Stimulus equivalence

Background and Objectives : The gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) stimulation test is the gold standard method for diagnosing central precocious puberty (CPP), although it requires multiple blood samplings over 120 min. This study aimed to evaluate if a shorter test may have an equivalent diagnostic accuracy. Materials and Methods : We retrospectively reviewed the GnRH tests of 188 consecutive pediatric patients (169 females) referred for signs of early pubertal development. The diagnostic accuracy of the hormonal levels was evaluated at different time points (15, 0, 60, 90, and 120 min after the GnRH stimulus)...

Human behavior is flexibly regulated by specific goals of cognitive tasks. One notable example is goal-directed modulation of metacognitive behavior, where logically equivalent decision-making problems can yield different patterns of introspective confidence depending on the frame in which they are presented. While this observation highlights the important heuristic nature of metacognitive monitoring, computational mechanisms underlying this phenomenon remain elusive. We confirmed the confidence framing effect in two-alternative dot-number discrimination and in previously published preference-choice data, demonstrating distinctive confidence patterns between "choose more" or "choose less" frames...

BACKGROUND: Chronic cough is a prevalent and difficult to treat condition often accompanied by cough hypersensitivity, characterised by cough triggered from exposure to low level sensory stimuli. The mechanisms underlying cough hypersensitivity may involve alterations in airway sensory nerve responsivity to tussive stimuli which would be accompanied by alterations in stimulus-induced brainstem activation, measurable with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). METHODS: We investigated brainstem responses during inhalation of capsaicin and adenosine triphosphate (ATP) in 29 participants with chronic cough and 29 age- and sex-matched controls...

PURPOSE: One of the major reasons that totally implantable cochlear microphones are not readily available is the lack of good implantable microphones. An implantable microphone has the potential to provide a range of benefits over external microphones for cochlear implant users including the filtering ability of the outer ear, cosmetics, and usability in all situations. This paper presents results from experiments in human cadaveric ears of a piezofilm microphone concept under development as a possible component of a future implantable microphone system for use with cochlear implants...

Optoelectronic synaptic transistors are attractive for applications in next-generation brain-like computation systems, especially for their visible-light operation and in-sensor computing capabilities. However, from a material perspective, it is difficult to build a device that meets expectations in terms of both its functions and power consumption, prompting the call for greater innovation in materials and device construction. In this study, we innovatively combined a novel perovskite carrier supply layer with an Al/MoO3 interface carrier regulatory layer to fabricate optoelectronic synaptic devices, namely Al/MoO3 /CsFAMA/ITO transistors...

In the human electroencephalogram (EEG), induced oscillatory responses in various frequency bands are regarded as valuable indices to examine the neural mechanisms underlying human memory. While the advent of virtual reality (VR) drives the investigation of mnemonic processing under more lifelike settings, the joint application of VR and EEG methods is still in its infancy (e.g., due to technical limitations impeding the signal acquisition). The objective of the present EEG study was twofold. First, we examined whether the investigation of induced oscillations under VR conditions yields equivalent results compared to standard paradigms...

BACKGROUND: Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori), the only bacterium classified as a type I (definite) carcinogen, is strongly associated with the development of gastric inflammation and adenocarcinoma. It infects the stomach of approximately half of the global population, equivalent to nearly 4.4 billion people. However, due to physiological barriers in the stomach, microbial barriers and increased antibiotic resistance, the therapeutic efficiency of standard antibiotic therapy is limited and cannot meet the clinical needs in some areas...

This article provides a comprehensive overview of the development of a behavior-analytic alternative to the popular implicit association test (IAT), namely, the function acquisition speed test (FAST). The IAT appears, prima facia , to indirectly assess participants' learning histories with regard to the categorization of stimuli. However, its origin within cognitive psychology has rendered it replete with mentalism, conceptual ambiguity, statistical arbitrariness, and confounding procedural artifacts. The most popular behavioral alternative to the IAT, the widely used implicit relational assessment procedure (IRAP), has inherited many of these concerning artifacts...

Stimulus equivalence (SE) is demonstrated when participants exposed to conditional discrimination training pass tests for reflexivity, symmetry, transitivity, and equivalence (symmetry combined with transitivity). Most theorists attribute the origin of SE to operant processes, but some argue that it results from Pavlovian conditioning. Symmetry is problematic for the latter hypothesis because it seems to require excitatory backward conditioning. However, equivalence tests resemble backward sensory preconditioning (BSP) and backward second-order conditioning (BSOC), two well-established processes...

There has been a growing interest in studying the usefulness of chirp stimuli in recording cervical vestibular evoked myogenic potential (cVEMP) waveforms. Nevertheless, the study outcomes are debatable and require verification. In view of this, the aim of the present study was to compare cVEMP results when elicited by 500 Hz tone burst and narrowband (NB) CE-Chirp stimuli in adults with sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL). Fifty adults with bilateral SNHL (aged 20-65 years) underwent the cVEMP testing based on the established protocol...

Previous work suggests the detection of small spots is mediated by a mixture of chromatic and achromatic mechanisms. We tested whether exposure to spatially-uniform chromatic or luminance flicker affected detection thresholds for 543 nm increments delivered through an AOSLO. Heterochromatic flicker photometry was used to determine isoluminant settings for the red and green primaries of a DLP display; this isoluminant red-green mixture provided the 2.1° background upon which 23 arcmin (N=4) or 3 arcmin (N=2) stimuli were presented for 100ms...

This series of experiments examined the effects of extinction and an explicitly unpaired treatment on the ability of a conditioned stimulus (CS) to function as a reinforcer. Rats were trained to lever press for food, exposed to pairings of a noise CS and food, and, finally, tested for their willingness to lever press for the CS in the absence of the food. Experiment 1 provided a demonstration of conditioned reinforcement (using controls that were only exposed to unpaired presentations of the CS and food) and showed that it was equivalent after one or four sessions of CS-food pairings...

Using liver phantoms for mimicking human tissue in clinical training, disease diagnosis, and treatment planning is a common practice. The fabrication material of the liver phantom should exhibit mechanical properties similar to those of the real liver organ in the human body. This tissue-equivalent material is essential for qualitative and quantitative investigation of the liver mechanisms in producing nutrients, excretion of waste metabolites, and tissue deformity at mechanical stimulus. This paper reviews the mechanical properties of human hepatic tissues to develop liver-mimicking phantoms...

Two-photon direct laser writing enables the fabrication of shape-changing microstructures that can be exploited in stimuli responsive micro-robotics and photonics. The use of Liquid Crystalline Networks (LCN) allows to realize 3D micrometric objects that can contract along a specific direction in response to stimuli, such as temperature or light. In this paper, the fabrication of free-standing LCN microstructures is demonstrated as graphical units of a smart tag for simple physical and optical encryption. Using an array of identical pixels, information can be hidden to the observer and revealed only upon application of a specific stimulus...

The channel currents have distinct magnetic field effect and any changes of the electromagnetic field or electric stimulus will change the membrane potential effectively. A feasible neuron model considers the distinct physical characteristic is more suitable to mimic the neural activities accompanying with shift in energy level. A Josephson junction (JJ) is connected to a neural circuit for estimating the effect of external magnetic field and two capacitors are connected via a linear resistor for mimicing the capacitive field beside two sides of the cell membrane...

UNLABELLED: With the technological advancement and democratization of electronic devices, computerized cognitive tests have been increasingly used in the clinical context to evaluate cognitive performance in individuals. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to propose a brief digital cognitive test based on the paradigm of stimulus equivalence and assess its convergent validity by comparing it with traditionally applied tests. METHODS: The study was carried out with a non-probabilistic sample of 50 older adults selected from a public call through the communication media, health units, and day centers of a city in the countryside of São Paulo...

Recent evidence shows that people have the meta-metacognitive ability to evaluate their metacognitive judgments of confidence. However, it is unclear whether meta-metacognitive judgments are made by a different system and rely on a separate set of computations compared to metacognitive judgments. To address this question, we asked participants ( N  = 36) to perform a perceptual decision-making task and provide (i) an object-level, Type-1 response about the identity of the stimulus; (ii) a metacognitive, Type-2 response (low/high) regarding their confidence in their Type-1 decision; and (iii) a meta-metacognitive, Type-3 response (low/high) regarding the quality of their Type-2 rating...

A powerful approach to understanding the computations carried out in visual cortex is to develop models that predict neural responses to arbitrary images. Deep neural network (DNN) models have worked remarkably well at predicting neural responses [1, 2, 3], yet their underlying computations remain buried in millions of parameters. Have we simply replaced one complicated system in vivo with another in silico ? Here, we train a data-driven deep ensemble model that predicts macaque V4 responses ∼50% more accurately than currently-used task-driven DNN models...

A noncontact tactile stimulus can be presented by focusing airborne ultrasound on the human skin. Focused ultrasound has recently been reported to produce not only vibration but also static pressure sensation on the palm by modulating the sound pressure distribution at a low frequency. This finding expands the potential for tactile rendering in ultrasound haptics as static pressure sensation is perceived with a high spatial resolution. In this study, we verified that focused ultrasound can render a static pressure sensation associated with contact with a small convex surface on a finger pad...

Previous studies have reported that larger visual stimuli are perceived as lasting longer than smaller ones. However, this effect disappears when participants provide a qualitative judgment, by stating whether two stimuli have the "same or different" duration, instead of providing an explicit quantitative judgment (which stimulus lasts longer). Here, we extended these observations to the interaction between the numerosity of visual stimuli, i.e. clouds of dots, and their duration. With "longer vs shorter" responses, participants judged larger numerosities as lasting longer than smaller ones, both when the responses were related to the order (Experiment 1) or color (Experiment 4) of stimuli...