The serial reproduction of an urban myth: revisiting Bartlett's schema theory.

Frederic Bartlett's schema theory is still widely misunderstood as claiming that remembering is inevitably unreliable. However, according to the logic of his schema theory, remembering should, in relation to certain kinds of material, be relatively . In this study we examined whether a "well-worn" urban myth (the ) could be exempt from the fate of other material used in Bartlett's own research on serial reproduction.

Biosonar signals impinging on the target during interception by big brown bats, Eptesicus fuscus.

Big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus) were videotaped in the dark with a night-vision lens and infrared illumination while flying repeatedly along the same straight course to seize a tethered mealworm or a small electret microphone used to record biosonar signals impinging on the target. Bats emitted frequency-modulated sounds with first to third harmonics covering frequencies from 23 to 105 kHz. As the bats neared the target, the first harmonic shifted lower in frequency while the third harmonic strengthened and the fourth harmonic, and sometimes the fifth harmonic, appeared.

Long-range cortical synchronization without concomitant oscillations in the somatosensory system of anesthetized cats.

To determine whether neuronal oscillations are essential for long-range cortical synchronization in the somatosensory system, we characterized the incidence and response properties of gamma range oscillations (20-80 Hz) among pairs of synchronized neurons in primary (SI) and secondary (SII) somatosensory cortex. Synchronized SI and SII discharges, which occurred within a 3 msec period, were detected in 13% (80 of 621) of single-unit pairs and 25% (29 of 118) of multiunit pairs. Power spectra derived from the auto-correlation histograms (ACGs) revealed that approximately 15% of the neurons forming synchronized pairs were characterized by oscillations.

Synchronized cortical potentials and wavelet packets: a potential mechanism for perceptual binding and conveying information.

Temporal synchronization in neuronal assemblies has been linked to the functional roles of perceptual binding, sensory-motor integration, attention, and information coding. We report new evidence for a common underlying mechanism that uses specific temporal patterns of synchronized neuronal activity as a basis for conveying information. The temporal patterns of stimulus-related synchronized neuronal discharges are structured to closely resemble specific members of the Symlet wavelet packet family employed in a computational framework.

Automated sequence preprocessing in a large-scale sequencing environment.

A software system for transforming fragments from four-color fluorescence-based gel electrophoresis experiments into assembled sequence is described. It has been developed for large-scale processing of all trace data, including shotgun and finishing reads, regardless of clone origin. Design considerations are discussed in detail, as are programming implementation and graphic tools.