Our new paper shows how fast spiking interneurons in the striatum activate specifically when attention cues are learned. This is a rare paper where we succeed to isolate fast spiking interneurons in recordings from nonhuman primate anterior striatum while the animals performed a complex feature-based attentional learning task. Phd can. Kia Banaeie Boroujeni spearheaded the advanced analysis pipeline for this sophisticated paper – congratulations for a huge milestone in deciphering the sources of attentional control! The paper can be downloaded here. See also Research-News @ Vanderbilt covering these findings.
What an honour and incredible acknowledgment of our research – Thilo received the 2017 E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship Award with five fellow scientists in Canada and across the Natural Sciences and Engineering. This is one of the most prestigious awards for young scientists in Canada, celebrating the critical role of fundamental, basic research for driving […]
We tested which model mechanisms best explain how six animals learn attention sets and found a common set of most-important behavioral mechanisms that account for learning success.When learning attention sets is easy value based reinforcement learning and working memory are powerful, but when learning problems are more complex learning is more efficient with attention and […]
Acetylcholinergic Drug enhances attention at different dose as cognitive flexibilityWe tested how a cholinergic drug that is used to treat symptoms of dementia (donepezil, Arizept) affects cognitive abilities across multiple domains in monkeys. We found that donepezil showed stunning improvements of attentional filtering (less distraction) during visual search but at a different dose at it […]
