Eiji Watanabe Lab @ NIBB, Japan

  Mapping 99 emotion terms with GPT4 prompting reveals nuanced semantic conceptual structure Abstract Dimensional theories of emotion propose that affective experiences can be organised along continuous dimensions like Pleasure, Arousal, and Dominance. Recent computational methods for capturing these conceptual structures have relied primarily on word embeddings, requiring substantial technical expertise. This study examined whether prompting GPT4 as a more accessible method, can capture this structure more effectively, by comparing both approaches against human spatial reasoning, with particular focus on analysing extensive emotion vocabularies exceeding constraints of human cognitive capability. Study 1 established validity by testing six basic emotions, prompting showed strong convergence with human judgements, while embeddings produced fundamentally different clustering patterns. Study 2 extended analysis to 99 emotion terms. Both approaches identified two optimal clusters dist...

Why Do We See Colors in a Black-and-White Top? — Predictive AI Offers New Clues to a 200-Year-Old Mystery — When a pattern drawn only in black and white is rotated, people sometimes perceive colors that are not actually present. This phenomenon is known as “subjective color” and has been studied for approximately 200 years as one of the remarkable mysteries of vision. Among such phenomena, Benham’s top is a well-known example in which colors are perceived simply by spinning a black-and-white disk. A research group led by Kyohei Ueda, a graduate student at the Laboratory of Neurophysiology, National Institute for Basic Biology, and SOKENDAI; Dr. Lana Sinapayen, a researcher at Sony Computer Science Laboratories Kyoto and concurrently a Specially Appointed Associate Professor at the AI Facility, Center for Trans-Scale Biology, National Institute for Basic Biology; and Associate Professor Eiji Watanabe of the Laboratory of Neurophysiology, National Institute for Basic Biology, who also se...

Preparation of Pseudopregnant Recipient Females Using Female Mice ( Mus musculus ) Showing Nonestrous Signs: Investigation of a Unique Approach Based on the Whitten Effect Abstract Availability of pseudopregnant recipient females is an essential component of embryo transfer in mice. However, conventional methods for sorting females based on estrous signs (proestrus or estrus) require maintaining a large stock of mice, thereby presenting challenges for animal welfare. Furthermore, these large numbers of female mice are often maintained in group housing due to space constraints; and this can induce the Lee-Boot effect, leading to decreased preparation efficiency. Therefore, this study examined a method for preparing pseudopregnant recipient females using mice showing nonestrous signs through a unique approach based on the Whitten effect. Female ICR mice exhibiting metestrus or diestrus characteristics were deliberately sorted and housed with vasectomized males for 3 consecutive days. The...