A Novel Monkey Kiosk: Cognitive Enrichment and Cognitive Assessment

We now published the hardware and software design for a novel Monkey Kiosk Station that provides cognitive enrichment and the ability to assess cognition with cage-based touchscreen tasks. The paper and its appendix with the technical details are available here.

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Fronto-Striatal Circuits Optimize Feature-based Attention and Learning

Our new publication (Oemisch et al. (2018) Feature Specific Prediction Errors and Surprise across Macaque Fronto-Striatal Circuits during Attention and Learning) provides the first 4-brain-area survey of how prediction error information in the anterior cingulate – ventral striatum and lateral prefrontal – caudate fronto-striatal loops relate to feature-based attention and learning. We found prediction errors […]

Phase-specific Activation Induces Latent Connectivity Changes

A recent paper provides rare causal evidence that phase-specific stimulation during beta oscillation bursts lead to transient changes in effective (latent) connectivity. This finding and its potentially widespread implications are discussed in our paper Womelsdorf T, Hoffman K (2018) Latent Connectivity: Neuronal Oscillations Can Be Leveraged for Transient Plasticity. Current Biology. 28(16):R879-R882..

ACC causally supports learning -difficult- attention sets

We used focused ultrasound (FUS) sonication of the anterior cingualte and striatum to disrupt local processing during learning. FUS in ACC slowed down learning of atetntion sets – but only when the attentional demands were high and the task included the risk of loosing already attaiuned reward tokens. Under these cognitive and motivaitonally challenging conditions […]