Related papers: A positive mood, a flexible brain
Mindfulness has become increasingly popular as a method for building resilience against stress in both clinical and healthy populations. This study sought to investigate the effects of mindfulness training on perceived levels of stress and…
Neurons and networks in the cerebral cortex must operate reliably despite multiple sources of noise. To evaluate the impact of both input and output noise, we determine the robustness of single-neuron stimulus selective responses, as well…
Objective: Brain is a fantastic organ that helps creature adapting to the environment. Network is the most essential structure of brain, but the capability of a simple network is still not very clear. In this study, we try to expound some…
We study the effect that the heterogeneity present among the elements of an ensemble of coupled excitable neurons have on the collective response of the system to an external signal. We have considered two different interaction scenarios,…
The brain is an intricately structured organ responsible for the rich emergent dynamics that support the complex cognitive functions we enjoy as humans. With around $10^{11}$ neurons and $10^{15}$ synapses, understanding how the human brain…
The brain's functional connectivity fluctuates over time instead of remaining steady in a stationary mode even during the resting state. This fluctuation establishes the dynamical functional connectivity that transitions in a non-random…
A new theory of motivations, emotions and attention is suggested, considering them as functions of sensory systems. The theory connects neurophysiological mechanisms of mental phenomena with the change of metabolic and functional state of…
Little is currently known about the coordination of neural activity over longitudinal time-scales and how these changes relate to behavior. To investigate this issue, we used resting-state fMRI data from a single individual to identify the…
As a person learns a new skill, distinct synapses, brain regions, and circuits are engaged and change over time. In this paper, we develop methods to examine patterns of correlated activity across a large set of brain regions. Our goal is…
Targeted electrical stimulation of the brain perturbs neural networks and modulates their rhythmic activity both at the site of stimulation and at remote brain regions. Understanding, or even predicting, this neuromodulatory effect is…
Behavioral flexibility is learning from previous experiences and planning appropriate actions in a changing or novel environment. Successful behavioral adaptation depends on internal models the brain builds to represent the relational…
Neural circuits exhibit remarkable computational flexibility, enabling adaptive responses to noisy and ever-changing environmental cues. A fundamental question in neuroscience concerns how a wide range of behaviors can emerge from a…
In this paper, we analyze the cognitive improvements that can be achieved through hacking the brain through the use of multiple methods to enhance neuroplasticity. Exposure to gaming, for example, has proven conducive for learning…
Synaptic connections between neurons in the brain are dynamic because of continuously ongoing spine dynamics, axonal sprouting, and other processes. In fact, it was recently shown that the spontaneous synapse-autonomous component of spine…
Grid cells in the entorhinal cortex fire when animals that are exploring a certain region of space occupy the vertices of a triangular grid that spans the environment. Different neurons feature triangular grids that differ in their…
Work in developmental psychology suggests that humans are predisposed to align their mental states with other individuals. This manifests principally in cooperative communication, that is, intentional communication geared towards aligning…
In the human brain, internal states are often correlated over time (due to local recurrence and other intrinsic circuit properties), punctuated by abrupt transitions. At first glance, temporal smoothness of internal states presents a…
Humans rapidly learn abstract knowledge when encountering novel environments and flexibly deploy this knowledge to guide efficient and intelligent action. Can modern AI systems learn and plan in a similar way? We study this question using a…
We investigate the selective forces that promote the emergence of modularity in nature. We demonstrate the spontaneous emergence of modularity in a population of individuals that evolve in a changing environment. We show that the level of…
Today, the human brain can be studied as a whole. Electroencephalography, magnetoencephalography, or functional magnetic resonance imaging techniques provide functional connectivity patterns between different brain areas, and during…