Throughout their daily lives, animals and humans often switch between different behaviours. However, neuroscience research typically studies the brain while the animal is performing one behavioural task at a time, and little is known about how brain circuits represent switches between different behaviours. Here we tested this question using an ethological setting: two bats flew together in a long 135 m tunnel, and switched between navigation when flying alone (solo) and collision avoidance as they flew past each other (cross-over). Bats increased their echolocation click rate before each cross-over, indicating attention to the other bat1–9. Hippocampal CA1 neurons represented the bat’s own position when flying alone (place coding10–14). Notably, during cross-overs, neurons switched rapidly to jointly represent the interbat distance by self-position. This neuronal switch was very fast—as fast as 100 ms—which could be revealed owing to the very rapid natural behavioural switch. The neuronal switch correlated with the attention signal, as indexed by echolocation. Interestingly, the different place fields of the same neuron often exhibited very different tuning to interbat distance, creating a complex non-separable coding of position by distance. Theoretical analysis showed that this complex representation yields more efficient coding. Overall, our results suggest that during dynamic natural behaviour, hippocampal neurons can rapidly switch their core computation to represent the relevant behavioural variables, supporting behavioural flexibility.

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Data concerning the functional and psychological status of a sample of 101 rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients were compared with data on a similar sample of 102 multiple sclerosis (MS) patients. Because far more psychological research has been done regarding the personal and interpersonal factors that impact adaptation to RA, the current study was conducted to (1) underscore the similarities that exist between the two illnesses; (2) assess the usefulness in an MS sample of functional assessment measures commonly used with RA populations; and (3) identify the similarities and differences that exist between RA patients and MS patients with respect to functional status and psychological impact. It was determined that for these two samples the level of functional disability was similar but that there was greater psychological impact observed among the MS participants. Limitations to household activities most strongly predicted depression in the MS group, followed by limitations to social activity and more limited financial resources. Younger patients reported more anxiety. The relevance of these findings to related MS research is noted, as well as the utility of questionnaire research with this population.Multiple sclerosis (MS), an autoimmune disease of the central nervous system (CNS), is characterized by destruction of the myelin sheath that encases the axons of nerve cell and facilitates nerve transmission. The destruction of myelin occurs in a random manner throughout the brain and spinal cord, resulting in delayed or blocked transmission of nerve impulses (2). The onset of MS generally occurs between the ages of fifteen and fifty years, with an average age of onset of thirty. Approximately twice as many women as men are diagnosed with MS (2). MS is a difficult disease to diagnose due to its variable course, transient symptoms, and the lack of a specific diagnostic test (3). After the diagnosis has been made, the course of the illness is unpredictable. Most individuals have a relapsing-remitting course, which is typified by cycles of exacerbation and remission, although approximately 15% of the diagnosed population have a chronic-progressive course characterized by slow, steady deterioration of function throughout their lives. Among individuals with a relapsing-remitting course, a new exacerbation or outbreak of symptoms occurs on average once every six months to a year.Within four to twelve weeks of exacerbation, some or all of the new symptoms will remit (1).It is impossible to predict for any particular individual what course his or her MS will follow or what symptoms will be experienced. MS is characterized by a wide and varying range of symptoms, which impact physical, cognitive, and social functioning. Physical symptoms include visual impairment, speech difficulties, weakness, fatigue, loss of sensation, incoordination, and sexual dysfunction (3). The most frequently reported physical complaints are loss of the ability to walk and urinary dysfunction. While these physical symptoms alone may not be fatal, t...

Human error or misconduct of one kind or another must be either the direct cause or a contributing factor to almost every security breach or outage. Whether it is the user clicking a phishing link, an operator accidentally deleting the corporate directory, a manager approving excessive privileges, a receptionist letting a thief or spy into the building, or an incident responder hitting the snooze button on the wrong malware alarm, the examples are legion. Security leaders should strive to improve security-related behavior through user awareness and training programs. Sometimes these programs succeed in bettering security-related behaviors, sometimes they don't. Wouldn't it be nice to know why? It turns out that people's behavior is related to a larger issue of security culture, which is itself a part of organizational culture. Formally adopted security policies, well-defined security governance, and clear security-related roles in the business are prerequisites for a successful security program. But in the background behind the visible security governance and security program machinery is the organization's security culture. A security culture is the part of an organization's self-sustaining patterns of behavior and perception that determine how (or if) the organization pursues security. A positive security culture can provide your best opportunity to secure the business; a negative one can be your greatest vulnerability.

Cyber-resilience provides the ability to withstand and mitigate the impacts of information risks. Businesses can start to become more resilient by identifying their critical assets, top risk scenarios, and basic contingency plans. Then, by aligning technical security capabilities with IT operations and other business functions, security leaders can enable the business to detect suspicious or anomalous events earlier, and respond and recover faster from incidents such as breaches or system outages. Incident response (IR) is closely linked to security monitoring and detection. It should be managed by a dedicated group (or person) that coordinates closely with security operations, legal, HR, and other functions. Businesses should develop response plans for common types of incidents and for potential incidents from top risk scenarios. Enact response in a structured manner wherein each business function has a script for its part; for example, after a data breach, IT restores affected systems to normal operation, public relations communicates with the media, and the legal team notifies customers or partners of lost personal information. Businesses can lay the groundwork to enable recovery from serious incidents by performing business impact assessments that identify critical assets and developing business continuity plans to restore or recover the assets. Recovery plans may overlap response plans in the case of cyber-incidents, requiring that business continuity teams and IR teams coordinate. Strictly operational incidents such as hardware failures fall purely in the purview of the business continuity function.