The noradrenergic nucleus locus ceruleus (LC) is associated classically with arousal and attention. Recent data suggest that it might also play a role in motivation. To study how LC neuronal responses are related to motivational intensity, we recorded 121 single neurons from two monkeys while reward size (one, two, or four drops) and the manner of obtaining reward (passive vs active) were both ...

Recent experiments have shown that spike-timing-dependent plasticity is influenced by neuromodulation. We derive theoretical conditions for successful learning of reward-related behavior for a large class of learning rules where Hebbian synaptic plasticity is conditioned on a global modulatory factor signaling reward. We show that all learning rules in this class can be separated into a term th...

Background: Market orientation refers to a type of modern marketing that emphasizes the creation of continuous value for customers and buyers. This research was conducted with the aim of presenting a new model of market orientation with an emphasis on moral implications. Method: The present study was applied and part of mixed research (qualitative-quantitative). The statistical population incl...

We report the first neural recording during ecstatic meditations called jhanas and test whether a brain reward system plays a role in the joy reported. Jhanas are Altered States of Consciousness (ASC) that imply major brain changes based on subjective reports: (1) external awareness dims, (2) internal verbalizations fade, (3) the sense of personal boundaries is altered, (4) attention is highly ...

To select appropriate behaviors leading to rewards, the brain needs to learn associations among sensory stimuli, selected behaviors, and rewards. Recent imaging and neural-recording studies have revealed that the dorsal striatum plays an important role in learning such stimulus-action-reward associations. However, the putamen and caudate nucleus are embedded in distinct cortico-striatal loop ci...

The TemporalMobile Stochastic Logic (MOSL) has been introduced in previous work by the authors for formulating properties of systems specified in STOKLAIM, a Markovian extension of KLAIM. The main purpose of MOSL is to address key functional aspects of global computing such as distribution awareness, mobility, and security and their integration with performance and dependability guarantees. In ...

Schizophrenia is a chronic brain disorder that affects about 1.1% of the adult US population annually. Hallucinations, delusions, and impaired reality testing are prominent symptoms of the disorder. Modeling these symptoms is difficult because it is unclear how to assess impaired reality testing in animals. Animals cannot discuss their beliefs; however, a century of learning experiments has sho...

Trained neural network models, which exhibit features of neural activity recorded from behaving animals, may provide insights into the circuit mechanisms of cognitive functions through systematic analysis of network activity and connectivity. However, in contrast to the graded error signals commonly used to train networks through supervised learning, animals learn from reward feedback on defini...