In recent years the role of top-down expectations on perception has been extensively researched within the framework of predictive coding. However, less attention has been given to the different sources of expectations, how they differ and how they interact. Here we examined the effects of informative hints on perceptual experience, and how these interact with repetition-based expectations to create a long-lasting effect. Over seven experiments, we used verbal hints and multiple presentations of ambiguous two-tone images. We found that vividness ratings increased from one presentation to the next, even after the object in the image had been identified. In addition, vividness ratings significantly increased when images were introduced with a hint, and this boost was greater for more detailed hints. However, the initial increase in vividness did not always carry over to the next presentation. When recognition of the image in the presentation was hard, due to memory load, inconsistent presentation, or noise level of the image, the initial advantage in vividness was attenuated. This was most apparent when participants were primed with greyscale version of the two-tone image. A computational model based on evidence accumulation was able to recover these patterns of perceptual experience, suggesting that the effect of hints is short lived if it cannot be encoded in memory for future presentations. This notion highlights the different contributions of attention, memory and their interactions on forming expectations for perception.

Visiting a museum and seeing an original artwork can be a special experience. We use a survey and a set of hypothetical questions to explore how such experience would be affected by changes in how the artwork is seen. In a first study, participants imagined that they had traveled to see a painting that they particularly like. They discover that it is impossible to directly see the original painting. Three alternatives are offered: seeing an optical reflection (using a mirror), seeing a video screening (a closed-circuit camera), or seeing a reproduction. In all cases, it is made clear that the size, brightness, and resolution will match that of the original. In addition, these options could be within the same room as the original, in the room next door, or in a different building. Results show that physical distance did not affect significantly the responses. However, there was an overall preference for seeing a reproduction as opposed to an optical or digital image. Contrary to the idea that the original is always superior to a copy, many people felt that a direct view of a copy is a preferable experience than an indirect view. The second study was focused directly on the comparison between a mirror and a monitor. Here we highlighted the fact that for the mirror light coming from the mirror originated from the painting. Data were collected in Britain and in China. In both cases, there was a clear preference for the mirror over the monitor.

The neural tube defects anencephaly and spina bifida are two of the most common serious congenital malformations. Most cases can be prevented by consuming sufficient folic acid immediately before pregnancy and in early pregnancy. Fortification of flour with folic acid to prevent these defects has been implemented in 81 countries without public objection or indication of harm. An obstacle to the wider adoption of fortification arises from the creation of a "tolerable upper intake level" for folate (which includes natural food folate as well as synthetic folic acid), and which has been set at 1 mg/day, thereby proscribing higher folate intakes. Increasing the intake of folic acid in a population will necessarily increase the number of people with a folate intake greater than 1 mg per day, and this concern is obstructing folic acid fortification. This paper shows that the scientific basis for setting any upper limit, let alone one at 1 mg/day, is flawed. An upper intake level is therefore unnecessary and should be removed, thus allaying unjustified concerns about folic acid fortification. As a result, the full global opportunity to prevent two serious fatal or disabling disorders can and should be realized.

Theoretical and methodological difficulties similar to those dealt with previously are also encountered when attempts are made to relate clinical assessments of personality to a unitary concept of "brain damage". Considerations of the nature, in relation to intellectual functions, have tended to provide the model for subsequent attempts to demonstrate the interrelationship of all forms of inter-individual behavioural variation, the effects of brain damage, and hypothesized neurological processes, thus extending the generalizations to areas of personality and its biological basis. A number of attempts have been made to relate individual differences in behaviour to neural processes theoretically, and in each of these the basic assumption has been that inter-individual behavioural variation is dependent to some extent upon the state or nature of the nervous system which each individual possesses. On the basis of such states of neural inhibition following brain injury, it might also be expected that conditionability would be impaired in subjects suffering from such conditions.

Science is ideally suited to connect people from different cultures and thereby foster mutual understanding. To promote international life science collaboration, we have launched "The Science Bridge'' initiative. Our current project focuses on partnership between Western and Middle Eastern neuroscience communities.

BACKGROUND:Huntington's disease (HD) is caused by a tandem repeat expansion and involves progressive cognitive decline, psychiatric abnormalities and motor deficits. Disease onset and progression in HD mice can be substantially delayed by a housing environment with enhanced sensorimotor and cognitive stimulation. However, the proposed benefits of environmental enrichment (EE) are always taken in the context of 'deprived' standard housing and investigation is warranted into the graded effects of enrichment.OBJECTIVE:To assess if a higher level of environmental stimulation ('super-enrichment') has additional benefits compared to home-cage EE in HD mice.METHODS:One group of R6/1 transgenic HD mice and wild-type (WT) littermates were home-cage enriched (EE group). A second group also had enriched home cages, but from 6 weeks of age were exposed to a large 'super-enrichment' arena (SuperE group) three times per week. A range of motor tests (open field, rotarod, clasping) were conducted from 8 weeks of age and, at the end of the experiment, grip strength was assessed and post-mortem measures were taken (brain weight, striatal volume, dopamine receptor activation and aggregate density).RESULTS:SuperE improved the reduction of exploration in the open field, ameliorated impaired grip strength in home-cage enriched HD mice and delayed, but did not abolish, the onset of rear-paw clasping compared to EE. SuperE increased brain weight compared to EE in HD mice and reduced striatal dopamine D1 receptor agonist-induced c-fos expression, regardless of genotype. Body weight, rotarod performance, aggregate formation and striatal volume in SuperE groups were no different compared to EE groups.CONCLUSIONS:The beneficial effects of sensorimotor and cognitive stimulation are graded and extend beyond merely compensating for the deprivation of standard home cages in specific motor-related phenotypes in HD. Our findings highlight the importance of environmental enrichment quality and quantity and the translational value of stimulating living conditions as experience-dependent modulators of pathogenesis in HD and other brain disorders.

In 1962, David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel published their first full-length paper on the physiological properties of single neurons in the primary visual cortex (V1) of the cat. Their descriptions of orientation selectivity, columnar organisation, laminar specialisation, binocular combination and the dramatic effects of early deprivation of vision, in cats and monkeys, opened a Pandora’s Box of discovery. In the past 50 years, research on the visual areas of the cortex has driven the development of new technologies, especially for the study of cortical development, neuronal specialisation, synaptic plasticity, microcircuitry, neuroimaging, and visual behaviour. Visual perception and visuomotor coordination depend on an extensive computational network covering about one third of the cerebral cortex in humans. Local analysis of contrast, orientation, spatial frequency, colour, motion and disparity starts within the precise retinotopically organised circuitry of V1. Surrounding V1, extending into inferotemporal and parietal cortex, is an array of additional visual areas, fed by cortico-cortical connections. The degree of functional specialisation within these areas, their organisation into processing ’streams’, their involvement in motor planning, object recognition and subjective awareness, and the way in which their activity is modulated during imagery, attention and decision-making, are all topics of huge interest. Study of the visual cortex has illuminated a variety of clinical disorders, from amblyopia and dyslexia to visual agnosias and neglect. It shows no sign of flagging and promises to remain at the forefront of neuroscience.

In spatial sequence synaesthesia (SSS) ordinal stimuli are perceived as arranged in peripersonal space. Using fMRI, we examined the neural bases of SSS and colour synaesthesia for spoken words in a late-blind synaesthete, JF. He reported days of the week and months of the year as both coloured and spatially ordered in peripersonal space; parts of the days and festivities of the year were spatially ordered but uncoloured. Words that denote time-units and triggered no concurrents were used in a control condition. Both conditions inducing SSS activated the occipito-parietal, infero-frontal and insular cortex. The colour area hOC4v was engaged when the synaesthetic experience included colour. These results confirm the continued recruitment of visual colour cortex in this late-blind synaesthetes. Synaesthesia also involved activation in inferior frontal cortex, which may be related to spatial memory and detection, and in the insula, which might contribute to audiovisual integration related to the processing of inducers and concurrents.

The 3Rs--replacement, reduction, and refinement--are aimed at minimizing the welfare costs to animals used in research. Some neuroscientists fear that implementing the 3Rs will prohibit essential studies. Others view them as fundamental ethical principles that improve the quality of research. A regulatory system that integrates science and welfare is most likely to deliver public confidence.

Objective: To decompose sensory event-related brain potentials (ERPs) into a set of independent components according to the modality and the spatial location of the eliciting sensory stimulus, and thus provide a quantitative analysis of their underlying components.Methods: Auditory, somatosensory and visual ERPs were recorded from 124 electrodes in thirteen healthy participants. Probabilistic Independent Component Analysis (P-ICA) was used to decompose these sensory ERPs into a set of independent components according to the modality (auditory, somatosensory, visual or multimodal) and the spatial location (left or right side) of the eliciting stimulus.Results: Middle-latency sensory ERPs were explained by a large contribution of multimodal neural activities, and a smaller contribution of unimodal neural activities. While a significant fraction of unimodal neural activities were dependent on the location of the eliciting stimulus, virtually all multimodal neural activities were not (i.e. their scalp distributions and time courses were not different when stimuli were presented on the left and right sides).Conclusion: These findings show that P-ICA can be used to dissect effectively sensory ERPs into physiologically meaningful components, and indicate a new approach for exploring the effect of various experimental modulations of sensory ERPs. Significance: This approach offers a better understanding of the functional significance of sensory ERPs. (C) 2009 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Your Editorial of April 17 (p 1319)1The LancetA collapse in integrity of scientific advice in the UK.Lancet. 2010; 375: 1319Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (14) Google Scholar looks forward to the outcome of David Omand's review of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) as a solution to the breakdown of confidence between scientists, experts, and policy makers in the UK. We believe that such broad expectations are overoptimistic and that a more fundamental review of the governance and leadership of drug policy in the UK is now needed. The ACMD was, until recently, the main vehicle through which government and parliament sought independent advice for drug policy, and that advice was respected and followed. In this respect, the Misuse of Drugs Act of 1971 provided a model for the development of evidence-based policy. However, great change has occurred over the past few years. In 1998, the government experimented briefly with the appointment of a “Drug Czar”. One of the unintended consequences of this was an undermining of the contribution and role of independent scientists and experts. We have seen drug policy increasingly affected by media pressure, sometimes hysteria, and by the ideological and polarised opinions of campaigning organisations and others, often based on flimsy evidence. Successive governments have tacitly acquiesced to this shift from evidence to opinion by not building an adequate evidence base along with suitable machinery and structures for independent scrutiny and evaluation. This point has been commented on by the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee.2National Audit OfficeTackling problem drug use: HC 297, report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, session 2009–2010. Stationery Office, London2010Google Scholar, 3Public Accounts CommitteeTackling problem drug use: HC 456, thirtieth report of session 2009–10. House of Commons, London2010Google Scholar This changing pattern of influence has eroded the provision of objective advice for the development and implementation of drug policy. In effect, policy has become dominated by ideological rivalries. The mechanisms for building consensus through commitment to objective evidence and rigorous evaluation have been undermined. The Misuse of Drugs Act will be 40 years old in 2011 and it is time to look afresh at the governance arrangements for drug policy. Over the next 18 months, our Commission will carry out a serious review of drug policy governance and stewardship in the UK. We need to examine, as the Phillips Report did for food safety, how expert analysis, public opinion, political strategy, and economic and social factors might be more transparently and rationally integrated. Our initial view is that an effective mechanism to deliver effective and better “governance” of drug policy would have several essential ingredients including: (1)Solid investment in developing the evidence base to inform drug policy analysis and decision making;(2)An independent mechanism and body for the evaluation and scrutiny of policies;(3)Inclusive and transparent methods, machinery, and structures to take account of public opinion and “political” considerations, against a background of the best scientific evidence and expert advice;(4)Enhanced political accountability through parliament and devolved bodies;(5)Clear and open reasoning that people can understand and hold to account. The new government will now have an opportunity to reflect on recent events and make a fresh start in strengthening the overall governance of drug policy, rebuilding the processes, structures, and practices, so that a new consensus about the aims and directions of drug policy can be created. We hope that the work of the UK Drug Policy Commission can facilitate this much-needed review. RR was a member of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (1974–95). She was also Chair of the Independent Inquiry into the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (1997–2000). CB is Professor of Neuroscience at the Universities of Oxford and Warwick. TB is the Managing Director of Sense about Science. A new dawn for drug policy in the USA40 years ago, the then US President Richard Nixon launched his “war on drugs”, declaring drug misuse “public enemy number one”. This approach criminalised the production, distribution, and consumption of illegal drugs. On May 11, US President Barack Obama took a decisive shift away from this policy with the release of his 5-year National Drug Control Strategy, which takes a more balanced approach to the problem and emphasises prevention and treatment, as well as law enforcement. This widely anticipated move, called for by the public health community, should be applauded. Full-Text PDF