The Competitive Edge: Improving American Board of Surgery In-Training Examination Scores Through a Team-Based Competition.

BackgroundThe American Board of Surgery (ABS) In-Training Examination (ABSITE) scores are predictive of passing the ABS qualifying exam and have become a marker of residency education success. A competitive team-based approach to encourage self-studying and didactic participation is a novel method of ABSITE preparation. We aimed to determine if this method significantly improves residents' percentile performances on the ABSITE.

Conflict acts as an implicit cost in reinforcement learning.

Conflict has been proposed to act as a cost in action selection, implying a general function of medio-frontal cortex in the adaptation to aversive events. Here we investigate if response conflict acts as a cost during reinforcement learning by modulating experienced reward values in cortical and striatal systems. Electroencephalography recordings show that conflict diminishes the relationship between reward-related frontal theta power and cue preference yet it enhances the relationship between punishment and cue avoidance.