Models optimized for real-world tasks reveal the task-dependent necessity of precise temporal coding in hearing.

Neurons encode information in the timing of their spikes in addition to their firing rates. Spike timing is particularly precise in the auditory nerve, where action potentials phase lock to sound with sub-millisecond precision, but its behavioral relevance remains uncertain. We optimized machine learning models to perform real-world hearing tasks with simulated cochlear input, assessing the precision of auditory nerve spike timing needed to reproduce human behavior.

Models optimized for real-world tasks reveal the task-dependent necessity of precise temporal coding in hearing.

Neurons encode information in the timing of their spikes in addition to their firing rates. Spike timing is particularly precise in the auditory nerve, where action potentials phase lock to sound with sub-millisecond precision, but its behavioral relevance remains uncertain. We optimized machine learning models to perform real-world hearing tasks with simulated cochlear input, assessing the precision of auditory nerve spike timing needed to reproduce human behavior.

Emerging Activity Patterns and Synaptogenesis in Dissociated Hippocampal Cultures.

Cultures of dissociated hippocampal neurons display a stereotypical development of network activity patterns within the first three weeks of maturation. During this process, network connections develop and the associated spiking patterns range from increasing levels of activity in the first two weeks to regular bursting activity in the third week of maturation. Characterization of network structure is important to examine the mechanisms underlying the emergent functional organization of neural circuits.

Deep neural network models reveal interplay of peripheral coding and stimulus statistics in pitch perception.

Perception is thought to be shaped by the environments for which organisms are optimized. These influences are difficult to test in biological organisms but may be revealed by machine perceptual systems optimized under different conditions. We investigated environmental and physiological influences on pitch perception, whose properties are commonly linked to peripheral neural coding limits.

The dialysis orders objective structured clinical examination (OSCE): a formative assessment for nephrology fellows.

Background: Few quantitative nephrology-specific simulations assess fellow competency. We describe the development and initial validation of a formative objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) assessing fellow competence in ordering acute dialysis.

Methods: The three test scenarios were acute continuous renal replacement therapy, chronic dialysis initiation in moderate uremia and acute dialysis in end-stage renal disease-associated hyperkalemia.

Characterizing Chilean blue whale vocalizations with DTAGs: a test of using tag accelerometers for caller identification.

Vocal behavior of blue whales () in the Gulf of Corcovado, Chile, was analysed using both audio and accelerometer data from digital acoustic recording tags (DTAGs). Over the course of three austral summers (2014, 2015 and 2016), seventeen tags were deployed, yielding 124 h of data. We report the occurrence of Southeast Pacific type 2 (SEP2) calls, which exhibit peak frequencies, durations and timing consistent with previous recordings made using towed and moored hydrophones.