Exploring Sentiment, Values, and Misinformation Surrounding Vaccination Legislation on Twitter: A Case Study of California's Passage of SB277.

California remains among a handful of U.S. states with no clause for a personal belief exemption for required vaccines due to passage of SB277.

Factorized visual representations in the primate visual system and deep neural networks.

Object classification has been proposed as a principal objective of the primate ventral visual stream and has been used as an optimization target for deep neural network models (DNNs) of the visual system. However, visual brain areas represent many different types of information, and optimizing for classification of object identity alone does not constrain how other information may be encoded in visual representations. Information about different scene parameters may be discarded altogether ('invariance'), represented in non-interfering subspaces of population activity ('factorization') or encoded in an entangled fashion.

Brain-like Flexible Visual Inference by Harnessing Feedback-Feedforward Alignment.

In natural vision, feedback connections support versatile visual inference capabilities such as making sense of the occluded or noisy bottom-up sensory information or mediating pure top-down processes such as imagination. However, the mechanisms by which the feedback pathway learns to give rise to these capabilities flexibly are not clear. We propose that top-down effects emerge through alignment between feedforward and feedback pathways, each optimizing its own objectives.

Marmoset core visual object recognition behavior is comparable to that of macaques and humans.

Among the smallest simian primates, the common marmoset offers promise as an experimentally tractable primate model for neuroscience with translational potential to humans. However, given its exceedingly small brain and body, the gap in perceptual and cognitive abilities between marmosets and humans requires study. Here, we performed a comparison of marmoset behavior to that of three other species in the domain of high-level vision.

An Interscholastic Network To Generate LexA Enhancer Trap Lines in .

Binary expression systems like the LexA-LexAop system provide a powerful experimental tool kit to study gene and tissue function in developmental biology, neurobiology, and physiology. However, the number of well-defined LexA enhancer trap insertions remains limited. In this study, we present the molecular characterization and initial tissue expression analysis of nearly 100 novel StanEx LexA enhancer traps, derived from the index line.

Evidence that recurrent circuits are critical to the ventral stream's execution of core object recognition behavior.

Non-recurrent deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are currently the best at modeling core object recognition, a behavior that is supported by the densely recurrent primate ventral stream, culminating in the inferior temporal (IT) cortex. If recurrence is critical to this behavior, then primates should outperform feedforward-only deep CNNs for images that require additional recurrent processing beyond the feedforward IT response. Here we first used behavioral methods to discover hundreds of these 'challenge' images.

Daily Water Intake by Common Marmosets () and Recommendations Regarding Fluid Regulation.

The typical daily water intake of common marmosets () in a research setting has not been well characterized. Because these New World primates are in demand as animal models for neurobehavioral experiments, which can include the potential use of fluid regulation for training, veterinary and research staff need to understand how marmosets keep hydrated under normal circumstances. In the current study, we measured the water consumption of older (age, 5 to 12 y; = 11) and younger (age, 1 to 2 y; = 11) marmosets every 3 h during the 12-h light phase in 2 different months (January and July).

Neural dynamics at successive stages of the ventral visual stream are consistent with hierarchical error signals.

Ventral visual stream neural responses are dynamic, even for static image presentations. However, dynamical neural models of visual cortex are lacking as most progress has been made modeling static, time-averaged responses. Here, we studied population neural dynamics during face detection across three cortical processing stages.

Large-Scale, High-Resolution Comparison of the Core Visual Object Recognition Behavior of Humans, Monkeys, and State-of-the-Art Deep Artificial Neural Networks.

Primates, including humans, can typically recognize objects in visual images at a glance despite naturally occurring identity-preserving image transformations (e.g., changes in viewpoint).

Neurophysiological Organization of the Middle Face Patch in Macaque Inferior Temporal Cortex.

Unlabelled: While early cortical visual areas contain fine scale spatial organization of neuronal properties, such as orientation preference, the spatial organization of higher-level visual areas is less well understood. The fMRI demonstration of face-preferring regions in human ventral cortex and monkey inferior temporal cortex ("face patches") raises the question of how neural selectivity for faces is organized. Here, we targeted hundreds of spatially registered neural recordings to the largest fMRI-identified face-preferring region in monkeys, the middle face patch (MFP), and show that the MFP contains a graded enrichment of face-preferring neurons.

Large-scale, high-resolution neurophysiological maps underlying FMRI of macaque temporal lobe.

Maps obtained by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) are thought to reflect the underlying spatial layout of neural activity. However, previous studies have not been able to directly compare fMRI maps to high-resolution neurophysiological maps, particularly in higher level visual areas. Here, we used a novel stereo microfocal x-ray system to localize thousands of neural recordings across monkey inferior temporal cortex (IT), construct large-scale maps of neuronal object selectivity at subvoxel resolution, and compare those neurophysiology maps with fMRI maps from the same subjects.

Increased neural correlations in primate auditory cortex during slow-wave sleep.

During sleep, changes in brain rhythms and neuromodulator levels in cortex modify the properties of individual neurons and the network as a whole. In principle, network-level interactions during sleep can be studied by observing covariation in spontaneous activity between neurons. Spontaneous activity, however, reflects only a portion of the effective functional connectivity that is activated by external and internal inputs (e.

Precedence of the eye region in neural processing of faces.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has revealed multiple subregions in monkey inferior temporal cortex (IT) that are selective for images of faces over other objects. The earliest of these subregions, the posterior lateral face patch (PL), has not been studied previously at the neurophysiological level. Perhaps not surprisingly, we found that PL contains a high concentration of "face-selective" cells when tested with standard image sets comparable to those used previously to define the region at the level of fMRI.

Altered neural responses to sounds in primate primary auditory cortex during slow-wave sleep.

How sounds are processed by the brain during sleep is an important question for understanding how we perceive the sensory environment in this unique behavioral state. While human behavioral data have indicated selective impairments of sound processing during sleep, brain imaging and neurophysiology studies have reported that overall neural activity in auditory cortex during sleep is surprisingly similar to that during wakefulness. This responsiveness to external stimuli leaves open the question of how neural responses during sleep differ, if at all, from wakefulness.

Sensory responses during sleep in primate primary and secondary auditory cortex.

Most sensory stimuli do not reach conscious perception during sleep. It has been thought that the thalamus prevents the relay of sensory information to cortex during sleep, but the consequences for cortical responses to sensory signals in this physiological state remain unclear. We recorded from two auditory cortical areas downstream of the thalamus in naturally sleeping marmoset monkeys.