Wednesday, June 20, 2012

This is my idea of fun Monkeys playing video games

Swinging in the back yard
Pull up in your fast car
Whistling my name

Open up a beer and
Say get over here
And play a video game

Video Games
------Lana Del Rey





It's you, it's you, it's all for you

Two Japanese researchers (Hosokawa & Watanabe, 2012) have trained three Japanese macaques to play competitive and noncompetitive video shooting games by manipulating a joystick to shoot bullets at a target. While the monkeys were playing video games, the researchers recorded the activity of neurons in the lateral prefrontal cortex:
We examined whether neurons in the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) showed response sensitivity related to a competitive game. In this study, monkeys played a video shooting game, either competing with another monkey or the computer, or playing alone without a rival. Monkeys performed more quickly and more accurately in the competitive than in the noncompetitive games, indicating that they were more motivated in the competitive than in the noncompetitive games. LPFC neurons showed differential activity between the competitive and noncompetitive games showing winning- and losing-related activity. Furthermore, activities of prefrontal neurons differed depending on whether the competition was between monkeys or between the monkey and the computer. These results indicate that LPFC neurons may play an important role in monitoring the outcome of competition and enabling animals to adapt their behavior to increase their chances of obtaining a reward in a socially interactive environment.

Everything I do
I tell you all the time
Heaven is a place on earth with you
Tell me all the things you want to do

Video Games
------Lana Del Rey


Reference

Hosokawa T, Watanabe M. (2012). Prefrontal Neurons Represent Winning and Losing during Competitive Video Shooting Games between Monkeys. J Neurosci. 32:7662-71.




I say you the bestest
Lean in for a big kiss
Put his favorite perfume on
Go play a video game

Video Games
------Lana Del Rey

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1 Comments:

At June 21, 2012 5:13 PM, Anonymous Shai-Hulud said...

Cheers for posting this fascinating and strangely amusing study. Wonder what are they going to investigate next... the correlation of activated brain regions with aggressive vocal behaviour and rage quits? ;)

Also, do Japanese researchers tend to illustrate the experiments with cute manga? I just saw http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/120621/srep00459/full/srep00459.html and this illustration http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/120621/srep00459/fig_tab/srep00459_F2.html is awesome!

And that LDR song is quite heart wrenching I think.

 

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