In this issue of Neuron, Fuerst et al., report that mammalian DSCAMs powerfully regulate the mosaic spacing of neurons in the retina, but not their synaptic specificity. The results unveil critical features regarding the type and scope of molecular interactions that guide neural circuit assembly in the mammalian CNS.

A mathematical model for a neural control system of ant locomotion was developed. Contrast-based detectors using excitation and inhibition were tuned to specific contrast orientations. A control system using multiple orientation contrast detectors was then developed and optimized for a model ant, which could move via a biased random walk. The system allowed sufficient control to guide the ant t...

Might psychology someday be reduced to (= exhaustively explained by) computational neurobiology? Many still say no. We approach this question through a brief survey of some prominent intertheoretic reductions drawn from our scientific history. A general charactITization of reduction is constructed from these, and some important philosophical and methodological lessons are drawn. The five most p...

Like humans, songbirds are one of the few animal groups that learn vocalization. Vocal learning requires coordination of auditory input and vocal output using auditory feedback to guide one's own vocalizations during a specific developmental stage known as the critical period. Songbirds are good animal models for understand the neural basis of vocal learning, a complex form of imitation, becaus...

Dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) mediates updating and maintenance of cognitive models of the world used to drive adaptive reward-guided behavior. We investigated the neurochemical underpinnings of this process. We used magnetic resonance spectroscopy in humans, to measure levels of glutamate and GABA in dACC. We examined their relationship to neural signals in dACC, measured with fMRI, ...

Since its introduction, multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA), or “neural decoding”, has 7 transformed the field of cognitive neuroscience. Underlying its influence is a crucial inference, 8 which we call the Decoder’s Dictum: if information can be decoded from patterns of neural 9 activity, then this provides strong evidence about what information those patterns represent. 10 Although the Dictu...

How can artificial neural nets generalize better from fewer examples? In order to generalize successfully, neural network learning methods typically require large training data sets. We introduce a neural network learning method that generalizes rationally from many fewer data points, relying instead on prior knowledge encoded in previously learned neural networks. For example, in robot control...

Social hierarchies guide behavior in many species, including humans, where status also has an enormous impact on motivation and health. However, little is known about the underlying neural representation of social hierarchies in humans. In the present study, we identify dissociable neural responses to perceived social rank using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in an interactive, si...

Like humans, songbirds are one of the few animal groups that learn vocalization. Vocal learning requires coordination of auditory input and vocal output using auditory feedback to guide one’s own vocalizations during a specific developmental stage known as the critical period. Songbirds are good animal models for understand the neural basis of vocal learning, a complex form of imitation, becaus...

Sequential decision making problems, such as structured prediction, robotic control, and game playing, require a combination of planning policies and generalisation of those plans. In this paper, we present Expert Iteration (EXIT), a novel reinforcement learning algorithm which decomposes the problem into separate planning and generalisation tasks. Planning new policies is performed by tree sea...