Samuel J. Gershman

2 months ago | thetransmitter.org | Calli McMurray |Loren M. Frank |Samuel J. Gershman |Caitlin James

Life as a researcher comes with a mountain of paperwork. Among the most time-consuming are the forms a scientist must submit to an institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC) that detail proposed animal experiments, according to surveys on administrative burden. A new protocol-sharing site that launched 15 January aims to lighten the load.

Oct 22, 2024 | biorxiv.org | Arthur Prat-Carrabin |Samuel J. Gershman

AbstractA classic result of psychophysics is that human perceptual estimates are more variable for larger magnitudes. This 'Weber behavior' has typically not been the focus of the prominent Bayesian paradigm, which models human perception as an optimal statistical inference conducted on the basis of noisy internal signals. Here we examine the variability of the estimates of a Bayesian observer, in comparison with human subjects.

Oct 8, 2024 | thetransmitter.org | Loren M. Frank |Samuel J. Gershman |Daniel Aharoni |Jill Adams

There is a growing recognition in the neuroscience community that efforts to improve data-sharing are, at least in principle, a good idea. Sharing the data generated by experiments is critical for reproducibility, and it enables reuse of data that may have taken years to collect. Sharing the code used to transform data into scientific results is also critical, both to boost reproducibility and to reduce the amount of time trainees spend developing these tools.

Sep 16, 2024 | biorxiv.org | Samuel J. Gershman |Armin Lak

AbstractLimits on information processing capacity impose limits on task performance. We show that animals achieve performance on a perceptual decision task that is near-optimal given their capacity limits, as measured by policy complexity (the mutual information between states and actions). This behavioral profile could be achieved by reinforcement learning with a penalty on high complexity policies, realized through modulation of dopaminergic learning signals.

Sep 10, 2024 | thetransmitter.org | Paul Middlebrooks |Jill Adams |Kevin G. Bender |Samuel J. Gershman

Paul Middlebrooks is special faculty research associate at Carnegie Mellon University. He studies how motor cortex and basal ganglia neural population activity underlies naturalistic behaviors in freely behaving mice. He is also creator of the podcast “Brain Inspired,” and its host since 2018. Middlebrooks received his Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience from the University of Pittsburgh in the lab of Marc Sommer.