Newest Papers

This study compares different types of regulation that motivate school students to participate in their formal education and in music entertainment. The framework of self-determination is used in this study to convey various forms of regulation that play important roles in driving students to take action in both settings. A survey result based on 207 student respondents in Thailand revealed that although it is not uncommon to anticipate that there could be a variety of reasons for establishing this educational participation, ranging from extrinsic controls to intrinsic values, the students were more likely to be extrinsically and personally pressured in their formal study, compared to participating in music. On the other hand, they were prone to be more intrinsically driven when joining in music activities than studying.

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How to make the best of the most important century?

Holden Karnofsky

Cold Takes·2021

We, the people living in this century, have the chance to have a huge impact on huge numbers of people to come - if we can make sense of the situation enough to find helpful actions.

★ 3.5 (2)

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Emerging forest–peatland bistability and resilience of European peatland carbon stores

Ype van der Velde, Arnaud J. A. M. Temme, Jelmer J. Nijp, Maarten C. Braakhekke, George A. K. van Voorn, Stefan C. Dekker, A. Johannes Dolman, Jakob Wallinga, Kevin J. Devito, Nicholas Kettridge, Carl A. Mendoza, Lammert Kooistra, Merel B. Soons, Adriaan J. Teuling

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences·2021·30 citations

Significance Peatlands are sensitive ecosystems that store carbon and water and support biodiversity. Currently, European peatlands are threatened by climate change and exploitation. In this study, we show that many landscape settings may support both wetland ecosystems on thick peat soils and forest ecosystems on thin organic soils. Both ecosystems have distinctly different water–carbon dynamics that create internal positive feedbacks, allowing both ecosystems to coexist (bistability) but also to shift when critical limits are exceeded. With this new landscape perspective, we find that currently, 20% of European raised bogs are threatened by climate change and drainage. This study demonstrates that a landscape perspective including interactions between peatlands, forests, and rivers is essential to understand and steer the future of peatlands.

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The neuroimmune response during stress: A physiological perspective

Hedva Haykin, Asya Rolls

Immunity, vol.54, no.9·2021·83 citations

Stress is an essential adaptive response that enables the organism to cope with challenges and restore homeostasis. Different stressors require distinctive corrective responses in which immune cells play a critical role. Hence, effects of stress on immunity may vary accordingly. Indeed, epidemiologically, stress can induce either inflammation or immune suppression in an organism. However, in the absence of a conceptual framework, these effects appear chaotic, leading to confusion. Here, we examine how stressor diversity is embedded in the neuroimmune axis. Stressors differ in the brain patterns they induce, diversifying the neuronal and endocrine mediators dispatched to the periphery and generating a wide range of potential immune effects. Uncovering this complexity and diversity of the immune response to different stressors will allow us to understand the involvement of stress in pathological conditions, identify ways to modulate it, and even harness the therapeutic potential embedded in an adaptive response to stress.

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Theory of mind, executive function, and lying in children: a meta-analysis.

Liyang Sai, Siyuan Shang, Cleo Tay, Xingchen Liu, Tingwen Sheng, Genyue Fu, Xiao Pan Ding, Kang Lee

Developmental science·2021

Scientific research on how children learn to tell lies has existed for more than a century. Earlier studies mainly focused on moral, social, and situational factors contributing to the development of lying. Researchers have only begun to explore the cognitive correlations of children's lying in the last two decades. Cognitive theories suggest that theory of mind (ToM) and executive function (EF) should be closely related to the development of lying since lying is, in essence, ToM and EF in action. Yet, findings from empirical studies are mixed. To address this issue, the current meta-analysis reviewed all prior literature that examined the relations between children's lying and ToM and/or between children's lying and EF. In total, 47 papers consisting of 5099 participants between 2 and 19 years of age were included, which yielded 74 effect sizes for ToM and 94 effect sizes for EF. Statistically significant but relatively small effects were found between children's lying and ToM (r = .17) and between lying and EF (r = .13). Furthermore, EF's correlation with children's initial lies was significantly smaller than its correlation with children's ability to maintain lies. This comprehensive meta-analysis provides a clear picture of the associations between children's ToM/EF and their lying behavior and confirms that ToM and EF indeed play a positive role in children's lying and its development.

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Convolutional Neural Networks as a Model of the Visual System: Past, Present, and Future

Grace W. Lindsay

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience·2021·377 citations

Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) were inspired by early findings in the study of biological vision. They have since become successful tools in computer vision and state-of-the-art models of both neural activity and behavior on visual tasks. This review highlights what, in the context of CNNs, it means to be a good model in computational neuroscience and the various ways models can provide insight. Specifically, it covers the origins of CNNs and the methods by which we validate them as models of biological vision. It then goes on to elaborate on what we can learn about biological vision by understanding and experimenting on CNNs and discusses emerging opportunities for the use of CNNs in vision research beyond basic object recognition.

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Single cortical neurons as deep artificial neural networks

David Beniaguev, Idan Segev, Michael London

Neuron·2021·191 citations

Utilizing recent advances in machine learning, we introduce a systematic approach to characterize neurons’ input/output (I/O) mapping complexity. Deep neural networks (DNNs) were trained to faithfully replicate the I/O function of various biophysical models of cortical neurons at millisecond (spiking) resolution. A temporally convolutional DNN with five to eight layers was required to capture the I/O mapping of a realistic model of a layer 5 cortical pyramidal cell (L5PC). This DNN generalized well when presented with inputs widely outside the training distribution. When NMDA receptors were removed, a much simpler network (fully connected neural network with one hidden layer) was sufficient to fit the model. Analysis of the DNNs’ weight matrices revealed that synaptic integration in dendritic branches could be conceptualized as pattern matching from a set of spatiotemporal templates. This study provides a unified characterization of the computational complexity of single neurons and suggests that cortical networks therefore have a unique architecture, potentially supporting their computational power.

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Emerging forest–peatland bistability and resilience of European peatland carbon stores

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Single cortical neurons as deep artificial neural networks