s dramatic work The Recollection of Śakuntalā. Indian poets and critics have cited it for centuries, using it to get to the heart of rasa. In the play, a young warlord on a hunting expedition encounters a girl, Śakuntalā, who has been raised in a cloistered forest ashram by her mendicant father. Prince and girl fall for each other and consummate their love in a wooded glade. By India’s old conventions, this is a “gandharva wedding”—a ceremony sanctified by the gandharvas, celestial musicians who watch over human love. The young couple strolls through the woods after their lovemaking and literally trip across a severe recluse, disrupting his meditation. In a fit of rage, the powerful yogin hurls a curse: when the prince returns home, no matter his vows, all memory of Śakuntalā will be obliterated. In a subsequent scene, the warlord is back in his life of wealth and rank when he hears a strain of music drift through the palace. A former lover of his plays on a musical instrument in her far-off quarters, the song a subtle reproach for his neglect of her. His heart, unexpectedly pierced, becomes paryutsuka, troubled, full of longing, brimming with uncertain desire and regret. The audience knows that a trace of Śakuntalā, some thin strand of passion, runs through his body, too buried by the curse to rise into consciousness. It is at this moment in the play—most likely accompanied by ceremonial dance—he recites, ramyāṇi vīkṣya … For poets, the stanza is the perfect isolation of rasa, bedrock emotional territory that underlies our surface passions. The purpose of poetry is to access that subconscious material, to provide a “taste” of the underlying white-hot encounter with what’s real. To the philosopher this taste is a “foretaste” of spiritual liberation. Most Indian accounts of the origins or the purpose of art have proceeded from the concept of rasa, ever since the Kashmiri poet-philosopher Abhinavagupta set down its metaphysical basis in the tenth- or eleventh-century treatise Abhinavabhāratī. The eight (or at times nine or ten) rasas are the names of emotional states: erotic love, humor, [End Page 43] grief, rage, revulsion, horror, heroism, and wonder. Laid out in a visual psychology, each has a color, a direction, a deity, a time of day or year, and many other associations. Originally meaning juice, sap, semen, rasa came to mean the essence or life-juice of anything, its “taste.” René Daumal translated rasa as saveur. The questions raised by this poem edge into psychoanalysis, evolutionary biology, and ecology. What is the wild unnamed edginess a person approaches in art? Why should things of beauty provoke desire instead of allay it? How far does memory reach, and through it do we actually touch other persons? How is art able to make us feel as though we’ve brushed against former life memories? The poem uses technical terms hard to match closely in English. Ramyāṇi are things that are gorgeous because they provoke bodily desire, from the verbal root ram, to make love. The bhāva-sthirāṇi are deep-seated personal emotions—almost “complexes”—at the core of the individual...

Inadequate domestic insulation in Australia – an additional risk factor for lethal hypothermia

Case report An 86-year-old woman was found deceased at her home address having not been seen for 4 days. The major findings at autopsy included a fractured neck of femur, recent pressure areas over her buttock, Wischnewski spots of the stomach and pancreatic necrosis. There were no significant underlying organic diseases and no other evidence of trauma. Minimum overnight temperatures around the time of death ranged from 8.0-14.6°C. Death was attributed to hypothermia complicating immobility from a fractured neck of femur. This case demonstrates that frail, elderly and socially-isolated individuals may be at risk of lethal hypothermia. Importantly, a subsequent scene investigation indicated additional risk factors. specifically the house, which was a pre-World War II brick bungalow, lacked double glazed windows, and had no wall or floor insulation, or underfloor heating. The external doors had gaps that would have been associated with significant air leakage. Discussion The evaluation of possible hypothermic deaths should, therefore, include not only measuring room and environmental temperatures, but also noting the type and quality of heating and insulation. As the population of Australia ages, and fuel and energy costs rise, more of these types of deaths may be expected to occur.

Threat of Punishment Motivates Memory Encoding via Amygdala, Not Midbrain, Interactions with the Medial Temporal Lobe

Neural circuits associated with motivated declarative encoding and active threat avoidance have both been described, but the relative contribution of these systems to punishment-motivated encoding remains unknown. The current study used functional magnetic resonance imaging in humans to examine mechanisms of declarative memory enhancement when subjects were motivated to avoid punishments that were contingent on forgetting. A motivational cue on each trial informed participants whether they would be punished or not for forgetting an upcoming scene image. Items associated with the threat of shock were better recognized 24 h later. Punishment-motivated enhancements in subsequent memory were associated with anticipatory activation of right amygdala and increases in its functional connectivity with parahippocampal and orbitofrontal cortices. On a trial-by-trial basis, right amygdala activation during the motivational cue predicted hippocampal activation during encoding of the subsequent scene; across participants, the strength of this interaction predicted memory advantages due to motivation. Of note, punishment-motivated learning was not associated with activation of dopaminergic midbrain, as would be predicted by valence-independent models of motivation to learn. These data are consistent with the view that motivation by punishment activates the amygdala, which in turn prepares the medial temporal lobe for memory formation. The findings further suggest a brain system for declarative learning motivated by punishment that is distinct from that for learning motivated by reward.