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#Musical reward prediction errors engage the nucleus accumbens and motivate #learning
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/02/05/1809855116
Enjoying music reliably ranks among life’s greatest pleasures. Like many hedonic experiences, it engages several reward-related brain areas, with activity in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) most consistently reflecting the listener’s subjective response. Converging evidence suggests that this activity arises from musical “reward prediction errors” (RPEs) that signal the difference between expected and perceived musical events, but this hypothesis has not been directly tested.
We modeled regressors of trial-by-trial RPEs, finding that NAc activity tracked musically elicited RPEs, to an extent that explained variance in the individual learning rates. These results demonstrate that music can act as a reward, driving learning and eliciting RPEs in the NAc, a hub of reward- and music enjoyment-related activity.
#Musical reward prediction errors engage the nucleus accumbens and motivate #learning
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/02/05/1809855116
Enjoying music reliably ranks among life’s greatest pleasures. Like many hedonic experiences, it engages several reward-related brain areas, with activity in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) most consistently reflecting the listener’s subjective response. Converging evidence suggests that this activity arises from musical “reward prediction errors” (RPEs) that signal the difference between expected and perceived musical events, but this hypothesis has not been directly tested.
We modeled regressors of trial-by-trial RPEs, finding that NAc activity tracked musically elicited RPEs, to an extent that explained variance in the individual learning rates. These results demonstrate that music can act as a reward, driving learning and eliciting RPEs in the NAc, a hub of reward- and music enjoyment-related activity.
PNAS
Musical reward prediction errors engage the nucleus accumbens and motivate learning
Prediction errors are crucial for perception, learning, and adaptability. Can they also explain the abstract pleasures we derive from seemingly nonadaptive behaviors? We present evidence of musically elicited reward prediction errors (RPEs), illustrating…
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How #odor cues help to optimize #learning during sleep in a real life-setting
Effortless learning during sleep is everybody’s dream. Several studies found that presenting odor cues during learning and selectively during slow wave sleep increases learning success..
..We (1) performed a field study of vocabulary-learning in a regular school setting, (2) stimulated with odor cues during the whole night without sleep monitoring, and (3) applied the odor additionally as retrieval cue in a subsequent test..
..Our results replicate previous findings and provide important extensions: First, the odor effect also works outside the lab. Second, continuous cueing at night produces similar effect sizes as a study with selective cueing in specific sleep stages. Whether odor cueing during memory recall further increases memory performance hast to be shown in future studies. Overall, our results extend the knowledge on odor cueing effects and provide a realistic practical perspective on it.
https://go.nature.com/37Jtmua
How #odor cues help to optimize #learning during sleep in a real life-setting
Effortless learning during sleep is everybody’s dream. Several studies found that presenting odor cues during learning and selectively during slow wave sleep increases learning success..
..We (1) performed a field study of vocabulary-learning in a regular school setting, (2) stimulated with odor cues during the whole night without sleep monitoring, and (3) applied the odor additionally as retrieval cue in a subsequent test..
..Our results replicate previous findings and provide important extensions: First, the odor effect also works outside the lab. Second, continuous cueing at night produces similar effect sizes as a study with selective cueing in specific sleep stages. Whether odor cueing during memory recall further increases memory performance hast to be shown in future studies. Overall, our results extend the knowledge on odor cueing effects and provide a realistic practical perspective on it.
https://go.nature.com/37Jtmua
Scientific Reports
How odor cues help to optimize learning during sleep in a real life-setting
How odor cues help to optimize learning during sleep in a real life-setting
Complementary contributions of non-REM and #REM sleep to visual #learning
https://2medical.news/2020/08/03/complementary-contributions-of-non-rem-and-rem-sleep-to-visual-learning/
Sleep is beneficial for learning. However, it remains unclear whether learning is facilitated by non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep or by REM sleep, whether it results from plasticity increases or stabilization, and whether facilitation results from learning-specific processing. Here, we trained volunteers on a visual task and measured the excitatory and inhibitory (E/I) balance in early visual areas during subsequent sleep as an index of …
https://2medical.news/2020/08/03/complementary-contributions-of-non-rem-and-rem-sleep-to-visual-learning/
Sleep is beneficial for learning. However, it remains unclear whether learning is facilitated by non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep or by REM sleep, whether it results from plasticity increases or stabilization, and whether facilitation results from learning-specific processing. Here, we trained volunteers on a visual task and measured the excitatory and inhibitory (E/I) balance in early visual areas during subsequent sleep as an index of …