The Humanities and Cognitive Sciences High School Summer Institute

IMPACT. 1: The program allows participants the unique opportunity to establish professional relationships with world-renowned professors at The Ohio State University, creating greater opportunities in institutions of higher education. -- 2. The program provides participants with a first-hand impression of the OSU college experience, and allows them to learn what it is like to study at a dynamic college campus. -- 3. Jointly sponsored by CCBS, the Office of Diversity & Inclusion, and University Libraries, the Institute ensures the inclusion of traditionally underrepresented communities by awarding scholarships to 45% of students enrolled.OSU PARTNERS: Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Brain Imaging; Department of English; Department of Germanic Languages and Literature; Department of Linguistics Department of Philosophy Department of Spanish and Portuguese; Department of Theatre; Latino and Latin American Space for Enrichment and Research; School of Communication; The Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Brain Imaging; College of Arts and Sciences; The Humanities Institute; Office of Diversity and Inclusion; Ohio State Libraries; University Orientation; First Year ExperienceCOMMUNITY PARTNERS: Cardinal Health; Private SponsorsPRIMARY CONTACT: Zhong-Lin Lu ([email protected])The Summer Institute provides a critical thinking forum for rising high school students to explore the big questions at the intersection of the humanities and cognitive sciences. Through daily lectures, interactive discussions, research exploration, and collaborative activities with OSU students and faculty across campus, students learn central aspects of how this interdisciplinary study can work together to help us understand how we imagine, artistically create, and materially transform the world in which we live

The Humanities and Cognitive Sciences High School Summer Institute

IMPACT. 1: The program allows participants the unique opportunity to establish professional relationships with world-renowned professors at The Ohio State University, creating greater opportunities in institutions of higher education. -- 2. The program provides participants with a first-hand impression of the OSU college experience, and allows them to learn what it is like to study at a dynamic college campus. -- 3. Jointly sponsored by CCBS, the Office of Diversity & Inclusion, and University Libraries, the Institute ensures the inclusion of traditionally underrepresented communities by awarding scholarships to 45% of students enrolled.OSU PARTNERS: Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Brain Imaging; Center for Cognitive and Brain Sciences; Department of English; Department of Germanic Languages and Literature; Department of Linguistics Department of Philosophy Department of Psychology Department of Spanish and Portuguese; Department of Theatre; Latino and Latin American Space for Enrichment and Research; School of Communication; The Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Brain Imaging; College of Arts and Sciences; The Humanities Institute; Office of Diversity and Inclusion; Ohio State Libraries; University Orientation; First Year ExperienceCOMMUNITY PARTNERS: Upper Arlington; Education Foundation; Cardinal HealthPRIMARY CONTACT: Zhong-Lin Lu ([email protected])The Summer Institute provides a critical thinking forum for rising high school students to explore the big questions at the intersection of the humanities and cognitive sciences. Through daily lectures, interactive discussions, research exploration, and collaborative activities with OSU students and faculty across campus, students will learn central aspects of how this interdisciplinary study can work together to help us understand how we imagine, artistically create, and materially transform the world in which we live

Experimental Design Modulates Variance in BOLD Activation: The Variance Design General Linear Model

Typical fMRI studies have focused on either the mean trend in the blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) time course or functional connectivity (FC). However, other statistics of the neuroimaging data may contain important information. Despite studies showing links between the variance in the BOLD time series (BV) and age and cognitive performance, a formal framework for testing these effects has not yet been developed. We introduce the Variance Design General Linear Model (VDGLM), a novel framework that facilitates the detection of variance effects. We designed the framework for general use in any fMRI study by modeling both mean and variance in BOLD activation as a function of experimental design. The flexibility of this approach allows the VDGLM to i) simultaneously make inferences about a mean or variance effect while controlling for the other and ii) test for variance effects that could be associated with multiple conditions and/or noise regressors. We demonstrate the use of the VDGLM in a working memory application and show that engagement in a working memory task is associated with whole-brain decreases in BOLD variance.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figure

Assessing the detailed time course of perceptual sensitivity change in perceptual learning.

The learning curve in perceptual learning is typically sampled in blocks of trials, which could result in imprecise and possibly biased estimates, especially when learning is rapid. Recently, Zhao, Lesmes, and Lu (2017, 2019) developed a Bayesian adaptive quick Change Detection (qCD) method to accurately, precisely, and efficiently assess the time course of perceptual sensitivity change. In this study, we implemented and tested the qCD method in assessing the learning curve in a four-alternative forced-choice global motion direction identification task in both simulations and a psychophysical experiment. The stimulus intensity in each trial was determined by the qCD, staircase or random stimulus selection (RSS) methods. Simulations showed that the accuracy (bias) and precision (standard deviation or confidence bounds) of the estimated learning curves from the qCD were much better than those obtained by the staircase and RSS method; this is true for both trial-by-trial and post hoc segment-by-segment qCD analyses. In the psychophysical experiment, the average half widths of the 68.2% credible interval of the estimated thresholds from the trial-by-trial and post hoc segment-by-segment qCD analyses were both quite small. Additionally, the overall estimates from the qCD and staircase methods matched extremely well in this task where the behavioral rate of learning is relatively slow. Our results suggest that the qCD method can precisely and accurately assess the trial-by-trial time course of perceptual learning

Level and mechanisms of perceptual learning: Learning first-order luminance and second-order texture objects

AbstractPerceptual learning is an improvement in perceptual task performance reflecting plasticity in the perceptual system. Practice effects were studied in two object orientation tasks: a first order, luminance object task and a second-order, texture object task. Perceptual learning was small or absent in the first-order task, but consistently occurred for the second-order (texture) task, where it was limited to improvements in low external noise conditions, or stimulus enhancement [Dosher, B., & Lu, Z. -L. (1998). Perceptual learning reflects external noise filtering and internal noise reduction through channel reweighting. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 95 (23) 13988–13993; Dosher, B., & Lu, Z. -L. (1999). Mechanisms of perceptual learning. Vision Research, 39 (19) 3197–3221], analogous to attention effects in first- and second-order motion processing [Lu, Z. -L., Liu, C. Q., & Dosher, B. (2000). Attention mechanisms for multi-location first- and second-order motion perception. Vision Research, 40 (2) 173–186]. Perceptual learning affected the later, post-rectification, stages of perceptual analysis, possibly localized at V2 or above. It serves to amplify the stimulus relative to limiting internal noise for intrinsically noisy representations of second-order stimuli