Topic: response time

In uncertain environments, we balance exploitation and exploration: we generally exploit rewarding opportunities, but sometimes explore uncertain alternatives that could be even better. Exploration is associated with a sudden disorganization of neuronal activity patterns in the prefrontal cortex, which could be a powerful way to promote discovery and learning. Although the mechanisms behind this disorganization remain unknown, one possibility is pupil-linked neuromodulatory systems. However, it is not clear whether pupil size predicts the neural signatures of exploration, much less the sudden

Acquiring a new skill, such as playing the piano, initially demands significant cognitive control. As one becomes proficient, reliance on cognitive control reduces, enabling skill automation. In adults, this transition is behaviourally evident through improved response times and accuracy, and neurally, by reduced frontal theta power across learning. However, our understanding of this transition throughout developmental stages is limited, especially concerning children and adolescents' ability to disengage cognitive control for skill automation. To address this gap, we measured neural activity

Spatial reasoning is the capacity to manipulate visual representations. Performance on spatial reasoning tasks has been related to testosterone, which increases in males during pubertal development. Nevertheless, it is not clear if children of different pubertal development have indeed differences in pubertal development, since the studies have not controlled the age and education of participants.Participants were 36 girls and 28 boys (10.28±0.98 years; 5.13±1.0 completed school years). The score on the Pubertal Development Scale was used to create high and low pubertal development groups, whi

Selective visual attention is a key feature of adaptive behavior, improving stimulus detection and response speed. Although it is well established that several measures of neural activity are modulated by attention in many brain areas, it is unclear whether and how these changes in activity correlate with behavior and how different cell types contribute to these mechanisms. To unravel the link between the behavioral benefits induced by spatial attention and its neuronal mechanisms, we analyzed neuronal responses obtained from simultaneous extracellular recordings in PFC and visual area V4 of t