Neuron-type-specific signals for reward and punishment in the ventral tegmental area

Dopamine has a central role in motivation and reward. Dopaminergic neurons in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) signal the discrepancy between expected and actual rewards (that is, reward prediction error), but how they compute such signals is unknown. We recorded the activity of VTA neurons while mice associated different odour cues with appetitive and aversive outcomes. We found three types of neuron based on responses to odours and outcomes: approximately half of the neurons (type I, 52%) showed phasic excitation after reward-predicting odours and rewards in a manner consistent with reward prediction error coding; the other half of neurons showed persistent activity during the delay between odour and outcome that was modulated positively (type II, 31%) or negatively (type III, 18%) by the value of outcomes. Whereas the activity of type I neurons was sensitive to actual outcomes (that is, when the reward was delivered as expected compared to when it was unexpectedly omitted), the activity of type II and type III neurons was determined predominantly by reward-predicting odours. We 'tagged' dopaminergic and GABAergic neurons with the light-sensitive protein channelrhodopsin-2 and identified them based on their responses to optical stimulation while recording. All identified dopaminergic neurons were of type I and all GABAergic neurons were of type II. These results show that VTA GABAergic neurons signal expected reward, a key variable for dopaminergic neurons to calculate reward prediction error.     

利用频域连续性检测非合作突发通信信号

针对在非合作突发通信信号检测中,已有的各种检测方法均未能充分利用信号的频域连续性的问题,提出了一种新的检测方法,利用信号的频域连续性,在频率和带宽二维进行频域能量累积,搜索最大值并检测.理论分析和仿真均验证了此方法优于Power-Law方法 2 dB以上.     

Terahertz-field-induced insulator-to-metal transition in vanadium dioxide metamaterial

Electron-electron interactions can render an otherwise conducting material insulating, with the insulator-metal phase transition in correlated-electron materials being the canonical macroscopic manifestation of the competition between charge-carrier itinerancy and localization. The transition can arise from underlying microscopic interactions among the charge, lattice, orbital and spin degrees of freedom, the complexity of which leads to multiple phase-transition pathways. For example, in many transition metal oxides, the insulator-metal transition has been achieved with external stimuli, including temperature, light, electric field, mechanical strain or magnetic field. Vanadium dioxide is particularly intriguing because both the lattice and on-site Coulomb repulsion contribute to the insulator-to-metal transition at 340?K (ref. 8). Thus, although the precise microscopic origin of the phase transition remains elusive, vanadium dioxide serves as a testbed for correlated-electron phase-transition dynamics. Here we report the observation of an insulator-metal transition in vanadium dioxide induced by a terahertz electric field. This is achieved using metamaterial-enhanced picosecond, high-field terahertz pulses to reduce the Coulomb-induced potential barrier for carrier transport. A nonlinear metamaterial response is observed through the phase transition, demonstrating that high-field terahertz pulses provide alternative pathways to induce collective electronic and structural rearrangements. The metamaterial resonators play a dual role, providing sub-wavelength field enhancement that locally drives the nonlinear response, and global sensitivity to the local changes, thereby enabling macroscopic observation of the dynamics. This methodology provides a powerful platform to investigate low-energy dynamics in condensed matter and, further, demonstrates that integration of metamaterials with complex matter is a viable pathway to realize functional nonlinear electromagnetic composites.     

泛函积分与玻色费米子模型中的长波激发

本文采用泛函积分方法研究了高温超导中玻色-费米子模型的长波激发.推导了能隙方程和激发谱方程,并且计算了在长波近似下费米场的玻色能谱,得到了简并和非简并激发模.     

Effects of SrTiO3 buffer layer on structural and electrical properties of Bi3.15Nd0.85Ti3O12 thin films prepared by a chemical method

Ferroelectric Bi3.15Nd0.85Ti3O12 (BNT) thin films have been grown on Pt/Ti/SiO2/Si substrates at 750 ℃ by a chemical solution deposition method using SrTiO3 (STO) as a buffer layer.The influence of STO...