Performance in a GO/NOGO perceptual task reflects a balance between impulsive and instrumental components of behaviour

In recent years, simple GO/NOGO behavioural tasks have become popular due to the relative ease with which they can be combined with technologies such as in vivo multiphoton imaging. To date, it has been assumed that behavioural performance can be captured by the average performance across a session, however this neglects the effect of motivation on behaviour within individual sessions. We investigated the effect of motivation on mice performing a GO/NOGO visual discrimination task. Performance within a session tended to follow a stereotypical trajectory on a Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) chart, beginning with an over-motivated state with many false positives, and transitioning through a more or less optimal regime to end with a low hit rate after satiation. Our observations are reproduced by a new model, the Motivated Actor-Critic, introduced here. Our results suggest that standard measures of discriminability, obtained by averaging across a session, may significantly underestimate behavioural performance

Verso una strategia condivisa per la citizen science in Italia

Over the last decade, a growing number of countries in Europe have acknowledged the potential of citizen science as an effective model to inspire the science-policy interface and its role in the context of Responsible Research and Innovation. This has led to the establishment of national networks to facilitate coordination and communication of projects´ goals, methodologies and achievements and have developed national strategies to engage citizens in science, identifying recommendations for actions on how to develop and implement citizen science at national level. Whilst recently citizen science initiatives have become increasingly common in Italy, there is the need to promote an open dialogue between the scientific community, citizen science practitioners and decision makers, ultimately to build a strong partnership at national level. This report summarises the main outcomes of the round table “Towards a shared strategy for citizen science in Italy”, which took place on 5-6th April 2018 in Grosseto and Rome (Italy). The round table was associated to a preliminary meeting of the national citizen science community and a Discovery Trip, or delegation visit: an innovative format to create knowledge transfer between citizen science experts, academics and decision makers. During the 2-days event, 43 national stakeholders exchanged knowledge on the state of the art of citizen science at national and international level, and collaborated to identify a process and initial roadmap of actions towards strengthening the existing network and developing a strategy to implement and sustain citizen science in Italy. Participants have set strategic short, medium and long-term objectives along with an action plan required to achieve them. The event was promoted by the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA), Tekiu Ltd, the National Academy of Sciences called XL and the Maremma Natural History Museum, as part of the policy engagement strategy for Responsible Research and Innovation developed and implemented within the Doing It Together Science (DITOs) project, funded under the Horizon 2020 framework. The summary of the discussion here provided intends to be a starting point for future work and reference document to be disseminated to a wide range of italian stakeholders, to advocate for the potential of citizen science for society, science and policy and to ensure an open and transparent process of national development of citizen science. As such, the full report is available only in Italian

European Stakeholder Round Table on Citizen and DIY Science and Responsible Research and Innovation

Göbel, C., Agnello, G., Baïz, I., Berditchevskaia, A., Evers, L., García, D., Pritchard, H., Luna, S., Ramanauskaite, E. M., Serrano, F., Boheemen, P. v., Völker, T., Wyszomirski, P., Vohland, K. (2017): European Stakeholder Round Table on Citizen and DIY Science and Responsible Research and Innovation. Doing-it-Together Science Report. URI: http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1563626 / The report is the result of an event on 8th November 2016 in Berlin. The round table has been organized by ECSA as part of the Doing-it-Together Science project (DITOs) and realized in the framework of the Berlin Science Week