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Neuronal Communication01:28

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Neurons, the fundamental units of the brain and nervous system, communicate through complex electrochemical signals that underpin all cognitive and bodily functions. This communication is primarily facilitated by a process involving the generation and propagation of an action potential along the axon of the neuron. When the internal electrical charge of a neuron surpasses a certain threshold, an action potential is triggered. This rapid change in voltage travels swiftly along the axon to the...
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In operant conditioning, the timing of reinforcement is crucial. For animals like rats and cats, immediate reinforcement (within a few seconds) is much more effective than delayed reinforcement. For example, a food reward for a rat needs to follow within 30 seconds of pressing a bar to be effective. 
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Neurons communicate by firing action potentials—the electrochemical signal that is propagated along the axon. The signal results in the release of neurotransmitters at axon terminals, thereby transmitting information to the nervous system. An action potential is a specific "all-or-none" change in membrane potential that results in a rapid spike in voltage.
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Neural circuits and neuronal pools are two of the main structures found in the nervous system. Neural circuits are networks of neurons that work together to carry out a specific task or process. They consist of interconnected neurons and glial cells, which provide structural and metabolic support.
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Using Neuron Spiking Activity to Trigger Closed-Loop Stimuli in Neurophysiological Experiments
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Using Neuron Spiking Activity to Trigger Closed-Loop Stimuli in Neurophysiological Experiments

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Relative timing: from behaviour to neurons.

S Mehdi Aghdaee1, Lorella Battelli, John A Assad

  • 1Department of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School, , Boston, MA 02115, USA.

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences
|January 22, 2014
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Understanding relative timing, or judging the order of events, is crucial for behavior. This review highlights the parietal cortex

Keywords:
parietal cortexprior entry theoryrace modelsrelative timing perceptiontemporal order judgement

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Neurobiology
  • Psychophysics

Background:

  • Processing temporal information is fundamental for guiding behavior.
  • Relative timing involves making ordinal comparisons between event occurrences.
  • This process can be implicit in brain computations or an explicit conscious judgment.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To review the phenomenology and mechanisms of relative timing.
  • To explore the neural basis of temporal order judgments (TOJs).
  • To propose an updated computational model for relative timing.

Main Methods:

  • Review of psychophysical measurements, human neurophysiological and imaging studies, and neuropsychological data.
  • Investigation of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) interventions.
  • Development of a computational model based on evidence integration to a decision threshold.

Main Results:

  • Evidence implicates the parietal cortex in relative timing.
  • An updated race model, integrating sensory evidence towards a decision threshold, is proposed.
  • The model facilitates identifying brain regions involved in relative timing through neural activity and TOJ correlations.

Conclusions:

  • The parietal cortex plays a significant role in relative timing.
  • An evidence integration model offers a refined understanding of neural timing mechanisms.
  • This framework can be applied to investigate temporal processing in both humans and animals.