An international consensus on effective, inclusive, and career-spanning short-format training in the life sciences and beyond.

Science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) fields change rapidly and are increasingly interdisciplinary. Commonly, STEMM practitioners use short-format training (SFT) such as workshops and short courses for upskilling and reskilling, but unaddressed challenges limit SFT's effectiveness and inclusiveness. Education researchers, students in SFT courses, and organizations have called for research and strategies that can strengthen SFT in terms of effectiveness, inclusiveness, and accessibility across multiple dimensions. This paper describes the project that resulted in a consensus set of 14 actionable recommendations to systematically strengthen SFT. A diverse international group of 30 experts in education, accessibility, and life sciences came together from 10 countries to develop recommendations that can help strengthen SFT globally. Participants, including representation from some of the largest life science training programs globally, assembled findings in the educational sciences and encompassed the experiences of several of the largest life science SFT programs. The 14 recommendations were derived through a Delphi method, where consensus was achieved in real time as the group completed a series of meetings and tasks designed to elicit specific recommendations. Recommendations cover the breadth of SFT contexts and stakeholder groups and include actions for instructors (e.g., make equity and inclusion an ethical obligation), programs (e.g., centralize infrastructure for assessment and evaluation), as well as organizations and funders (e.g., professionalize training SFT instructors; deploy SFT to counter inequity). Recommendations are aligned with a purpose-built framework-"The Bicycle Principles"-that prioritizes evidenced-based teaching, inclusiveness, and equity, as well as the ability to scale, share, and sustain SFT. We also describe how the Bicycle Principles and recommendations are consistent with educational change theories and can overcome systemic barriers to delivering consistently effective, inclusive, and career-spanning SFT.

Orbitofrontal lesions eliminate signalling of biological significance in cue-responsive ventral striatal neurons.

The ventral striatum has long been proposed as an integrator of biologically significant associative information to drive actions. Although inputs from the amygdala and hippocampus have been much studied, the role of prominent inputs from orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) are less well understood. Here, we recorded single-unit activity from ventral striatum core in rats with sham or ipsilateral neurotoxic lesions of lateral OFC, as they performed an odour-guided spatial choice task. Consistent with prior reports, we found that spiking activity recorded in sham rats during cue sampling was related to both reward magnitude and reward identity, with higher firing rates observed for cues that predicted more reward. Lesioned rats also showed differential activity to the cues, but this activity was unbiased towards larger rewards. These data support a role for OFC in shaping activity in the ventral striatum to represent the biological significance of associative information in the environment.

What the orbitofrontal cortex does not do.

The number of papers about the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) has grown from 1 per month in 1987 to a current rate of over 50 per month. This publication stream has implicated the OFC in nearly every function known to cognitive neuroscience and in most neuropsychiatric diseases. However, new ideas about OFC function are typically based on limited data sets and often ignore or minimize competing ideas or contradictory findings. Yet true progress in our understanding of an area's function comes as much from invalidating existing ideas as proposing new ones. Here we consider the proposed roles for OFC, critically examining the level of support for these claims and highlighting the data that call them into question.

Orbitofrontal neurons infer the value and identity of predicted outcomes.

The best way to respond flexibly to changes in the environment is to anticipate them. Such anticipation often benefits us if we can infer that a change has occurred, before we have actually experienced the effects of that change. Here we test for neural correlates of this process by recording single-unit activity in the orbitofrontal cortex in rats performing a choice task in which the available rewards changed across blocks of trials. Consistent with the proposal that orbitofrontal cortex signals inferred information, firing changes at the start of each new block as if predicting the not-yet-experienced reward. This change occurs whether the new reward is different in number of drops, requiring signalling of a new value, or in flavour, requiring signalling of a new sensory feature. These results show that orbitofrontal neurons provide a behaviourally relevant signal that reflects inferences about both value-relevant and value-neutral information about impending outcomes.

Disruption of model-based behavior and learning by cocaine self-administration in rats.

RATIONALE: Addiction is characterized by maladaptive decision-making, in which individuals seem unable to use adverse outcomes to modify their behavior. Adverse outcomes are often infrequent, delayed, and even rare events, especially when compared to the reliable rewarding drug-associated outcomes. As a result, recognizing and using information about their occurrence put a premium on the operation of so-called model-based systems of behavioral control, which allow one to mentally simulate outcomes of different courses of action based on knowledge of the underlying associative structure of the environment. This suggests that addiction may reflect, in part, drug-induced dysfunction in these systems. Here, we tested this hypothesis. OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to test whether cocaine causes deficits in model-based behavior and learning independent of requirements for response inhibition or perception of costs or punishment. METHODS: We trained rats to self-administer sucrose or cocaine for 2 weeks. Four weeks later, the rats began training on a sensory preconditioning and inferred value blocking task. Like devaluation, normal performance on this task requires representations of the underlying task structure; however, unlike devaluation, it does not require either response inhibition or adapting behavior to reflect aversive outcomes. RESULTS: Rats trained to self-administer cocaine failed to show conditioned responding or blocking to the preconditioned cue. These deficits were not observed in sucrose-trained rats nor did they reflect any changes in responding to cues paired directly with reward. CONCLUSIONS: These results imply that cocaine disrupts the operation of neural circuits that mediate model-based behavioral control.

The role of the nucleus accumbens in knowing when to respond.

While knowing what to expect is important, it is equally important to know when to expect it and to respond accordingly. This is apparent even in simple Pavlovian training situations in which animals learn to respond more strongly closer to reward delivery. Here we report that the nucleus accumbens core, an area well-positioned to represent information about the timing of impending rewards, plays a critical role in this timing function.