NeuroDecodeR: a package for neural decoding in R.

Neural decoding is a powerful method to analyze neural activity. However, the code needed to run a decoding analysis can be complex, which can present a barrier to using the method. In this paper we introduce a package that makes it easy to perform decoding analyses in the R programing language.

The wisdom in the story: Clarifying assumptions about radical uncertainty and reasonableness in narrative judgment.

Human lives are radically uncertain. Making sense of such uncertainties is the hallmark of wisdom. Sense-making requires narratives, putting them in the center stage of human everyday decision-making.

COVID-19 vaccine skeptics are persuaded by pro-vaccine expert consensus messaging.

To further understand how to combat COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy, we examined the effects of pro-vaccine expert consensus messaging on lay attitudes about vaccine safety and intention to get a COVID-19 vaccine. We surveyed 729 unvaccinated individuals from four countries in the early stages of the pandemic and 472 unvaccinated individuals from two countries after 2 years of the pandemic. We found belief of vaccine safety strongly correlated with intention to vaccinate in the first sample and less strongly in the second.

Predictors and consequences of intellectual humility.

In a time of societal acrimony, psychological scientists have turned to a possible antidote - intellectual humility. Interest in intellectual humility comes from diverse research areas, including researchers studying leadership and organizational behaviour, personality science, positive psychology, judgement and decision-making, education, culture, and intergroup and interpersonal relationships. In this Review, we synthesize empirical approaches to the study of intellectual humility.

Controlling the narrative: Euphemistic language affects judgments of actions while avoiding perceptions of dishonesty.

The present work (N = 1906 U.S. residents) investigates the extent to which peoples' evaluations of actions can be biased by the strategic use of euphemistic (agreeable) and dysphemistic (disagreeable) terms.

The environmental malleability of base-rate neglect.

Across two experiments (N=799) we demonstrate that people's use of quantitative information (e.g., base-rates) when making a judgment varies as the causal link of qualitative information (e.

Dynamic population coding and its relationship to working memory.

For over 45 years, neuroscientists have conducted experiments aimed at understanding the neural basis of working memory. Early results examining individual neurons highlighted that information is stored in working memory in persistent sustained activity where neurons maintained elevated firing rates over extended periods of time. However, more recent work has emphasized that information is often stored in working memory in dynamic population codes, where different neurons contain information at different periods in time.

Differential Processing of Isolated Object and Multi-item Pop-Out Displays in LIP and PFC.

Objects that are highly distinct from their surroundings appear to visually "pop-out." This effect is present for displays in which: (1) a single cue object is shown on a blank background, and (2) a single cue object is highly distinct from surrounding objects; it is generally assumed that these 2 display types are processed in the same way. To directly examine this, we applied a decoding analysis to neural activity recorded from the lateral intraparietal (LIP) area and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC).

Intelligent information loss: the coding of facial identity, head pose, and non-face information in the macaque face patch system.

Faces are a behaviorally important class of visual stimuli for primates. Recent work in macaque monkeys has identified six discrete face areas where most neurons have higher firing rates to images of faces compared with other objects (Tsao et al., 2006).

The dynamics of invariant object recognition in the human visual system.

The human visual system can rapidly recognize objects despite transformations that alter their appearance. The precise timing of when the brain computes neural representations that are invariant to particular transformations, however, has not been mapped in humans. Here we employ magnetoencephalography decoding analysis to measure the dynamics of size- and position-invariant visual information development in the ventral visual stream.

The neural decoding toolbox.

Population decoding is a powerful way to analyze neural data, however, currently only a small percentage of systems neuroscience researchers use this method. In order to increase the use of population decoding, we have created the Neural Decoding Toolbox (NDT) which is a Matlab package that makes it easy to apply population decoding analyses to neural activity. The design of the toolbox revolves around four abstract object classes which enables users to interchange particular modules in order to try different analyses while keeping the rest of the processing stream intact.

Incorporation of new information into prefrontal cortical activity after learning working memory tasks.

The ability to learn new tasks requires that new information is integrated into neural systems that already support other behaviors. To study how new information is incorporated into neural representations, we analyzed single-unit recordings from the prefrontal cortex (PFC), a brain region important for task acquisition and working memory, before and after monkeys learned to perform two behavioral tasks. A population-decoding analysis revealed a large increase in task-relevant information, and smaller changes in stimulus-related information, after training.

Object decoding with attention in inferior temporal cortex.

Recognizing objects in cluttered scenes requires attentional mechanisms to filter out distracting information. Previous studies have found several physiological correlates of attention in visual cortex, including larger responses for attended objects. However, it has been unclear whether these attention-related changes have a large impact on information about objects at the neural population level.

Visual parsing after recovery from blindness.

How the visual system comes to bind diverse image regions into whole objects is not well understood. We recently had a unique opportunity to investigate this issue when we met three congenitally blind individuals in India. After providing them treatment, we studied the early stages of their visual skills.

Dynamic population coding of category information in inferior temporal and prefrontal cortex.

Most electrophysiology studies analyze the activity of each neuron separately. While such studies have given much insight into properties of the visual system, they have also potentially overlooked important aspects of information coded in changing patterns of activity that are distributed over larger populations of neurons. In this work, we apply a population decoding method to better estimate what information is available in neuronal ensembles and how this information is coded in dynamic patterns of neural activity in data recorded from inferior temporal cortex (ITC) and prefrontal cortex (PFC) as macaque monkeys engaged in a delayed match-to-category task.

Contextually evoked object-specific responses in human visual cortex.

Human visual recognition processes are remarkably robust and can function effectively even under highly degraded viewing conditions. Contextual information may play a critical role in such circumstances. Here, we provide neurophysiological evidence that contextual cues can elicit object-specific neural responses, which have hitherto been believed to be based on intrinsic cues alone.