Visual cognition of birds and its underlying neural mechanism:A review

Birds have acute vision and many remarkable visual cognition abilities,due to their unique living environment.The underlying neural mechanisms have also attracted interests of researchers in neuroscience.Here,we firstly summarize the visual cognition abilities of birds,and make a comparison with mammals.Secondly,the underlying neural mechanisms are presented,including histological structure of avian brain and visual pathways,typical experimental results and conclusions in electrochemistry and electrophysiology.The latter mainly focuses on several higher brain areas related to visual cognition,including mesopallium ventrolaterale,entopallium,visual Wulst,and nidopallium caudolaterale.Finally,we make a conclusion and provide a suggestion about future studies on revealing the neural mechanisms of avian visual cognition.This review presents a detailed understanding of avian visual cognition and would be helpful in ornithology studies in the field of cognitive neuroscience.

Belief into Action Scale: A Brief but Comprehensive Measure of Religious Commitment

Objective: Our goal was to develop a comprehensive measure of religious involvement for those affiliated with monotheistic religious traditions that fully captures the centrality of religion in life. Methods: A convenience sample of female caregivers of those with chronic disabling illness, recruited from North Carolina and California, completed a questionnaire including a new 10-item scale called the Belief into Action (BIAC) scale (possible score range: 10 - 100). Psychometric properties of the BIAC were examined. Results: 231 participants completed the BIAC (87% Christian). The average score was 46.3 (range: 10 - 90). Cronbach alpha was 0.89 (95% CI 0.86 - 0.91) and the intra-class correlation coefficient between two administrations (n = 60) was 0.919 (95% CI 0.869 - 0.951). Convergent validity was demonstrated by high correlations between the BIAC and existing religiosity scales;divergent validity by weak correlations with mental, social, and physical health outcomes;construct validity by high correlations between individual items and total scale score (r’s 0.58 - 0.80);factor analytic validity by a single factor that explained 94.4% of the scale’s variance;and predictive validity by small to moderate correlations with psychosocial outcomes in expected directions. Conclusion: The BIAC is a reliable and valid scale for comprehensively assessing religious involvement in female caregivers affiliated with monotheistic religions, Christianity in particular. Psychometric properties of the scale need to be established in other populations.

Detection of a temporal salient object benefits from visual stimulus-specific adaptation in avian midbrain inhibitory nucleus

Food and predators are the most noteworthy objects for the basic survival of wild animals,and both are often deviant in both spatial and temporal domains and quickly attract an animal’s attention.Although stimulus-specific adaptation(SSA)is considered a potential neural basis of salient sound detection in the temporal domain,related research on visual SSA is limited and its relationship with temporal saliency is uncertain.The avian nucleus isthmi pars magnocellularis(Imc),which is central to midbrain selective attention network,is an ideal site to investigate the neural correlate of visual SSA and detection of a salient object in the time domain.Here,the constant order paradigm was applied to explore the visual SSA in the Imc of pigeons.The results showed that the firing rates of Imc neurons gradually decrease with repetitions of motion in the same direction,but recover when a motion in a deviant direction is presented,implying visual SSA to the direction of a moving object.Furthermore,enhanced response for an object moving in other directions that were not presented ever in the paradigm is also observed.To verify the neural mechanism underlying these phenomena,we introduced a neural computation model involving a recoverable synaptic change with a“center-surround”pattern to reproduce the visual SSA and temporal saliency for the moving object.These results suggest that the Imc produces visual SSA to motion direction,allowing temporal salient object detection,which may facilitate the detection of the sudden appearance of a predator.

交通与运载工程学科践行板块改革侧记

2021年,国家自然科学基金委员会进一步推进科学基金资助改革。工程与材料科学部作为技术科学板块有机组成部分,瞄准国家目标、夯实实际需求、聚力学科建设、推动成果落地,十分注重基础研究解决实际需求背后的核心科学问题的能力。通过系统分析2020—2021年基金申报数据,解析本学科基金申请中存在的“虚、软、非共识”等共性问题,提出相关改革举措,深入分析这些问题的成因,并提出相关改革举措,以此引导本学科的基础研究更加面向实际工程需求,深入践行技术科学板块改革精神。

TESTING SERIAL CORRELATION IN SEMIPARAMETRIC VARYING COEFFICIENT PARTIALLY LINEAR ERRORS-IN-VARIABLES MODEL

The authors propose a V_(N,p) test statistic for testing finite-order serial correlation in asemiparametric varying coefficient partially linear errors-in-variables model.The test statistic is shownto have asymptotic normal distribution under the null hypothesis of no serial correlation.Some MonteCarlo experiments are conducted to examine the finite sample performance of the proposed V_(N,p) teststatistic.Simulation results confirm that the proposed test performs satisfactorily in estimated sizeand power.

First spike latency of ON/OFF neurons in the optic tectum of pigeons

Some shallow and middle optic tectum(OT)neurons have stable,asymmetric full-screen ON and OFF stimu­lus response properties,which makes them candidates for delay encoding.In this paper,we investigated the de­lay encoding mechanism for the neuronal clusters in the OT region of pigeons and determined the mechanism of delay coding in the OT region.By analyzing the responses of the neuron cluster under full-screen switch-on and switch-off stimulation,we found that the delay coding was widespread in the OT region where the ON/OFF stimulation time difference was 4-6 ms.Information theory analysis under grating stimulation and experiments based on single-neuron character reconstruction of neurons showed that OT neuron clusters use the first spike latency(FSL)for the rapid transfer of spatial structure information.Furthermore,4 models were used to pre­dict the first spike latency of these OT neurons.The best simulation results were obtained using an architecture where the ON and OFF paths of multiple retinal ganglion cells(RGCs)were integrated and summed,respec­tively.

Taxonomy on crane flies in family Tipulidae and Limoniidae(Diptera: Tipuloidea) from Yaoluoping National Nature Reserve, Anhui, China

The paper reports 13 species from Yaoluoping National Nature Reserve, Anhui, China, including a new species and a new subspecies, Tipula（Emodotipula） alexanderi Men, sp. nov. and Nephrotoma impigra anqingensis Men, subsp. nov. The female of Libnotes（Libnotes） pseudonohirai Men, 2015 is described and illustrated for the first time. The males of Holorusia henana Yang, 1999 and Tipula（Vestiplex） jiangi Yang ＆ Yang, 1991 are redescribed and illustrated with new morphological characters. A key to all species is provided.