Effects of Choice Restriction on Accuracy and User Experience in an Internet-Based Geopolitical Forecasting Task.

Large-scale geopolitical forecasting tournaments have emerged in recent years as effective testbeds for conducting research into novel forecasting tools and methods. A challenge of such tournaments involves the distribution of forecasting load across forecasters, since there are often more forecasting questions than an individual forecaster can answer. Intelligent load distribution, or triage, may therefore be helpful in ensuring that all questions have sufficient numbers of forecasts to benefit from crowd-based aggregation and that individual forecasters are matched to the questions for which they are best suited.

Visual salience affects performance in a working memory task.

Many studies of bottom-up visual attention have focused on identifying which features of a visual stimulus render it salient--i.e., make it "pop out" from its background--and on characterizing the extent to which salience predicts eye movements under certain task conditions.

Cool (TRPM8) and hot (TRPV1) receptors in the bladder and male genital tract.

Purpose: Overactive bladder symptoms due to various etiologies have been successfully treated with capsaicin by desensitization of the temperature sensitive vanilloid receptor TRPV1. Recently another temperature sensitive receptor, TRPM8, activated by menthol and cool temperatures (8C to 28C) was described that may be the proposed cool receptor, at least in part mediating the bladder response in the diagnostic ice water test. We defined the sites of mRNA and protein expression of TRPM8 and TRPV1 in the rat and human genitourinary tract.

Protracted development of responses to whisker deflection in rat trigeminal ganglion neurons.

The rodent whisker-to-barrel pathway constitutes a major model system for studying experience-dependent brain development. Yet little is known about responses of neurons to whisker stimulation in young animals. Response properties of trigeminal ganglion (NV) neurons in 2-, 3-, and 4-week-old and adult rats were examined using extracellular single-unit recordings and controlled whisker stimuli.

Response transformation and receptive-field synthesis in the lemniscal trigeminothalamic circuit.

To understand how the lemniscal trigeminothalamic circuit (PrV --> VPM) of the rodent whisker-to-barrel pathway transforms afferent signals, we applied ramp-and-hold deflections to individual whiskers of lightly narcotized rats while recording the extracellular responses of neurons in either the ventroposterior medial (VPM) thalamic nucleus or in brain stem nucleus principalis (PrV). In PrV, only those neurons antidromically determined to project to VPM were selected for recording. We found that VPM neurons exhibited smaller response magnitudes and greater spontaneous firing rates than those of their PrV inputs, but that both populations were similarly well tuned for stimulus direction.

Response properties of whisker-associated trigeminothalamic neurons in rat nucleus principalis.

Nucleus principalis (PrV) of the brain stem trigeminal complex mediates the processing and transfer of low-threshold mechanoreceptor input en route to the ventroposterior medial nucleus of the thalamus (VPM). In rats, this includes tactile information relayed from the large facial whiskers via primary afferent fibers originating in the trigeminal ganglion (NV). Here we describe the responses of antidromically identified VPM-projecting PrV neurons (n = 72) to controlled ramp-and-hold deflections of whiskers.