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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Motor Output Evoked By Subsaccadic Stimulation Of Primate Frontal Eye Fields., Brian D Corneil, James K Elsley, Benjamin Nagy, Sharon L Cushing Mar 2010

Motor Output Evoked By Subsaccadic Stimulation Of Primate Frontal Eye Fields., Brian D Corneil, James K Elsley, Benjamin Nagy, Sharon L Cushing

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

In addition to its role in shifting the line of sight, the oculomotor system is also involved in the covert orienting of visuospatial attention. Causal evidence supporting this premotor theory of attention, or oculomotor readiness hypothesis, comes from the effect of subsaccadic threshold stimulation of the oculomotor system on behavior and neural activity in the absence of evoked saccades, which parallels the effects of covert attention. Here, by recording neck-muscle activity from monkeys and systematically titrating the level of stimulation current delivered to the frontal eye fields (FEF), we show that such subsaccadic stimulation is not divorced from immediate motor …


Seasonal Hippocampal Plasticity In Food-Storing Birds., David F Sherry, Jennifer S Hoshooley Mar 2010

Seasonal Hippocampal Plasticity In Food-Storing Birds., David F Sherry, Jennifer S Hoshooley

Psychology Publications

Both food-storing behaviour and the hippocampus change annually in food-storing birds. Food storing increases substantially in autumn and winter in chickadees and tits, jays and nutcrackers and nuthatches. The total size of the chickadee hippocampus increases in autumn and winter as does the rate of hippocampal neurogenesis. The hippocampus is necessary for accurate cache retrieval in food-storing birds and is much larger in food-storing birds than in non-storing passerines. It therefore seems probable that seasonal change in caching and seasonal change in the hippocampus are causally related. The peak in recruitment of new neurons into the hippocampus occurs before birds …


Running Enhances Spatial Pattern Separation In Mice., David J Creer, Carola Romberg, Lisa M Saksida, Henriette Van Praag, Timothy J Bussey Feb 2010

Running Enhances Spatial Pattern Separation In Mice., David J Creer, Carola Romberg, Lisa M Saksida, Henriette Van Praag, Timothy J Bussey

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

Increasing evidence suggests that regular exercise improves brain health and promotes synaptic plasticity and hippocampal neurogenesis. Exercise improves learning, but specific mechanisms of information processing influenced by physical activity are unknown. Here, we report that voluntary running enhanced the ability of adult (3 months old) male C57BL/6 mice to discriminate between the locations of two adjacent identical stimuli. Improved spatial pattern separation in adult runners was tightly correlated with increased neurogenesis. In contrast, very aged (22 months old) mice had impaired spatial discrimination and low basal cell genesis that was refractory to running. These findings suggest that the addition of …