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Sample records for related neural events

  1. Neural Basis of Intrinsic Motivation: Evidence from Event-Related Potentials.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jin, Jia; Yu, Liping; Ma, Qingguo

    2015-01-01

    Human intrinsic motivation is of great importance in human behavior. However, although researchers have focused on this topic for decades, its neural basis was still unclear. The current study employed event-related potentials to investigate the neural disparity between an interesting stop-watch (SW) task and a boring watch-stop task (WS) to understand the neural mechanisms of intrinsic motivation. Our data showed that, in the cue priming stage, the cue of the SW task elicited smaller N2 amplitude than that of the WS task. Furthermore, in the outcome feedback stage, the outcome of the SW task induced smaller FRN amplitude and larger P300 amplitude than that of the WS task. These results suggested that human intrinsic motivation did exist and that it can be detected at the neural level. Furthermore, intrinsic motivation could be quantitatively indexed by the amplitude of ERP components, such as N2, FRN, and P300, in the cue priming stage or feedback stage. Quantitative measurements would also be convenient for intrinsic motivation to be added as a candidate social factor in the construction of a machine learning model.

  2. Convolutional neural networks for event-related potential detection: impact of the architecture.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cecotti, H

    2017-07-01

    The detection of brain responses at the single-trial level in the electroencephalogram (EEG) such as event-related potentials (ERPs) is a difficult problem that requires different processing steps to extract relevant discriminant features. While most of the signal and classification techniques for the detection of brain responses are based on linear algebra, different pattern recognition techniques such as convolutional neural network (CNN), as a type of deep learning technique, have shown some interests as they are able to process the signal after limited pre-processing. In this study, we propose to investigate the performance of CNNs in relation of their architecture and in relation to how they are evaluated: a single system for each subject, or a system for all the subjects. More particularly, we want to address the change of performance that can be observed between specifying a neural network to a subject, or by considering a neural network for a group of subjects, taking advantage of a larger number of trials from different subjects. The results support the conclusion that a convolutional neural network trained on different subjects can lead to an AUC above 0.9 by using an appropriate architecture using spatial filtering and shift invariant layers.

  3. Neural network real time event selection for the DIRAC experiment

    CERN Document Server

    Kokkas, P; Tauscher, Ludwig; Vlachos, S

    2001-01-01

    The neural network first level trigger for the DIRAC experiment at CERN is presented. Both the neural network algorithm used and its actual hardware implementation are described. The system uses the fast plastic scintillator information of the DIRAC spectrometer. In 210 ns it selects events with two particles having low relative momentum. Such events are selected with an efficiency of more than 0.94. The corresponding rate reduction for background events is a factor of 2.5. (10 refs).

  4. Neural network approach in multichannel auditory event-related potential analysis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wu, F Y; Slater, J D; Ramsay, R E

    1994-04-01

    Even though there are presently no clearly defined criteria for the assessment of P300 event-related potential (ERP) abnormality, it is strongly indicated through statistical analysis that such criteria exist for classifying control subjects and patients with diseases resulting in neuropsychological impairment such as multiple sclerosis (MS). We have demonstrated the feasibility of artificial neural network (ANN) methods in classifying ERP waveforms measured at a single channel (Cz) from control subjects and MS patients. In this paper, we report the results of multichannel ERP analysis and a modified network analysis methodology to enhance automation of the classification rule extraction process. The proposed methodology significantly reduces the work of statistical analysis. It also helps to standardize the criteria of P300 ERP assessment and facilitate the computer-aided analysis on neuropsychological functions.

  5. Forecasting solar proton event with artificial neural network

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gong, J.; Wang, J.; Xue, B.; Liu, S.; Zou, Z.

    Solar proton event (SPE), relatively rare but popular in solar maximum, can bring hazard situation to spacecraft. As a special event, SPE always accompanies flare, which is also called proton flare. To produce such an eruptive event, large amount energy must be accumulated within the active region. So we can investigate the character of the active region and its evolving trend, together with other such as cm radio emission and soft X-ray background to evaluate the potential of SEP in chosen area. In order to summarize the omen of SPEs in the active regions behind the observed parameters, we employed AI technology. Full connecting neural network was chosen to fulfil this job. After constructing the network, we train it with 13 parameters that was able to exhibit the character of active regions and their evolution trend. More than 80 sets of event parameter were defined to teach the neural network to identify whether an active region was potential of SPE. Then we test this model with a data base consisting SPE and non-SPE cases that was not used to train the neural network. The result showed that 75% of the choice by the model was right.

  6. Emotional expectations influence neural sensitivity to fearful faces in humans:An event-related potential study

    Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

    2010-01-01

    The present study tested whether neural sensitivity to salient emotional facial expressions was influenced by emotional expectations induced by a cue that validly predicted the expression of a subsequently presented target face. Event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by fearful and neutral faces were recorded while participants performed a gender discrimination task under cued (‘expected’) and uncued (‘unexpected’) conditions. The behavioral results revealed that accuracy was lower for fearful compared with neutral faces in the unexpected condition, while accuracy was similar for fearful and neutral faces in the expected condition. ERP data revealed increased amplitudes in the P2 component and 200–250 ms interval for unexpected fearful versus neutral faces. By contrast, ERP responses were similar for fearful and neutral faces in the expected condition. These findings indicate that human neural sensitivity to fearful faces is modulated by emotional expectations. Although the neural system is sensitive to unpredictable emotionally salient stimuli, sensitivity to salient stimuli is reduced when these stimuli are predictable.

  7. The neural basis of event simulation: an FMRI study.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yukihito Yomogida

    Full Text Available Event simulation (ES is the situational inference process in which perceived event features such as objects, agents, and actions are associated in the brain to represent the whole situation. ES provides a common basis for various cognitive processes, such as perceptual prediction, situational understanding/prediction, and social cognition (such as mentalizing/trait inference. Here, functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to elucidate the neural substrates underlying important subdivisions within ES. First, the study investigated whether ES depends on different neural substrates when it is conducted explicitly and implicitly. Second, the existence of neural substrates specific to the future-prediction component of ES was assessed. Subjects were shown contextually related object pictures implying a situation and performed several picture-word-matching tasks. By varying task goals, subjects were made to infer the implied situation implicitly/explicitly or predict the future consequence of that situation. The results indicate that, whereas implicit ES activated the lateral prefrontal cortex and medial/lateral parietal cortex, explicit ES activated the medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, and medial/lateral temporal cortex. Additionally, the left temporoparietal junction plays an important role in the future-prediction component of ES. These findings enrich our understanding of the neural substrates of the implicit/explicit/predictive aspects of ES-related cognitive processes.

  8. Specific neural basis of Chinese idioms processing: an event-related functional MRI study

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Chen Shaoqi; Zhang Yanzhen; Xiao Zhuangwei; Zhang Xuexin

    2007-01-01

    Objective: To address the neural basis of Chinese idioms processing with different kinds of stimuli using an event-related fMRI design. Methods: Sixteen native Chinese speakers were asked to perform a semantic decision task during fMRI scanning. Three kinds of stimuli were used: Real idioms (Real-idiom condition); Literally plausible phrases (Pseudo-idiom condition, the last character of a real idiom was replaced by a character with similar meaning); Literally implausible strings (Non-idiom condition, the last character of a real idiom was replaced by a character with unrelated meaning). Reaction time and correct rate were recorded at the same time. Results: The error rate was 2.6%, 5.2% and 0.9% (F=3.51, P 0.05) for real idioms, pseudo-idioms and wrong idioms, respectively. Similar neural network was activated in all of the three conditions. However, the right hippocampus was only activated in the real idiom condition, and significant activations were found in anterior portion of left inferior frontal gyms (BA47) in real-and pseudo-idiom conditions, but not in non-idiom condition. Conclusion: The right hippocampus plays a specific role in the particular wording of the Chinese idioms. And the left anterior inferior frontal gyms (BA47) may be engaged in the semantic processing of Chinese idioms. The results support the notion that there were specific neural bases for Chinese idioms processing. (authors)

  9. Neural correlates of attentional and mnemonic processing in event-based prospective memory.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Knight, Justin B; Ethridge, Lauren E; Marsh, Richard L; Clementz, Brett A

    2010-01-01

    Prospective memory (PM), or memory for realizing delayed intentions, was examined with an event-based paradigm while simultaneously measuring neural activity with high-density EEG recordings. Specifically, the neural substrates of monitoring for an event-based cue were examined, as well as those perhaps associated with the cognitive processes supporting detection of cues and fulfillment of intentions. Participants engaged in a baseline lexical decision task (LDT), followed by a LDT with an embedded PM component. Event-based cues were constituted by color and lexicality (red words). Behavioral data provided evidence that monitoring, or preparatory attentional processes, were used to detect cues. Analysis of the event-related potentials (ERP) revealed visual attentional modulations at 140 and 220 ms post-stimulus associated with preparatory attentional processes. In addition, ERP components at 220, 350, and 400 ms post-stimulus were enhanced for intention-related items. Our results suggest preparatory attention may operate by selectively modulating processing of features related to a previously formed event-based intention, as well as provide further evidence for the proposal that dissociable component processes support the fulfillment of delayed intentions.

  10. From sensation to percept: the neural signature of auditory event-related potentials.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Joos, Kathleen; Gilles, Annick; Van de Heyning, Paul; De Ridder, Dirk; Vanneste, Sven

    2014-05-01

    An external auditory stimulus induces an auditory sensation which may lead to a conscious auditory perception. Although the sensory aspect is well known, it is still a question how an auditory stimulus results in an individual's conscious percept. To unravel the uncertainties concerning the neural correlates of a conscious auditory percept, event-related potentials may serve as a useful tool. In the current review we mainly wanted to shed light on the perceptual aspects of auditory processing and therefore we mainly focused on the auditory late-latency responses. Moreover, there is increasing evidence that perception is an active process in which the brain searches for the information it expects to be present, suggesting that auditory perception requires the presence of both bottom-up, i.e. sensory and top-down, i.e. prediction-driven processing. Therefore, the auditory evoked potentials will be interpreted in the context of the Bayesian brain model, in which the brain predicts which information it expects and when this will happen. The internal representation of the auditory environment will be verified by sensation samples of the environment (P50, N100). When this incoming information violates the expectation, it will induce the emission of a prediction error signal (Mismatch Negativity), activating higher-order neural networks and inducing the update of prior internal representations of the environment (P300). Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  11. A Markovian event-based framework for stochastic spiking neural networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Touboul, Jonathan D; Faugeras, Olivier D

    2011-11-01

    In spiking neural networks, the information is conveyed by the spike times, that depend on the intrinsic dynamics of each neuron, the input they receive and on the connections between neurons. In this article we study the Markovian nature of the sequence of spike times in stochastic neural networks, and in particular the ability to deduce from a spike train the next spike time, and therefore produce a description of the network activity only based on the spike times regardless of the membrane potential process. To study this question in a rigorous manner, we introduce and study an event-based description of networks of noisy integrate-and-fire neurons, i.e. that is based on the computation of the spike times. We show that the firing times of the neurons in the networks constitute a Markov chain, whose transition probability is related to the probability distribution of the interspike interval of the neurons in the network. In the cases where the Markovian model can be developed, the transition probability is explicitly derived in such classical cases of neural networks as the linear integrate-and-fire neuron models with excitatory and inhibitory interactions, for different types of synapses, possibly featuring noisy synaptic integration, transmission delays and absolute and relative refractory period. This covers most of the cases that have been investigated in the event-based description of spiking deterministic neural networks.

  12. Neural correlates of attentional and mnemonic processing in event-based prospective memory

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Justin B Knight

    2010-02-01

    Full Text Available Prospective memory, or memory for realizing delayed intentions, was examined with an event-based paradigm while simultaneously measuring neural activity with high-density EEG recordings. Specifically, the neural substrates of monitoring for an event-based cue were examined, as well as those perhaps associated with the cognitive processes supporting detection of cues and fulfillment of intentions. Participants engaged in a baseline lexical decision task (LDT, followed by a LDT with an embedded prospective memory (PM component. Event-based cues were constituted by color and lexicality (red words. Behavioral data provided evidence that monitoring, or preparatory attentional processes, were used to detect cues. Analysis of the event-related potentials (ERP revealed visual attentional modulations at 140 and 220 ms post-stimulus associated with preparatory attentional processes. In addition, ERP components at 220, 350, and 400 ms post-stimulus were enhanced for intention-related items. Our results suggest preparatory attention may operate by selectively modulating processing of features related to a previously formed event-based intention, as well as provide further evidence for the proposal that dissociable component processes support the fulfillment of delayed intentions.

  13. Disentangling the Attention Network Test: Behavioral, Event Related Potentials and neural source analyses.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Alejandro eGalvao-Carmona

    2014-10-01

    Full Text Available Background. The study of the attentional system remains a challenge for current neuroscience. The Attention Network Test (ANT was designed to study simultaneously three different attentional networks (alerting, orienting and executive based in subtraction of different experimental conditions. However, some studies recommend caution with these calculations due to the interactions between the attentional networks. In particular, it is highly relevant that several interpretations about attentional impairment have arisen from these calculations in diverse pathologies. Event Related Potentials (ERPs and neural source analysis can be applied to disentangle the relationships between these attentional networks not specifically shown by behavioural measures. Results. This study shows that there is a basic level of alerting (tonic alerting in the no cue condition, represented by a slow negative trend in the ERP trace prior to the onset of the target stimuli. A progressive increase in the CNV amplitude related to the amount of information provided by the cue conditions is also shown. Neural source analysis reveals specific modulations of the CNV related to a task-related expectancy presented in the no cue condition; a late modulation triggered by the central cue condition and probably representing a generic motor preparation; and an early and late modulation for spatial cue condition suggesting specific motor and sensory preactivation. Finally, the first component in the information processing of the target stimuli modulated by the interaction between orienting network and the executive system can be represented by N1. Conclusions. The ANT is useful as a paradigm to study specific attentional mechanisms and their interactions. However, calculation of network effects is based in subtractions with non-comparable experimental conditions, as evidenced by the present data, which can induce misinterpretations in the study of the attentional capacity in human

  14. Event-driven processing for hardware-efficient neural spike sorting

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Yan; Pereira, João L.; Constandinou, Timothy G.

    2018-02-01

    Objective. The prospect of real-time and on-node spike sorting provides a genuine opportunity to push the envelope of large-scale integrated neural recording systems. In such systems the hardware resources, power requirements and data bandwidth increase linearly with channel count. Event-based (or data-driven) processing can provide here a new efficient means for hardware implementation that is completely activity dependant. In this work, we investigate using continuous-time level-crossing sampling for efficient data representation and subsequent spike processing. Approach. (1) We first compare signals (synthetic neural datasets) encoded with this technique against conventional sampling. (2) We then show how such a representation can be directly exploited by extracting simple time domain features from the bitstream to perform neural spike sorting. (3) The proposed method is implemented in a low power FPGA platform to demonstrate its hardware viability. Main results. It is observed that considerably lower data rates are achievable when using 7 bits or less to represent the signals, whilst maintaining the signal fidelity. Results obtained using both MATLAB and reconfigurable logic hardware (FPGA) indicate that feature extraction and spike sorting accuracies can be achieved with comparable or better accuracy than reference methods whilst also requiring relatively low hardware resources. Significance. By effectively exploiting continuous-time data representation, neural signal processing can be achieved in a completely event-driven manner, reducing both the required resources (memory, complexity) and computations (operations). This will see future large-scale neural systems integrating on-node processing in real-time hardware.

  15. Shindigs, brunches, and rodeos: the neural basis of event words.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bedny, Marina; Dravida, Swethasri; Saxe, Rebecca

    2014-09-01

    Events (e.g., "running" or "eating") constitute a basic type within human cognition and human language. We asked whether thinking about events, as compared to other conceptual categories, depends on partially independent neural circuits. Indirect evidence for this hypothesis comes from previous studies showing elevated posterior temporal responses to verbs, which typically label events. Neural responses to verbs could, however, be driven either by their grammatical or by their semantic properties. In the present experiment, we separated the effects of grammatical class (verb vs. noun) and semantic category (event vs. object) by measuring neural responses to event nouns (e.g., "the hurricane"). Participants rated the semantic relatedness of event nouns, as well as of two categories of object nouns-animals (e.g., "the alligator") and plants (e.g., "the acorn")-and three categories of verbs-manner of motion (e.g., "to roll"), emission (e.g., "to sparkle"), and perception (e.g., "to gaze"). As has previously been observed, we found larger responses to verbs than to object nouns in the left posterior middle (LMTG) and superior (LSTG) temporal gyri. Crucially, we also found that the LMTG responds more to event than to object nouns. These data suggest that part of the posterior lateral temporal response to verbs is driven by their semantic properties. By contrast, a more superior region, at the junction of the temporal and parietal cortices, responded more to verbs than to all nouns, irrespective of their semantic category. We concluded that the neural mechanisms engaged when thinking about event and object categories are partially dissociable.

  16. Blind Source Separation of Event-Related EEG/MEG.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Metsomaa, Johanna; Sarvas, Jukka; Ilmoniemi, Risto Juhani

    2017-09-01

    Blind source separation (BSS) can be used to decompose complex electroencephalography (EEG) or magnetoencephalography data into simpler components based on statistical assumptions without using a physical model. Applications include brain-computer interfaces, artifact removal, and identifying parallel neural processes. We wish to address the issue of applying BSS to event-related responses, which is challenging because of nonstationary data. We introduce a new BSS approach called momentary-uncorrelated component analysis (MUCA), which is tailored for event-related multitrial data. The method is based on approximate joint diagonalization of multiple covariance matrices estimated from the data at separate latencies. We further show how to extend the methodology for autocovariance matrices and how to apply BSS methods suitable for piecewise stationary data to event-related responses. We compared several BSS approaches by using simulated EEG as well as measured somatosensory and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) evoked EEG. Among the compared methods, MUCA was the most tolerant one to noise, TMS artifacts, and other challenges in the data. With measured somatosensory data, over half of the estimated components were found to be similar by MUCA and independent component analysis. MUCA was also stable when tested with several input datasets. MUCA is based on simple assumptions, and the results suggest that MUCA is robust with nonideal data. Event-related responses and BSS are valuable and popular tools in neuroscience. Correctly designed BSS is an efficient way of identifying artifactual and neural processes from nonstationary event-related data.

  17. Neural networks for event filtering at D/O/

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Cutts, D.; Hoftun, J.S.; Sornborger, A.; Johnson, C.R.; Zeller, R.T.

    1989-01-01

    Neural networks may provide important tools for pattern recognition in high energy physics. We discuss an initial exploration of these techniques, presenting the result of network simulations of several filter algorithms. The D0 data acquisition system, a MicroVAX farm, will perform critical event selection; we describe a possible implementation of neural network algorithms in this system. 7 refs., 4 figs

  18. Synchronization of Switched Neural Networks With Communication Delays via the Event-Triggered Control.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wen, Shiping; Zeng, Zhigang; Chen, Michael Z Q; Huang, Tingwen

    2017-10-01

    This paper addresses the issue of synchronization of switched delayed neural networks with communication delays via event-triggered control. For synchronizing coupled switched neural networks, we propose a novel event-triggered control law which could greatly reduce the number of control updates for synchronization tasks of coupled switched neural networks involving embedded microprocessors with limited on-board resources. The control signals are driven by properly defined events, which depend on the measurement errors and current-sampled states. By using a delay system method, a novel model of synchronization error system with delays is proposed with the communication delays and event-triggered control in the unified framework for coupled switched neural networks. The criteria are derived for the event-triggered synchronization analysis and control synthesis of switched neural networks via the Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional method and free weighting matrix approach. A numerical example is elaborated on to illustrate the effectiveness of the derived results.

  19. Event-driven simulation of neural population synchronization facilitated by electrical coupling.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Carrillo, Richard R; Ros, Eduardo; Barbour, Boris; Boucheny, Christian; Coenen, Olivier

    2007-02-01

    Most neural communication and processing tasks are driven by spikes. This has enabled the application of the event-driven simulation schemes. However the simulation of spiking neural networks based on complex models that cannot be simplified to analytical expressions (requiring numerical calculation) is very time consuming. Here we describe briefly an event-driven simulation scheme that uses pre-calculated table-based neuron characterizations to avoid numerical calculations during a network simulation, allowing the simulation of large-scale neural systems. More concretely we explain how electrical coupling can be simulated efficiently within this computation scheme, reproducing synchronization processes observed in detailed simulations of neural populations.

  20. Neural correlates of self-appraisals in the near and distant future: an event-related potential study.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yangmei Luo

    Full Text Available To investigate perceptual and neural correlates of future self-appraisals as a function of temporal distance, event-related potentials (ERPs were recorded while participants (11 women, eight men made judgments about the applicability of trait adjectives to their near future selves (i.e., one month from now and their distant future selves (i.e., three years from now. Behavioral results indicated people used fewer positive adjectives, more negative adjectives, recalled more specific events coming to mind and felt more psychologically connected to the near future self than the distant future self. Electrophysiological results demonstrated that negative trait adjectives elicited more positive ERP deflections than did positive trait adjectives in the interval between 550 and 800 ms (late positive component within the near future self condition. However, within the same interval, there were no significant differences between negative and positive traits adjectives in the distant future self condition. The results suggest that negative emotional processing in future self-appraisals is modulated by temporal distance, consistent with predictions of construal level theory.

  1. Neural Alterations in Acquired Age-Related Hearing Loss

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Raksha Anand Mudar

    2016-06-01

    Full Text Available Hearing loss is one of the most prevalent chronic health conditions in older adults. Growing evidence suggests that hearing loss is associated with reduced cognitive functioning and incident dementia. In this mini-review, we briefly examine literature on anatomical and functional alterations in the brains of adults with acquired age-associated hearing loss, which may underlie the cognitive consequences observed in this population, focusing on studies that have used structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging, diffusion tensor imaging, and event-related electroencephalography. We discuss structural and functional alterations observed in the temporal and frontal cortices and the limbic system. These neural alterations are discussed in the context of common cause, information-degradation, and sensory-deprivation hypotheses, and we suggest possible rehabilitation strategies. Although we are beginning to learn more about changes in neural architecture and functionality related to age-associated hearing loss, much work remains to be done. Understanding the neural alterations will provide objective markers for early identification of neural consequences of age-associated hearing loss and for evaluating benefits of intervention approaches.

  2. A robust neural network-based approach for microseismic event detection

    KAUST Repository

    Akram, Jubran

    2017-08-17

    We present an artificial neural network based approach for robust event detection from low S/N waveforms. We use a feed-forward network with a single hidden layer that is tuned on a training dataset and later applied on the entire example dataset for event detection. The input features used include the average of absolute amplitudes, variance, energy-ratio and polarization rectilinearity. These features are calculated in a moving-window of same length for the entire waveform. The output is set as a user-specified relative probability curve, which provides a robust way of distinguishing between weak and strong events. An optimal network is selected by studying the weight-based saliency and effect of number of neurons on the predicted results. Using synthetic data examples, we demonstrate that this approach is effective in detecting weaker events and reduces the number of false positives.

  3. Social exclusion in middle childhood: rejection events, slow-wave neural activity, and ostracism distress.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Crowley, Michael J; Wu, Jia; Molfese, Peter J; Mayes, Linda C

    2010-01-01

    This study examined neural activity with event-related potentials (ERPs) in middle childhood during a computer-simulated ball-toss game, Cyberball. After experiencing fair play initially, children were ultimately excluded by the other players. We focused specifically on “not my turn” events within fair play and rejection events within social exclusion. Dense-array ERPs revealed that rejection events are perceived rapidly. Condition differences (“not my turn” vs. rejection) were evident in a posterior ERP peaking at 420 ms consistent, with a larger P3 effect for rejection events indicating that in middle childhood rejection events are differentiated in <500 ms. Condition differences were evident for slow-wave activity (500-900 ms) in the medial frontal cortical region and the posterior occipital-parietal region, with rejection events more negative frontally and more positive posteriorly. Distress from the rejection experience was associated with a more negative frontal slow wave and a larger late positive slow wave, but only for rejection events. Source modeling with Geosouce software suggested that slow-wave neural activity in cortical regions previously identified in functional imaging studies of ostracism, including subgenual cortex, ventral anterior cingulate cortex, and insula, was greater for rejection events vs. “not my turn” events. © 2010 Psychology Press

  4. Automatic Seismic-Event Classification with Convolutional Neural Networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bueno Rodriguez, A.; Titos Luzón, M.; Garcia Martinez, L.; Benitez, C.; Ibáñez, J. M.

    2017-12-01

    Active volcanoes exhibit a wide range of seismic signals, providing vast amounts of unlabelled volcano-seismic data that can be analyzed through the lens of artificial intelligence. However, obtaining high-quality labelled data is time-consuming and expensive. Deep neural networks can process data in their raw form, compute high-level features and provide a better representation of the input data distribution. These systems can be deployed to classify seismic data at scale, enhance current early-warning systems and build extensive seismic catalogs. In this research, we aim to classify spectrograms from seven different seismic events registered at "Volcán de Fuego" (Colima, Mexico), during four eruptive periods. Our approach is based on convolutional neural networks (CNNs), a sub-type of deep neural networks that can exploit grid structure from the data. Volcano-seismic signals can be mapped into a grid-like structure using the spectrogram: a representation of the temporal evolution in terms of time and frequency. Spectrograms were computed from the data using Hamming windows with 4 seconds length, 2.5 seconds overlapping and 128 points FFT resolution. Results are compared to deep neural networks, random forest and SVMs. Experiments show that CNNs can exploit temporal and frequency information, attaining a classification accuracy of 93%, similar to deep networks 91% but outperforming SVM and random forest. These results empirically show that CNNs are powerful models to classify a wide range of volcano-seismic signals, and achieve good generalization. Furthermore, volcano-seismic spectrograms contains useful discriminative information for the CNN, as higher layers of the network combine high-level features computed for each frequency band, helping to detect simultaneous events in time. Being at the intersection of deep learning and geophysics, this research enables future studies of how CNNs can be used in volcano monitoring to accurately determine the detection and

  5. Multi-modular neural networks for the classification of e+e- hadronic events

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Proriol, J.

    1994-01-01

    Some multi-modular neural network methods of classifying e + e - hadronic events are presented. We compare the performances of the following neural networks: MLP (multilayer perceptron), MLP and LVQ (learning vector quantization) trained sequentially, and MLP and RBF (radial basis function) trained sequentially. We introduce a MLP-RBF cooperative neural network. Our last study is a multi-MLP neural network. (orig.)

  6. Event- and Time-Driven Techniques Using Parallel CPU-GPU Co-processing for Spiking Neural Networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Naveros, Francisco; Garrido, Jesus A; Carrillo, Richard R; Ros, Eduardo; Luque, Niceto R

    2017-01-01

    Modeling and simulating the neural structures which make up our central neural system is instrumental for deciphering the computational neural cues beneath. Higher levels of biological plausibility usually impose higher levels of complexity in mathematical modeling, from neural to behavioral levels. This paper focuses on overcoming the simulation problems (accuracy and performance) derived from using higher levels of mathematical complexity at a neural level. This study proposes different techniques for simulating neural models that hold incremental levels of mathematical complexity: leaky integrate-and-fire (LIF), adaptive exponential integrate-and-fire (AdEx), and Hodgkin-Huxley (HH) neural models (ranged from low to high neural complexity). The studied techniques are classified into two main families depending on how the neural-model dynamic evaluation is computed: the event-driven or the time-driven families. Whilst event-driven techniques pre-compile and store the neural dynamics within look-up tables, time-driven techniques compute the neural dynamics iteratively during the simulation time. We propose two modifications for the event-driven family: a look-up table recombination to better cope with the incremental neural complexity together with a better handling of the synchronous input activity. Regarding the time-driven family, we propose a modification in computing the neural dynamics: the bi-fixed-step integration method. This method automatically adjusts the simulation step size to better cope with the stiffness of the neural model dynamics running in CPU platforms. One version of this method is also implemented for hybrid CPU-GPU platforms. Finally, we analyze how the performance and accuracy of these modifications evolve with increasing levels of neural complexity. We also demonstrate how the proposed modifications which constitute the main contribution of this study systematically outperform the traditional event- and time-driven techniques under

  7. Can Older Adults Resist the Positivity Effect in Neural Responding: The Impact of Verbal Framing on Event-Related Brain Potentials Elicited by Emotional Images

    OpenAIRE

    Rehmert, Andrea E.; Kisley, Michael A.

    2013-01-01

    Older adults have demonstrated an avoidance of negative information presumably with a goal of greater emotional satisfaction. Understanding whether avoidance of negative information is a voluntary, motivated choice, or an involuntary, automatic response will be important to differentiate, as decision-making often involves emotional factors. With the use of an emotional framing event-related potential (ERP) paradigm, the present study investigated whether older adults could alter neural respon...

  8. Discrepancy of neural response between exogenous and endogenous task switching: an event-related potentials study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Miyajima, Maki; Toyomaki, Atsuhito; Hashimoto, Naoki; Kusumi, Ichiro; Murohashi, Harumitsu; Koyama, Tsukasa

    2012-08-01

    Task switching is a well-known cognitive paradigm to explore task-set reconfiguration processes such as rule shifting. In particular, endogenous task switching is thought to differ qualitatively from stimulus-triggered exogenous task switching. However, no previous study has examined the neural substrate of endogenous task switching. The purpose of the present study is to explore the differences between event-related potential responses to exogenous and endogenous rule switching at cue stimulus. We modified two patterns of cued switching tasks: exogenous (bottom-up) rule switching and endogenous (top-down) rule switching. In each task cue stimulus was configured to induce switching or maintaining rule. In exogenous switching tasks, late positive deflection was larger in the switch rule condition than in the maintain rule condition. However, in endogenous switching tasks late positive deflection was unexpectedly larger in the maintain-rule condition than in the switch-rule condition. These results indicate that exogenous rule switching is explicit stimulus-driven processes, whereas endogenous rule switching is implicitly parallel processes independent of external stimulus.

  9. Recognition of power quality events by using multiwavelet-based neural networks

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Kaewarsa, Suriya; Attakitmongcol, Kitti; Kulworawanichpong, Thanatchai [School of Electrical Engineering, Suranaree University of Technology, 111 University Avenue, Muang District, Nakhon Ratchasima 30000 (Thailand)

    2008-05-15

    Recognition of power quality events by analyzing the voltage and current waveform disturbances is a very important task for the power system monitoring. This paper presents a novel approach for the recognition of power quality disturbances using multiwavelet transform and neural networks. The proposed method employs the multiwavelet transform using multiresolution signal decomposition techniques working together with multiple neural networks using a learning vector quantization network as a powerful classifier. Various transient events are tested, such as voltage sag, swell, interruption, notching, impulsive transient, and harmonic distortion show that the classifier can detect and classify different power quality signal types efficiency. (author)

  10. Event management for large scale event-driven digital hardware spiking neural networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Caron, Louis-Charles; D'Haene, Michiel; Mailhot, Frédéric; Schrauwen, Benjamin; Rouat, Jean

    2013-09-01

    The interest in brain-like computation has led to the design of a plethora of innovative neuromorphic systems. Individually, spiking neural networks (SNNs), event-driven simulation and digital hardware neuromorphic systems get a lot of attention. Despite the popularity of event-driven SNNs in software, very few digital hardware architectures are found. This is because existing hardware solutions for event management scale badly with the number of events. This paper introduces the structured heap queue, a pipelined digital hardware data structure, and demonstrates its suitability for event management. The structured heap queue scales gracefully with the number of events, allowing the efficient implementation of large scale digital hardware event-driven SNNs. The scaling is linear for memory, logarithmic for logic resources and constant for processing time. The use of the structured heap queue is demonstrated on a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) with an image segmentation experiment and a SNN of 65,536 neurons and 513,184 synapses. Events can be processed at the rate of 1 every 7 clock cycles and a 406×158 pixel image is segmented in 200 ms. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  11. Automatic Classification of volcano-seismic events based on Deep Neural Networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Titos Luzón, M.; Bueno Rodriguez, A.; Garcia Martinez, L.; Benitez, C.; Ibáñez, J. M.

    2017-12-01

    Seismic monitoring of active volcanoes is a popular remote sensing technique to detect seismic activity, often associated to energy exchanges between the volcano and the environment. As a result, seismographs register a wide range of volcano-seismic signals that reflect the nature and underlying physics of volcanic processes. Machine learning and signal processing techniques provide an appropriate framework to analyze such data. In this research, we propose a new classification framework for seismic events based on deep neural networks. Deep neural networks are composed by multiple processing layers, and can discover intrinsic patterns from the data itself. Internal parameters can be initialized using a greedy unsupervised pre-training stage, leading to an efficient training of fully connected architectures. We aim to determine the robustness of these architectures as classifiers of seven different types of seismic events recorded at "Volcán de Fuego" (Colima, Mexico). Two deep neural networks with different pre-training strategies are studied: stacked denoising autoencoder and deep belief networks. Results are compared to existing machine learning algorithms (SVM, Random Forest, Multilayer Perceptron). We used 5 LPC coefficients over three non-overlapping segments as training features in order to characterize temporal evolution, avoid redundancy and encode the signal, regardless of its duration. Experimental results show that deep architectures can classify seismic events with higher accuracy than classical algorithms, attaining up to 92% recognition accuracy. Pre-training initialization helps these models to detect events that occur simultaneously in time (such explosions and rockfalls), increase robustness against noisy inputs, and provide better generalization. These results demonstrate deep neural networks are robust classifiers, and can be deployed in real-environments to monitor the seismicity of restless volcanoes.

  12. The neural basis of love as a subliminal prime: an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ortigue, S; Bianchi-Demicheli, F; Hamilton, A F de C; Grafton, S T

    2007-07-01

    Throughout the ages, love has been defined as a motivated and goal-directed mechanism with explicit and implicit mechanisms. Recent evidence demonstrated that the explicit representation of love recruits subcorticocortical pathways mediating reward, emotion, and motivation systems. However, the neural basis of the implicit (unconscious) representation of love remains unknown. To assess this question, we combined event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with a behavioral subliminal priming paradigm embedded in a lexical decision task. In this task, the name of either a beloved partner, a neutral friend, or a passionate hobby was subliminally presented before a target stimulus (word, nonword, or blank), and participants were required to decide if the target was a word or not. Behavioral results showed that subliminal presentation of either a beloved's name (love prime) or a passion descriptor (passion prime) enhanced reaction times in a similar fashion. Subliminal presentation of a friend's name (friend prime) did not show any beneficial effects. Functional results showed that subliminal priming with a beloved's name (as opposed to either a friend's name or a passion descriptor) specifically recruited brain areas involved in abstract representations of others and the self, in addition to motivation circuits shared with other sources of passion. More precisely, love primes recruited the fusiform and angular gyri. Our findings suggest that love, as a subliminal prime, involves a specific neural network that surpasses a dopaminergic-motivation system.

  13. Differences in the neural signature of remembering schema-congruent and schema-incongruent events.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brod, Garvin; Lindenberger, Ulman; Werkle-Bergner, Markus; Shing, Yee Lee

    2015-08-15

    New experiences are remembered in relation to one's existing world knowledge or schema. Recent research suggests that the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) supports the retrieval of schema-congruent information. However, the neural mechanisms supporting memory for information violating a schema have remained elusive, presumably because incongruity is inherently ambiguous in tasks that rely on world knowledge. We present a novel paradigm that experimentally induces hierarchically structured knowledge to directly contrast neural correlates that contribute to the successful retrieval of schema-congruent versus schema-incongruent information. We hypothesize that remembering incongruent events engages source memory networks including the lateral PFC. In a sample of young adults, we observed enhanced activity in the dorsolateral PFC (DLPFC), in the posterior parietal cortex, and in the striatum when successfully retrieving incongruent events, along with enhanced connectivity between DLPFC and striatum. In addition, we found enhanced mPFC activity for successfully retrieved events that are congruent with the induced schema, presumably reflecting a role of the mPFC in biasing retrieval towards schema-congruent episodes. We conclude that medial and lateral PFC contributions to memory retrieval differ by schema congruency, and highlight the utility of the new experimental paradigm for addressing developmental research questions. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  14. Emotion identification and aging: Behavioral and neural age-related changes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gonçalves, Ana R; Fernandes, Carina; Pasion, Rita; Ferreira-Santos, Fernando; Barbosa, Fernando; Marques-Teixeira, João

    2018-05-01

    Aging is known to alter the processing of facial expressions of emotion (FEE), however the impact of this alteration is less clear. Additionally, there is little information about the temporal dynamics of the neural processing of facial affect. We examined behavioral and neural age-related changes in the identification of FEE using event-related potentials. Furthermore, we analyze the relationship between behavioral/neural responses and neuropsychological functioning. To this purpose, 30 younger adults, 29 middle-aged adults and 26 older adults identified FEE. The behavioral results showed a similar performance between groups. The neural results showed no significant differences between groups for the P100 component and an increased N170 amplitude in the older group. Furthermore, a pattern of asymmetric activation was evident in the N170 component. Results also suggest deficits in facial feature decoding abilities, reflected by a reduced N250 amplitude in older adults. Neuropsychological functioning predicts P100 modulation, but does not seem to influence emotion identification ability. The findings suggest the existence of a compensatory function that would explain the age-equivalent performance in emotion identification. The study may help future research addressing behavioral and neural processes involved on processing of FEE in neurodegenerative conditions. Copyright © 2018 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  15. Cryogenic dark matter search (CDMS II): Application of neural networks and wavelets to event analysis

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Attisha, Michael J. [Brown U.

    2006-01-01

    The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) experiment is designed to search for dark matter in the form of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) via their elastic scattering interactions with nuclei. This dissertation presents the CDMS detector technology and the commissioning of two towers of detectors at the deep underground site in Soudan, Minnesota. CDMS detectors comprise crystals of Ge and Si at temperatures of 20 mK which provide ~keV energy resolution and the ability to perform particle identification on an event by event basis. Event identification is performed via a two-fold interaction signature; an ionization response and an athermal phonon response. Phonons and charged particles result in electron recoils in the crystal, while neutrons and WIMPs result in nuclear recoils. Since the ionization response is quenched by a factor ~ 3(2) in Ge(Si) for nuclear recoils compared to electron recoils, the relative amplitude of the two detector responses allows discrimination between recoil types. The primary source of background events in CDMS arises from electron recoils in the outer 50 µm of the detector surface which have a reduced ionization response. We develop a quantitative model of this ‘dead layer’ effect and successfully apply the model to Monte Carlo simulation of CDMS calibration data. Analysis of data from the two tower run March-August 2004 is performed, resulting in the world’s most sensitive limits on the spin-independent WIMP-nucleon cross-section, with a 90% C.L. upper limit of 1.6 × 10-43 cm2 on Ge for a 60 GeV WIMP. An approach to performing surface event discrimination using neural networks and wavelets is developed. A Bayesian methodology to classifying surface events using neural networks is found to provide an optimized method based on minimization of the expected dark matter limit. The discrete wavelet analysis of CDMS phonon pulses improves surface event discrimination in conjunction with the neural

  16. A robust neural network-based approach for microseismic event detection

    KAUST Repository

    Akram, Jubran; Ovcharenko, Oleg; Peter, Daniel

    2017-01-01

    We present an artificial neural network based approach for robust event detection from low S/N waveforms. We use a feed-forward network with a single hidden layer that is tuned on a training dataset and later applied on the entire example dataset

  17. Event-related theta synchronization predicts deficit in facial affect recognition in schizophrenia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Csukly, Gábor; Stefanics, Gábor; Komlósi, Sarolta; Czigler, István; Czobor, Pál

    2014-02-01

    Growing evidence suggests that abnormalities in the synchronized oscillatory activity of neurons in schizophrenia may lead to impaired neural activation and temporal coding and thus lead to neurocognitive dysfunctions, such as deficits in facial affect recognition. To gain an insight into the neurobiological processes linked to facial affect recognition, we investigated both induced and evoked oscillatory activity by calculating the Event Related Spectral Perturbation (ERSP) and the Inter Trial Coherence (ITC) during facial affect recognition. Fearful and neutral faces as well as nonface patches were presented to 24 patients with schizophrenia and 24 matched healthy controls while EEG was recorded. The participants' task was to recognize facial expressions. Because previous findings with healthy controls showed that facial feature decoding was associated primarily with oscillatory activity in the theta band, we analyzed ERSP and ITC in this frequency band in the time interval of 140-200 ms, which corresponds to the N170 component. Event-related theta activity and phase-locking to facial expressions, but not to nonface patches, predicted emotion recognition performance in both controls and patients. Event-related changes in theta amplitude and phase-locking were found to be significantly weaker in patients compared with healthy controls, which is in line with previous investigations showing decreased neural synchronization in the low frequency bands in patients with schizophrenia. Neural synchrony is thought to underlie distributed information processing. Our results indicate a less effective functioning in the recognition process of facial features, which may contribute to a less effective social cognition in schizophrenia. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.

  18. Acoustic Event Detection in Multichannel Audio Using Gated Recurrent Neural Networks with High‐Resolution Spectral Features

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hyoung‐Gook Kim

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available Recently, deep recurrent neural networks have achieved great success in various machine learning tasks, and have also been applied for sound event detection. The detection of temporally overlapping sound events in realistic environments is much more challenging than in monophonic detection problems. In this paper, we present an approach to improve the accuracy of polyphonic sound event detection in multichannel audio based on gated recurrent neural networks in combination with auditory spectral features. In the proposed method, human hearing perception‐based spatial and spectral‐domain noise‐reduced harmonic features are extracted from multichannel audio and used as high‐resolution spectral inputs to train gated recurrent neural networks. This provides a fast and stable convergence rate compared to long short‐term memory recurrent neural networks. Our evaluation reveals that the proposed method outperforms the conventional approaches.

  19. Neural activation in stress-related exhaustion

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Gavelin, Hanna Malmberg; Neely, Anna Stigsdotter; Andersson, Micael

    2017-01-01

    The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the association between burnout and neural activation during working memory processing in patients with stress-related exhaustion. Additionally, we investigated the neural effects of cognitive training as part of stress rehabilitation. Fifty...... association between burnout level and working memory performance was found, however, our findings indicate that frontostriatal neural responses related to working memory were modulated by burnout severity. We suggest that patients with high levels of burnout need to recruit additional cognitive resources...... to uphold task performance. Following cognitive training, increased neural activation was observed during 3-back in working memory-related regions, including the striatum, however, low sample size limits any firm conclusions....

  20. Neural correlates of face and object perception in an awake chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes examined by scalp-surface event-related potentials.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hirokata Fukushima

    Full Text Available BACKGROUND: The neural system of our closest living relative, the chimpanzee, is a topic of increasing research interest. However, electrophysiological examinations of neural activity during visual processing in awake chimpanzees are currently lacking. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: In the present report, skin-surface event-related brain potentials (ERPs were measured while a fully awake chimpanzee observed photographs of faces and objects in two experiments. In Experiment 1, human faces and stimuli composed of scrambled face images were displayed. In Experiment 2, three types of pictures (faces, flowers, and cars were presented. The waveforms evoked by face stimuli were distinguished from other stimulus types, as reflected by an enhanced early positivity appearing before 200 ms post stimulus, and an enhanced late negativity after 200 ms, around posterior and occipito-temporal sites. Face-sensitive activity was clearly observed in both experiments. However, in contrast to the robustly observed face-evoked N170 component in humans, we found that faces did not elicit a peak in the latency range of 150-200 ms in either experiment. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Although this pilot study examined a single subject and requires further examination, the observed scalp voltage patterns suggest that selective processing of faces in the chimpanzee brain can be detected by recording surface ERPs. In addition, this non-invasive method for examining an awake chimpanzee can be used to extend our knowledge of the characteristics of visual cognition in other primate species.

  1. Event classification with the electronic detectors of the OPERA experiment using neural networks

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Hierholzer, Martin C.

    2012-02-01

    The OPERA experiment searches for ν μ ν τ oscillations in appearance mode. It uses the emulsion cloud chamber (ECC) technique for a high spatial resolution combined with on-line components for event localisation and muon identification. The analysis of events in an ECC detector takes considerable time, especially in case of ν τ /ν e candidate events. A ranking of events by a probability for being a ν τ /ν e event can speed up the analysis of the OPERA experiment. An algorithm for such an event ranking based on a classification-type neural network is presented in this thesis. Almost all candidate events can be found within the first 30% of the analysed events if the described ranking is applied. This event ranking is currently applied for testing purposes by the OPERA collaboration, a decision on a full application for the whole analysis is pending. A similar neural network is used for discrimination between neutral and charged current events. This is used to observe neutrino oscillations in disappearance mode with the on-line components of the OPERA detector by measuring the energy dependence of the fraction of neutral current interactions. The confidence level of the observed oscillation effect is 87%. Assuming full mixing, the mass splitting has been determined to vertical stroke Δm 2 32 vertical stroke =2.8 -1.7 +1.4 .10 -3 eV 2 .

  2. The modulating effect of personality traits on neural error monitoring: evidence from event-related FMRI.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sosic-Vasic, Zrinka; Ulrich, Martin; Ruchsow, Martin; Vasic, Nenad; Grön, Georg

    2012-01-01

    The present study investigated the association between traits of the Five Factor Model of Personality (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness for Experiences, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness) and neural correlates of error monitoring obtained from a combined Eriksen-Flanker-Go/NoGo task during event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging in 27 healthy subjects. Individual expressions of personality traits were measured using the NEO-PI-R questionnaire. Conscientiousness correlated positively with error signaling in the left inferior frontal gyrus and adjacent anterior insula (IFG/aI). A second strong positive correlation was observed in the anterior cingulate gyrus (ACC). Neuroticism was negatively correlated with error signaling in the inferior frontal cortex possibly reflecting the negative inter-correlation between both scales observed on the behavioral level. Under present statistical thresholds no significant results were obtained for remaining scales. Aligning the personality trait of Conscientiousness with task accomplishment striving behavior the correlation in the left IFG/aI possibly reflects an inter-individually different involvement whenever task-set related memory representations are violated by the occurrence of errors. The strong correlations in the ACC may indicate that more conscientious subjects were stronger affected by these violations of a given task-set expressed by individually different, negatively valenced signals conveyed by the ACC upon occurrence of an error. Present results illustrate that for predicting individual responses to errors underlying personality traits should be taken into account and also lend external validity to the personality trait approach suggesting that personality constructs do reflect more than mere descriptive taxonomies.

  3. The modulating effect of personality traits on neural error monitoring: evidence from event-related FMRI.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Zrinka Sosic-Vasic

    Full Text Available The present study investigated the association between traits of the Five Factor Model of Personality (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness for Experiences, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness and neural correlates of error monitoring obtained from a combined Eriksen-Flanker-Go/NoGo task during event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging in 27 healthy subjects. Individual expressions of personality traits were measured using the NEO-PI-R questionnaire. Conscientiousness correlated positively with error signaling in the left inferior frontal gyrus and adjacent anterior insula (IFG/aI. A second strong positive correlation was observed in the anterior cingulate gyrus (ACC. Neuroticism was negatively correlated with error signaling in the inferior frontal cortex possibly reflecting the negative inter-correlation between both scales observed on the behavioral level. Under present statistical thresholds no significant results were obtained for remaining scales. Aligning the personality trait of Conscientiousness with task accomplishment striving behavior the correlation in the left IFG/aI possibly reflects an inter-individually different involvement whenever task-set related memory representations are violated by the occurrence of errors. The strong correlations in the ACC may indicate that more conscientious subjects were stronger affected by these violations of a given task-set expressed by individually different, negatively valenced signals conveyed by the ACC upon occurrence of an error. Present results illustrate that for predicting individual responses to errors underlying personality traits should be taken into account and also lend external validity to the personality trait approach suggesting that personality constructs do reflect more than mere descriptive taxonomies.

  4. Can older adults resist the positivity effect in neural responding? The impact of verbal framing on event-related brain potentials elicited by emotional images.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rehmert, Andrea E; Kisley, Michael A

    2013-10-01

    Older adults have demonstrated an avoidance of negative information, presumably with a goal of greater emotional satisfaction. Understanding whether avoidance of negative information is a voluntary, motivated choice or an involuntary, automatic response will be important to differentiate, as decision making often involves emotional factors. With the use of an emotional framing event-related potential (ERP) paradigm, the present study investigated whether older adults could alter neural responses to negative stimuli through verbal reframing of evaluative response options. The late positive potential (LPP) response of 50 older adults and 50 younger adults was recorded while participants categorized emotional images in one of two framing conditions: positive ("more or less positive") or negative ("more or less negative"). It was hypothesized that older adults would be able to overcome a presumed tendency to down-regulate neural responding to negative stimuli in the negative framing condition, thus leading to larger LPP wave amplitudes to negative images. A similar effect was predicted for younger adults, but for positively valenced images, such that LPP responses would be increased in the positive framing condition compared with the negative framing condition. Overall, younger adults' LPP wave amplitudes were modulated by framing condition, including a reduction in the negativity bias in the positive frame. Older adults' neural responses were not significantly modulated, even though task-related behavior supported the notion that older adults were able to successfully adopt the negative framing condition.

  5. Can Older Adults Resist the Positivity Effect in Neural Responding: The Impact of Verbal Framing on Event-Related Brain Potentials Elicited by Emotional Images

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rehmert, Andrea E.; Kisley, Michael A.

    2014-01-01

    Older adults have demonstrated an avoidance of negative information presumably with a goal of greater emotional satisfaction. Understanding whether avoidance of negative information is a voluntary, motivated choice, or an involuntary, automatic response will be important to differentiate, as decision-making often involves emotional factors. With the use of an emotional framing event-related potential (ERP) paradigm, the present study investigated whether older adults could alter neural responses to negative stimuli through verbal reframing of evaluative response options. The late-positive potential (LPP) response of 50 older adults and 50 younger adults was recorded while participants categorized emotional images in one of two framing conditions: positive (“more or less positive”) or negative (“more or less negative”). It was hypothesized that older adults would be able to overcome a presumed tendency to down-regulate neural responding to negative stimuli in the negative framing condition thus leading to larger LPP wave amplitudes to negative images. A similar effect was predicted for younger adults but for positively valenced images such that LPP responses would be increased in the positive framing condition compared to the negative framing condition. Overall, younger adults' LPP wave amplitudes were modulated by framing condition, including a reduction in the negativity bias in the positive frame. Older adults' neural responses were not significantly modulated even though task-related behavior supported the notion that older adults were able to successfully adopt the negative framing condition. PMID:23731435

  6. Event-Related Potentials for Post-Error and Post-Conflict Slowing

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chang, Andrew; Chen, Chien-Chung; Li, Hsin-Hung; Li, Chiang-Shan R.

    2014-01-01

    In a reaction time task, people typically slow down following an error or conflict, each called post-error slowing (PES) and post-conflict slowing (PCS). Despite many studies of the cognitive mechanisms, the neural responses of PES and PCS continue to be debated. In this study, we combined high-density array EEG and a stop-signal task to examine event-related potentials of PES and PCS in sixteen young adult participants. The results showed that the amplitude of N2 is greater during PES but not PCS. In contrast, the peak latency of N2 is longer for PCS but not PES. Furthermore, error-positivity (Pe) but not error-related negativity (ERN) was greater in the stop error trials preceding PES than non-PES trials, suggesting that PES is related to participants' awareness of the error. Together, these findings extend earlier work of cognitive control by specifying the neural correlates of PES and PCS in the stop signal task. PMID:24932780

  7. Prediction of Increasing Production Activities using Combination of Query Aggregation on Complex Events Processing and Neural Network

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Achmad Arwan

    2016-07-01

    Full Text Available AbstrakProduksi, order, penjualan, dan pengiriman adalah serangkaian event yang saling terkait dalam industri manufaktur. Selanjutnya hasil dari event tersebut dicatat dalam event log. Complex Event Processing adalah metode yang digunakan untuk menganalisis apakah terdapat pola kombinasi peristiwa tertentu (peluang/ancaman yang terjadi pada sebuah sistem, sehingga dapat ditangani secara cepat dan tepat. Jaringan saraf tiruan adalah metode yang digunakan untuk mengklasifikasi data peningkatan proses produksi. Hasil pencatatan rangkaian proses yang menyebabkan peningkatan produksi digunakan sebagai data latih untuk mendapatkan fungsi aktivasi dari jaringan saraf tiruan. Penjumlahan hasil catatan event log dimasukkan ke input jaringan saraf tiruan untuk perhitungan nilai aktivasi. Ketika nilai aktivasi lebih dari batas yang ditentukan, maka sistem mengeluarkan sinyal untuk meningkatkan produksi, jika tidak, sistem tetap memantau kejadian. Hasil percobaan menunjukkan bahwa akurasi dari metode ini adalah 77% dari 39 rangkaian aliran event.Kata kunci: complex event processing, event, jaringan saraf tiruan, prediksi peningkatan produksi, proses. AbstractProductions, orders, sales, and shipments are series of interrelated events within manufacturing industry. Further these events were recorded in the event log. Complex event processing is a method that used to analyze whether there are patterns of combinations of certain events (opportunities / threats that occur in a system, so it can be addressed quickly and appropriately. Artificial neural network is a method that we used to classify production increase activities. The series of events that cause the increase of the production used as a dataset to train the weight of neural network which result activation value. An aggregate stream of events inserted into the neural network input to compute the value of activation. When the value is over a certain threshold (the activation value results

  8. Dynamic Neural Processing of Linguistic Cues Related to Death

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ma, Yina; Qin, Jungang; Han, Shihui

    2013-01-01

    Behavioral studies suggest that humans evolve the capacity to cope with anxiety induced by the awareness of death’s inevitability. However, the neurocognitive processes that underlie online death-related thoughts remain unclear. Our recent functional MRI study found that the processing of linguistic cues related to death was characterized by decreased neural activity in human insular cortex. The current study further investigated the time course of neural processing of death-related linguistic cues. We recorded event-related potentials (ERP) to death-related, life-related, negative-valence, and neutral-valence words in a modified Stroop task that required color naming of words. We found that the amplitude of an early frontal/central negativity at 84–120 ms (N1) decreased to death-related words but increased to life-related words relative to neutral-valence words. The N1 effect associated with death-related and life-related words was correlated respectively with individuals’ pessimistic and optimistic attitudes toward life. Death-related words also increased the amplitude of a frontal/central positivity at 124–300 ms (P2) and of a frontal/central positivity at 300–500 ms (P3). However, the P2 and P3 modulations were observed for both death-related and negative-valence words but not for life-related words. The ERP results suggest an early inverse coding of linguistic cues related to life and death, which is followed by negative emotional responses to death-related information. PMID:23840787

  9. Event classification with the electronic detectors of the OPERA experiment using neural networks

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Hierholzer, Martin C.

    2012-02-15

    The OPERA experiment searches for {nu}{sub {mu}} <-> {nu}{sub {tau}} oscillations in appearance mode. It uses the emulsion cloud chamber (ECC) technique for a high spatial resolution combined with on-line components for event localisation and muon identification. The analysis of events in an ECC detector takes considerable time, especially in case of {nu}{sub {tau}}/{nu}{sub e} candidate events. A ranking of events by a probability for being a {nu}{sub {tau}}/{nu}{sub e} event can speed up the analysis of the OPERA experiment. An algorithm for such an event ranking based on a classification-type neural network is presented in this thesis. Almost all candidate events can be found within the first 30% of the analysed events if the described ranking is applied. This event ranking is currently applied for testing purposes by the OPERA collaboration, a decision on a full application for the whole analysis is pending. A similar neural network is used for discrimination between neutral and charged current events. This is used to observe neutrino oscillations in disappearance mode with the on-line components of the OPERA detector by measuring the energy dependence of the fraction of neutral current interactions. The confidence level of the observed oscillation effect is 87%. Assuming full mixing, the mass splitting has been determined to vertical stroke {delta}m{sup 2}{sub 32} vertical stroke =2.8{sub -1.7}{sup +1.4}.10{sup -3}eV{sup 2}.

  10. Tracking cognitive phases in analogical reasoning with event-related potentials.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Maguire, Mandy J; McClelland, M Michelle; Donovan, Colin M; Tillman, Gail D; Krawczyk, Daniel C

    2012-03-01

    Analogical reasoning consists of multiple phases. Four-term analogies (A:B::C:D) have an encoding period in which the A:B pair is evaluated prior to a mapping phase. The electrophysiological timing associated with analogical reasoning has remained unclear. We used event-related potentials to identify neural timing related to analogical reasoning relative to perceptual and semantic control conditions. Spatiotemporal principal-components analyses revealed differences primarily in left frontal electrodes during encoding and mapping phases of analogies relative to the other conditions. The timing of the activity differed depending upon the phase of the problem. During the encoding of A:B terms, analogies elicited a positive deflection compared to the control conditions between 400 and 1,200 ms, but for the mapping phase analogical processing elicited a negative deflection that occurred earlier and for a shorter time period, between 350 and 625 ms. These results provide neural and behavioral evidence that 4-term analogy problems involve a highly active evaluation phase of the A:B pair. 2012 APA, all rights reserved

  11. Social contexts modulate neural responses in the processing of others' pain: An event-related potential study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cui, Fang; Zhu, Xiangru; Luo, Yuejia

    2017-08-01

    Two hypotheses have been proposed regarding the response that is triggered by observing others' pain: the "empathizing hypothesis" and the "threat value of pain hypothesis." The former suggests that observing others' pain triggers an empathic response. The latter suggests that it activates the threat-detection system. In the present study, participants were instructed to observe pictures that showed an anonymous hand or foot in a painful or non-painful situation in a threatening or friendly social context. Event-related potentials were recorded when the participants passively observed these pictures in different contexts. We observed an interaction between context and picture in the early automatic N1 component, in which the painful pictures elicited a larger amplitude than the non-painful pictures only in the threatening context and not in the friendly context. We also observed an interaction between context and picture in the late P3 component, in which the painful pictures elicited a larger amplitude than the non-painful pictures only in the friendly context and not in the threatening context. These results indicate that specific social contexts can modulate the neural responses to observing others' pain. The "empathic hypothesis" and "threat value of pain hypothesis" are not mutually exclusive and do not contradict each other but rather work in different temporal stages.

  12. Not my future? Core values and the neural representation of future events.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brosch, Tobias; Stussi, Yoann; Desrichard, Olivier; Sander, David

    2018-06-01

    Individuals with pronounced self-transcendence values have been shown to put greater weight on the long-term consequences of their actions when making decisions. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated the neural mechanisms underlying the evaluation of events occurring several decades in the future as well as the role of core values in these processes. Thirty-six participants viewed a series of events, consisting of potential consequences of climate change, which could occur in the near future (around 2030), and thus would be experienced by the participants themselves, or in the far future (around 2080). We observed increased activation in anterior VMPFC (BA11), a region involved in encoding the personal significance of future events, when participants were envisioning far future events, demonstrating for the first time that the role of the VMPFC in future projection extends to the time scale of decades. Importantly, this activation increase was observed only in participants with pronounced self-transcendence values measured by self-report questionnaire, as shown by a statistically significant interaction of temporal distance and value structure. These findings suggest that future projection mechanisms are modulated by self-transcendence values to allow for a more extensive simulation of far future events. Consistent with this, these participants reported similar concern ratings for near and far future events, whereas participants with pronounced self-enhancement values were more concerned about near future events. Our findings provide a neural substrate for the tendency of individuals with pronounced self-transcendence values to consider the long-term consequences of their actions.

  13. Convolutional neural networks applied to neutrino events in a liquid argon time projection chamber

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Acciarri, R.; Adams, C.; An, R.; Asaadi, J.; Auger, M.

    2017-01-01

    Here, we present several studies of convolutional neural networks applied to data coming from the MicroBooNE detector, a liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC). The algorithms studied include the classification of single particle images, the localization of single particle and neutrino interactions in an image, and the detection of a simulated neutrino event overlaid with cosmic ray backgrounds taken from real detector data. These studies demonstrate the potential of convolutional neural networks for particle identification or event detection on simulated neutrino interactions. Lastly, we also address technical issues that arise when applying this technique to data from a large LArTPC at or near ground level.

  14. Convolutional neural networks applied to neutrino events in a liquid argon time projection chamber

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Acciarri, R.; Adams, C.; An, R.; Asaadi, J.; Auger, M.; Bagby, L.; Baller, B.; Barr, G.; Bass, M.; Bay, F.; Bishai, M.; Blake, A.; Bolton, T.; Bugel, L.; Camilleri, L.; Caratelli, D.; Carls, B.; Fernandez, R. Castillo; Cavanna, F.; Chen, H.; Church, E.; Cianci, D.; Collin, G. H.; Conrad, J. M.; Convery, M.; Crespo-Anad?n, J. I.; Del Tutto, M.; Devitt, D.; Dytman, S.; Eberly, B.; Ereditato, A.; Sanchez, L. Escudero; Esquivel, J.; Fleming, B. T.; Foreman, W.; Furmanski, A. P.; Garvey, G. T.; Genty, V.; Goeldi, D.; Gollapinni, S.; Graf, N.; Gramellini, E.; Greenlee, H.; Grosso, R.; Guenette, R.; Hackenburg, A.; Hamilton, P.; Hen, O.; Hewes, J.; Hill, C.; Ho, J.; Horton-Smith, G.; James, C.; de Vries, J. Jan; Jen, C. -M.; Jiang, L.; Johnson, R. A.; Jones, B. J. P.; Joshi, J.; Jostlein, H.; Kaleko, D.; Karagiorgi, G.; Ketchum, W.; Kirby, B.; Kirby, M.; Kobilarcik, T.; Kreslo, I.; Laube, A.; Li, Y.; Lister, A.; Littlejohn, B. R.; Lockwitz, S.; Lorca, D.; Louis, W. C.; Luethi, M.; Lundberg, B.; Luo, X.; Marchionni, A.; Mariani, C.; Marshall, J.; Caicedo, D. A. Martinez; Meddage, V.; Miceli, T.; Mills, G. B.; Moon, J.; Mooney, M.; Moore, C. D.; Mousseau, J.; Murrells, R.; Naples, D.; Nienaber, P.; Nowak, J.; Palamara, O.; Paolone, V.; Papavassiliou, V.; Pate, S. F.; Pavlovic, Z.; Porzio, D.; Pulliam, G.; Qian, X.; Raaf, J. L.; Rafique, A.; Rochester, L.; von Rohr, C. Rudolf; Russell, B.; Schmitz, D. W.; Schukraft, A.; Seligman, W.; Shaevitz, M. H.; Sinclair, J.; Snider, E. L.; Soderberg, M.; S?ldner-Rembold, S.; Soleti, S. R.; Spentzouris, P.; Spitz, J.; St. John, J.; Strauss, T.; Szelc, A. M.; Tagg, N.; Terao, K.; Thomson, M.; Toups, M.; Tsai, Y. -T.; Tufanli, S.; Usher, T.; Van de Water, R. G.; Viren, B.; Weber, M.; Weston, J.; Wickremasinghe, D. A.; Wolbers, S.; Wongjirad, T.; Woodruff, K.; Yang, T.; Zeller, G. P.; Zennamo, J.; Zhang, C.

    2017-03-01

    We present several studies of convolutional neural networks applied to data coming from the MicroBooNE detector, a liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC). The algorithms studied include the classification of single particle images, the localization of single particle and neutrino interactions in an image, and the detection of a simulated neutrino event overlaid with cosmic ray backgrounds taken from real detector data. These studies demonstrate the potential of convolutional neural networks for particle identification or event detection on simulated neutrino interactions. We also address technical issues that arise when applying this technique to data from a large LArTPC at or near ground level.

  15. Lexical decision making in adults with dyslexia: an event-related potential study

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Karen E. Waldie

    2012-12-01

    Full Text Available http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/2175-8026.2012n63p37   Performance on a lexical decision task was investigated in 12 English speaking adults with dyslexia.  two age-matched comparison groups of unimpaired readers were included: 14 monolingual adults and 15 late proficient bilinguals. The aim of the study was to determine the timing of neural events with event-related potentials (ErPs during lexical decision-making between individuals with dyslexia and unimpaired readers (both unilingual and bilingual. ErPs were calculated for posterior sites in the left and right hemispheres and the P1 and n170 components were compared between groups. Event-related EEG  coherence (measuring  the synchrony of neural events during lexical tasks both between and within cerebral hemispheres was also calculated for seven electrode pairs (three pairs at symmetrical locations between hemispheres, and two pairs within each hemisphere. We chose to recruit two comparison groups of unimpaired readers to better clarify the findings resulting from the right hemisphere (EEG coherence analysis. That is, both late-proficient bilinguals and adults with dyslexia are thought to rely on right hemisphere resources during reading. We hypothesized that those with dyslexia would show less within-hemisphere coherence and more between-hemisphere coherence than bilingual individuals. dyslexics had both lower amplitude and longer latency n170 activation than unimpaired readers, suggesting asynchronous neural activity. Dyslexics showed greater synchrony between hemispheres in gamma range frequencies whereas the bilingual group showed greater synchrony in the theta frequency band (both within and between hemispheres. This study demonstrates that individuals with developmental dyslexia have reduced amplitudes in the n170 and higher synchrony between hemispheres during a reading task. The differences may be due to an asynchrony of neuronal activity at the point where

  16. Aesthetic appreciation: event-related field and time-frequency analyses.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Munar, Enric; Nadal, Marcos; Castellanos, Nazareth P; Flexas, Albert; Maestú, Fernando; Mirasso, Claudio; Cela-Conde, Camilo J

    2011-01-01

    Improvements in neuroimaging methods have afforded significant advances in our knowledge of the cognitive and neural foundations of aesthetic appreciation. We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to register brain activity while participants decided about the beauty of visual stimuli. The data were analyzed with event-related field (ERF) and Time-Frequency (TF) procedures. ERFs revealed no significant differences between brain activity related with stimuli rated as "beautiful" and "not beautiful." TF analysis showed clear differences between both conditions 400 ms after stimulus onset. Oscillatory power was greater for stimuli rated as "beautiful" than those regarded as "not beautiful" in the four frequency bands (theta, alpha, beta, and gamma). These results are interpreted in the frame of synchronization studies.

  17. Exponential Synchronization of Networked Chaotic Delayed Neural Network by a Hybrid Event Trigger Scheme.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fei, Zhongyang; Guan, Chaoxu; Gao, Huijun; Zhongyang Fei; Chaoxu Guan; Huijun Gao; Fei, Zhongyang; Guan, Chaoxu; Gao, Huijun

    2018-06-01

    This paper is concerned with the exponential synchronization for master-slave chaotic delayed neural network with event trigger control scheme. The model is established on a network control framework, where both external disturbance and network-induced delay are taken into consideration. The desired aim is to synchronize the master and slave systems with limited communication capacity and network bandwidth. In order to save the network resource, we adopt a hybrid event trigger approach, which not only reduces the data package sending out, but also gets rid of the Zeno phenomenon. By using an appropriate Lyapunov functional, a sufficient criterion for the stability is proposed for the error system with extended ( , , )-dissipativity performance index. Moreover, hybrid event trigger scheme and controller are codesigned for network-based delayed neural network to guarantee the exponential synchronization between the master and slave systems. The effectiveness and potential of the proposed results are demonstrated through a numerical example.

  18. Tagging b and c quark events in e+e- collisions with neural networks

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Proriol, J.; Falvard, A.; Henrard, P.; Jousset, J.; Brandl, B.

    1992-01-01

    High purity samples of b quark events and, if possible, of c quark events are attempted to produce, and the width of Γ(Z 0 → bb-bar) is measured. The different variables and the method to select the most discriminating variables are given. The physical results obtained with these methods are recalled, and new results are presented with variables connected with the impact parameter. Some neural networks used throughout this work and some results on c quark events selection are also presented. (K.A.) 9 refs.; 6 figs

  19. Neural robust stabilization via event-triggering mechanism and adaptive learning technique.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Ding; Liu, Derong

    2018-06-01

    The robust control synthesis of continuous-time nonlinear systems with uncertain term is investigated via event-triggering mechanism and adaptive critic learning technique. We mainly focus on combining the event-triggering mechanism with adaptive critic designs, so as to solve the nonlinear robust control problem. This can not only make better use of computation and communication resources, but also conduct controller design from the view of intelligent optimization. Through theoretical analysis, the nonlinear robust stabilization can be achieved by obtaining an event-triggered optimal control law of the nominal system with a newly defined cost function and a certain triggering condition. The adaptive critic technique is employed to facilitate the event-triggered control design, where a neural network is introduced as an approximator of the learning phase. The performance of the event-triggered robust control scheme is validated via simulation studies and comparisons. The present method extends the application domain of both event-triggered control and adaptive critic control to nonlinear systems possessing dynamical uncertainties. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  20. Discrimination Analysis of Earthquakes and Man-Made Events Using ARMA Coefficients Determination by Artificial Neural Networks

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    AllamehZadeh, Mostafa

    2011-01-01

    A Quadratic Neural Networks (QNNs) model has been developed for identifying seismic source classification problem at regional distances using ARMA coefficients determination by Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs). We have devised a supervised neural system to discriminate between earthquakes and chemical explosions with filter coefficients obtained by windowed P-wave phase spectra (15 s). First, we preprocess the recording's signals to cancel out instrumental and attenuation site effects and obtain a compact representation of seismic records. Second, we use a QNNs system to obtain ARMA coefficients for feature extraction in the discrimination problem. The derived coefficients are then applied to the neural system to train and classification. In this study, we explore the possibility of using single station three-component (3C) covariance matrix traces from a priori-known explosion sites (learning) for automatically recognizing subsequent explosions from the same site. The results have shown that this feature extraction gives the best classifier for seismic signals and performs significantly better than other classification methods. The events have been tested, which include 36 chemical explosions at the Semipalatinsk test site in Kazakhstan and 61 earthquakes (mb = 5.0–6.5) recorded by the Iranian National Seismic Network (INSN). The 100% correct decisions were obtained between site explosions and some of non-site events. The above approach to event discrimination is very flexible as we can combine several 3C stations.

  1. Discrimination Analysis of Earthquakes and Man-Made Events Using ARMA Coefficients Determination by Artificial Neural Networks

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    AllamehZadeh, Mostafa, E-mail: dibaparima@yahoo.com [International Institute of Earthquake Engineering and Seismology (Iran, Islamic Republic of)

    2011-12-15

    A Quadratic Neural Networks (QNNs) model has been developed for identifying seismic source classification problem at regional distances using ARMA coefficients determination by Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs). We have devised a supervised neural system to discriminate between earthquakes and chemical explosions with filter coefficients obtained by windowed P-wave phase spectra (15 s). First, we preprocess the recording's signals to cancel out instrumental and attenuation site effects and obtain a compact representation of seismic records. Second, we use a QNNs system to obtain ARMA coefficients for feature extraction in the discrimination problem. The derived coefficients are then applied to the neural system to train and classification. In this study, we explore the possibility of using single station three-component (3C) covariance matrix traces from a priori-known explosion sites (learning) for automatically recognizing subsequent explosions from the same site. The results have shown that this feature extraction gives the best classifier for seismic signals and performs significantly better than other classification methods. The events have been tested, which include 36 chemical explosions at the Semipalatinsk test site in Kazakhstan and 61 earthquakes (mb = 5.0-6.5) recorded by the Iranian National Seismic Network (INSN). The 100% correct decisions were obtained between site explosions and some of non-site events. The above approach to event discrimination is very flexible as we can combine several 3C stations.

  2. A Hierarchical Convolutional Neural Network for vesicle fusion event classification.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Haohan; Mao, Yunxiang; Yin, Zhaozheng; Xu, Yingke

    2017-09-01

    Quantitative analysis of vesicle exocytosis and classification of different modes of vesicle fusion from the fluorescence microscopy are of primary importance for biomedical researches. In this paper, we propose a novel Hierarchical Convolutional Neural Network (HCNN) method to automatically identify vesicle fusion events in time-lapse Total Internal Reflection Fluorescence Microscopy (TIRFM) image sequences. Firstly, a detection and tracking method is developed to extract image patch sequences containing potential fusion events. Then, a Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) is applied on each image patch of the patch sequence with outliers rejected for robust Gaussian fitting. By utilizing the high-level time-series intensity change features introduced by GMM and the visual appearance features embedded in some key moments of the fusion process, the proposed HCNN architecture is able to classify each candidate patch sequence into three classes: full fusion event, partial fusion event and non-fusion event. Finally, we validate the performance of our method on 9 challenging datasets that have been annotated by cell biologists, and our method achieves better performances when comparing with three previous methods. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  3. Cognitive flexibility modulates maturation and music-training-related changes in neural sound discrimination.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Saarikivi, Katri; Putkinen, Vesa; Tervaniemi, Mari; Huotilainen, Minna

    2016-07-01

    Previous research has demonstrated that musicians show superior neural sound discrimination when compared to non-musicians, and that these changes emerge with accumulation of training. Our aim was to investigate whether individual differences in executive functions predict training-related changes in neural sound discrimination. We measured event-related potentials induced by sound changes coupled with tests for executive functions in musically trained and non-trained children aged 9-11 years and 13-15 years. High performance in a set-shifting task, indexing cognitive flexibility, was linked to enhanced maturation of neural sound discrimination in both musically trained and non-trained children. Specifically, well-performing musically trained children already showed large mismatch negativity (MMN) responses at a young age as well as at an older age, indicating accurate sound discrimination. In contrast, the musically trained low-performing children still showed an increase in MMN amplitude with age, suggesting that they were behind their high-performing peers in the development of sound discrimination. In the non-trained group, in turn, only the high-performing children showed evidence of an age-related increase in MMN amplitude, and the low-performing children showed a small MMN with no age-related change. These latter results suggest an advantage in MMN development also for high-performing non-trained individuals. For the P3a amplitude, there was an age-related increase only in the children who performed well in the set-shifting task, irrespective of music training, indicating enhanced attention-related processes in these children. Thus, the current study provides the first evidence that, in children, cognitive flexibility may influence age-related and training-related plasticity of neural sound discrimination. © 2016 Federation of European Neuroscience Societies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  4. Doctor, Teacher, and Stethoscope: Neural Representation of Different Types of Semantic Relations.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Xu, Yangwen; Wang, Xiaosha; Wang, Xiaoying; Men, Weiwei; Gao, Jia-Hong; Bi, Yanchao

    2018-03-28

    Concepts can be related in many ways. They can belong to the same taxonomic category (e.g., "doctor" and "teacher," both in the category of people) or be associated with the same event context (e.g., "doctor" and "stethoscope," both associated with medical scenarios). How are these two major types of semantic relations coded in the brain? We constructed stimuli from three taxonomic categories (people, manmade objects, and locations) and three thematic categories (school, medicine, and sports) and investigated the neural representations of these two dimensions using representational similarity analyses in human participants (10 men and nine women). In specific regions of interest, the left anterior temporal lobe (ATL) and the left temporoparietal junction (TPJ), we found that, whereas both areas had significant effects of taxonomic information, the taxonomic relations had stronger effects in the ATL than in the TPJ ("doctor" and "teacher" closer in ATL neural activity), with the reverse being true for thematic relations ("doctor" and "stethoscope" closer in TPJ neural activity). A whole-brain searchlight analysis revealed that widely distributed regions, mainly in the left hemisphere, represented the taxonomic dimension. Interestingly, the significant effects of the thematic relations were only observed after the taxonomic differences were controlled for in the left TPJ, the right superior lateral occipital cortex, and other frontal, temporal, and parietal regions. In summary, taxonomic grouping is a primary organizational dimension across distributed brain regions, with thematic grouping further embedded within such taxonomic structures. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT How are concepts organized in the brain? It is well established that concepts belonging to the same taxonomic categories (e.g., "doctor" and "teacher") share neural representations in specific brain regions. How concepts are associated in other manners (e.g., "doctor" and "stethoscope," which are thematically

  5. Neurophysiological Effects of Meditation Based on Evoked and Event Related Potential Recordings.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Singh, Nilkamal; Telles, Shirley

    2015-01-01

    Evoked potentials (EPs) are a relatively noninvasive method to assess the integrity of sensory pathways. As the neural generators for most of the components are relatively well worked out, EPs have been used to understand the changes occurring during meditation. Event-related potentials (ERPs) yield useful information about the response to tasks, usually assessing attention. A brief review of the literature yielded eleven studies on EPs and seventeen on ERPs from 1978 to 2014. The EP studies covered short, mid, and long latency EPs, using both auditory and visual modalities. ERP studies reported the effects of meditation on tasks such as the auditory oddball paradigm, the attentional blink task, mismatched negativity, and affective picture viewing among others. Both EP and ERPs were recorded in several meditations detailed in the review. Maximum changes occurred in mid latency (auditory) EPs suggesting that maximum changes occur in the corresponding neural generators in the thalamus, thalamic radiations, and primary auditory cortical areas. ERP studies showed meditation can increase attention and enhance efficiency of brain resource allocation with greater emotional control.

  6. Neurophysiological Effects of Meditation Based on Evoked and Event Related Potential Recordings

    Science.gov (United States)

    Singh, Nilkamal; Telles, Shirley

    2015-01-01

    Evoked potentials (EPs) are a relatively noninvasive method to assess the integrity of sensory pathways. As the neural generators for most of the components are relatively well worked out, EPs have been used to understand the changes occurring during meditation. Event-related potentials (ERPs) yield useful information about the response to tasks, usually assessing attention. A brief review of the literature yielded eleven studies on EPs and seventeen on ERPs from 1978 to 2014. The EP studies covered short, mid, and long latency EPs, using both auditory and visual modalities. ERP studies reported the effects of meditation on tasks such as the auditory oddball paradigm, the attentional blink task, mismatched negativity, and affective picture viewing among others. Both EP and ERPs were recorded in several meditations detailed in the review. Maximum changes occurred in mid latency (auditory) EPs suggesting that maximum changes occur in the corresponding neural generators in the thalamus, thalamic radiations, and primary auditory cortical areas. ERP studies showed meditation can increase attention and enhance efficiency of brain resource allocation with greater emotional control. PMID:26137479

  7. Why all the confusion? Experimental task explains discrepant semantic priming effects in schizophrenia under “automatic” conditions: evidence from Event-Related Potentials

    OpenAIRE

    Kreher, Donna A.; Goff, Donald; Kuperberg, Gina R.

    2009-01-01

    The schizophrenia research literature contains many differing accounts of semantic memory function in schizophrenia as assessed through the semantic priming paradigm. Most recently, Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) have been used to demonstrate both increased and decreased semantic priming at a neural level in schizophrenia patients, relative to healthy controls. The present study used ERPs to investigate the role of behavioral task in determining neural semantic priming effects in schizophren...

  8. Neural Correlates of Drug-Related Attentional Bias in Heroin Dependence

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Qinglin Zhao

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available The attention of drug-dependent persons tends to be captured by stimuli associated with drug consumption. This involuntary cognitive process is considered as attentional bias (AB. AB has been hypothesized to have causal effects on drug abuse and drug relapse, but its underlying neural mechanisms are still unclear. This study investigated the neural basis of AB in abstinent heroin addicts (AHAs, combining event-related potential (ERP analysis and source localization techniques. Electroencephalography data were collected in 21 abstinent heroin addicts and 24 age- and gender-matched healthy controls (HCs during a dot-probe task. In the task, a pair of drug-related image and neutral image was presented randomly in left and right side of the cross fixation, followed by a dot probe replacing one of the images. Behaviorally, AHAs had shorter reaction times (RTs for the congruent condition compared to the incongruent condition, whereas this was not the case in the HCs. This finding demonstrated the presence of AB towards drug cues in AHAs. Furthermore, the image-evoked ERPs in AHAs had significant shorter P1 latency compared to HCs, as well as larger N1, N2, and P2 amplitude, suggesting that drug-related stimuli might capture attention early and overall require more attentional resources in AHAs. The target-related P3 had significantly shorter latency and lower amplitude in the congruent than incongruent condition in AHAs compared to HCs. Moreover, source localization of ERP components revealed increased activity for AHAs as compared to HCs in the dorsal posterior cingulate cortex (dPCC, superior parietal lobule and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG for image-elicited responses, and decreased activity in the occipital and the medial parietal lobes for target-elicited responses. Overall, the results of our study confirmed that AHAs may exhibit AB in drug-related contexts, and suggested that the bias might be related to an abnormal neural activity, both in

  9. Discrimination of panti p → tanti t events by a neural network classifier

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Cherubini, A.; Odorico, R.

    1992-01-01

    Neural network and conventional statistical techniques are compared in the problem of discriminating panti p→tanti t events, with top quarks decaying into anything, from the associated hadronic background at the energy of the Fermilab collider. The NN we develop for this sake is an improved version of Kohonen's learning vector quantization scheme. Performance of the NN as a tanti t event classifier is found to be less satisfactory than that achievable by statistical methods. We conclude that the probable reasons for that are: i) The NN approach presents advantages only when dealing with event distributions in the feature space which substantially differ from Gaussians; ii) NN's require much larger training sets of events than statistical discrimination in order to give comparable results. (orig.)

  10. NEVESIM: event-driven neural simulation framework with a Python interface.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pecevski, Dejan; Kappel, David; Jonke, Zeno

    2014-01-01

    NEVESIM is a software package for event-driven simulation of networks of spiking neurons with a fast simulation core in C++, and a scripting user interface in the Python programming language. It supports simulation of heterogeneous networks with different types of neurons and synapses, and can be easily extended by the user with new neuron and synapse types. To enable heterogeneous networks and extensibility, NEVESIM is designed to decouple the simulation logic of communicating events (spikes) between the neurons at a network level from the implementation of the internal dynamics of individual neurons. In this paper we will present the simulation framework of NEVESIM, its concepts and features, as well as some aspects of the object-oriented design approaches and simulation strategies that were utilized to efficiently implement the concepts and functionalities of the framework. We will also give an overview of the Python user interface, its basic commands and constructs, and also discuss the benefits of integrating NEVESIM with Python. One of the valuable capabilities of the simulator is to simulate exactly and efficiently networks of stochastic spiking neurons from the recently developed theoretical framework of neural sampling. This functionality was implemented as an extension on top of the basic NEVESIM framework. Altogether, the intended purpose of the NEVESIM framework is to provide a basis for further extensions that support simulation of various neural network models incorporating different neuron and synapse types that can potentially also use different simulation strategies.

  11. Event-Related fMRI Studies of Episodic Encoding and Retrieval: Meta-Analyses Using Activation Likelihood Estimation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Spaniol, Julia; Davidson, Patrick S. R.; Kim, Alice S. N.; Han, Hua; Moscovitch, Morris; Grady, Cheryl L.

    2009-01-01

    The recent surge in event-related fMRI studies of episodic memory has generated a wealth of information about the neural correlates of encoding and retrieval processes. However, interpretation of individual studies is hampered by methodological differences, and by the fact that sample sizes are typically small. We submitted results from studies of…

  12. Probabilistic delay differential equation modeling of event-related potentials.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ostwald, Dirk; Starke, Ludger

    2016-08-01

    "Dynamic causal models" (DCMs) are a promising approach in the analysis of functional neuroimaging data due to their biophysical interpretability and their consolidation of functional-segregative and functional-integrative propositions. In this theoretical note we are concerned with the DCM framework for electroencephalographically recorded event-related potentials (ERP-DCM). Intuitively, ERP-DCM combines deterministic dynamical neural mass models with dipole-based EEG forward models to describe the event-related scalp potential time-series over the entire electrode space. Since its inception, ERP-DCM has been successfully employed to capture the neural underpinnings of a wide range of neurocognitive phenomena. However, in spite of its empirical popularity, the technical literature on ERP-DCM remains somewhat patchy. A number of previous communications have detailed certain aspects of the approach, but no unified and coherent documentation exists. With this technical note, we aim to close this gap and to increase the technical accessibility of ERP-DCM. Specifically, this note makes the following novel contributions: firstly, we provide a unified and coherent review of the mathematical machinery of the latent and forward models constituting ERP-DCM by formulating the approach as a probabilistic latent delay differential equation model. Secondly, we emphasize the probabilistic nature of the model and its variational Bayesian inversion scheme by explicitly deriving the variational free energy function in terms of both the likelihood expectation and variance parameters. Thirdly, we detail and validate the estimation of the model with a special focus on the explicit form of the variational free energy function and introduce a conventional nonlinear optimization scheme for its maximization. Finally, we identify and discuss a number of computational issues which may be addressed in the future development of the approach. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  13. The light-makeup advantage in facial processing: Evidence from event-related potentials

    OpenAIRE

    Tagai, Keiko; Shimakura, Hitomi; Isobe, Hiroko; Nittono, Hiroshi

    2017-01-01

    The effects of makeup on attractiveness have been evaluated using mainly subjective measures. In this study, event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from a total of 45 Japanese women (n = 23 and n = 22 for Experiment 1 and 2, respectively) to examine the neural processing of faces with no makeup, light makeup, and heavy makeup. To have the participants look at each face carefully, an identity judgement task was used: they were asked to judge whether the two faces presented in succ...

  14. Remembering the past and imagining the future: common and distinct neural substrates during event construction and elaboration

    OpenAIRE

    Addis, Donna Rose; Wong, Alana T.; Schacter, Daniel L.

    2006-01-01

    People can consciously re-experience past events and pre-experience possible future events. This fMRI study examined the neural regions mediating the construction and elaboration of past and future events. Participants were cued with a noun for 20 seconds and instructed to construct a past or future event within a specified time period (week, year, 5–20 years). Once participants had the event in mind, they made a button press and for the remainder of the 20 seconds elaborated on the event. Im...

  15. Altered Neural Activity during Semantic Object Memory Retrieval in Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment as Measured by Event-Related Potentials.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chiang, Hsueh-Sheng; Mudar, Raksha A; Pudhiyidath, Athula; Spence, Jeffrey S; Womack, Kyle B; Cullum, C Munro; Tanner, Jeremy A; Eroh, Justin; Kraut, Michael A; Hart, John

    2015-01-01

    Deficits in semantic memory in individuals with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) have been previously reported, but the underlying neurobiological mechanisms remain to be clarified. We examined event-related potentials (ERPs) associated with semantic memory retrieval in 16 individuals with aMCI as compared to 17 normal controls using the Semantic Object Retrieval Task (EEG SORT). In this task, subjects judged whether pairs of words (object features) elicited retrieval of an object (retrieval trials) or not (non-retrieval trials). Behavioral findings revealed that aMCI subjects had lower accuracy scores and marginally longer reaction time compared to controls. We used a multivariate analytical technique (STAT-PCA) to investigate similarities and differences in ERPs between aMCI and control groups. STAT-PCA revealed a left fronto-temporal component starting at around 750 ms post-stimulus in both groups. However, unlike controls, aMCI subjects showed an increase in the frontal-parietal scalp potential that distinguished retrieval from non-retrieval trials between 950 and 1050 ms post-stimulus negatively correlated with the performance on the logical memory subtest of the Wechsler Memory Scale-III. Thus, individuals with aMCI were not only impaired in their behavioral performance on SORT relative to controls, but also displayed alteration in the corresponding ERPs. The altered neural activity in aMCI compared to controls suggests a more sustained and effortful search during object memory retrieval, which may be a potential marker indicating disease processes at the pre-dementia stage.

  16. Episodic memory in former professional football players with a history of concussion: an event-related functional neuroimaging study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ford, Jaclyn H; Giovanello, Kelly S; Guskiewicz, Kevin M

    2013-10-15

    Previous research has demonstrated that sport-related concussions can have short-term effects on cognitive processes, but the long-term consequences are less understood and warrant more research. This study was the first to use event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine long-term differences in neural activity during memory tasks in former athletes who have sustained multiple sport-related concussions. In an event-related fMRI study, former football players reporting multiple sport-related concussions (i.e., three or more) were compared with players who reported fewer than three concussions during a memory paradigm examining item memory (i.e., memory for the particular elements of an event) and relational memory (i.e., memory for the relationships between elements). Behaviorally, we observed that concussion history did not significantly affect behavioral performance, because persons in the low and high concussion groups had equivalent performance on both memory tasks, and in addition, that concussion history was not associated with any behavioral memory measures. Despite demonstrating equivalent behavioral performance, the two groups of former players demonstrated different neural recruitment patterns during relational memory retrieval, suggesting that multiple concussions may be associated with functional inefficiencies in the relational memory network. In addition, the number of previous concussions significantly correlated with functional activity in a number of brain regions, including the medial temporal lobe and inferior parietal lobe. Our results provide important insights in understanding the long-term functional consequences of sustaining multiple sports-related concussions.

  17. The Role of Episodic Memory in Controlled Evaluative Judgments about Attitudes: An Event-Related Potential Study

    Science.gov (United States)

    Johnson, Ray, Jr.; Simon, Elizabeth J.; Henkell, Heather; Zhu, John

    2011-01-01

    Event-related potentials (ERPs) are unique in their ability to provide information about the timing of activity in the neural networks that perform complex cognitive processes. Given the dearth of extant data from normal controls on the question of whether attitude representations are stored in episodic or semantic memory, the goal here was to…

  18. Neural Temporal Dynamics of Social Exclusion Elicited by Averted Gaze: An Event-Related Potentials Study

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yue Leng

    2018-02-01

    Full Text Available Eye gaze plays a fundamental role in social communication. The averted eye gaze during social interaction, as the most common form of silent treatment, conveys a signal of social exclusion. In the present study, we examined the time course of brain response to social exclusion by using a modified version of Eye-gaze paradigm. The event-related potentials (ERPs data and the subjective rating data showed that the frontocentral P200 was positively correlated with negative mood of excluded events, whereas, the centroparietal late positive potential (LPP was positively correlated with the perceived ostracism intensity. Both the P200 and LPP were more positive-going for excluded events than for included events. These findings suggest that brain responses sensitive to social exclusion can be divided into the early affective processing stage, linking to the early pre-cognitive warning system; and the late higher-order processes stage, demanding attentional resources for elaborate stimuli evaluation and categorization generally not under specific situation.

  19. Event-related potential effects of superior action anticipation in professional badminton players.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jin, Hua; Xu, Guiping; Zhang, John X; Gao, Hongwei; Ye, Zuoer; Wang, Pin; Lin, Huiyan; Mo, Lei; Lin, Chong-De

    2011-04-04

    The ability to predict the trajectory of a ball based on the opponent's body kinematics has been shown to be critical to high-performing athletes in many sports. However, little is known about the neural correlates underlying such superior ability in action anticipation. The present event-related potential study compared brain responses from professional badminton players and non-player controls when they watched video clips of badminton games and predicted a ball's landing position. Replicating literature findings, the players made significantly more accurate judgments than the controls and showed better action anticipation. Correspondingly, they showed enlarged amplitudes of two ERP components, a P300 peaking around 350ms post-stimulus with a parietal scalp distribution and a P2 peaking around 250ms with a posterior-occipital distribution. The P300 effect was interpreted to reflect primed access and/or directing of attention to game-related memory representations in the players facilitating their online judgment of related actions. The P2 effect was suggested to reflect some generic learning effects. The results identify clear neural responses that differentiate between different levels of action anticipation associated with sports expertise. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

  20. Event-related brain potentials that distinguish false memory for events that occurred only seconds in the past.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chen, Hong; Voss, Joel L; Guo, Chunyan

    2012-07-30

    False memory often involves retrieving events from the distant past that did not actually happen. However, recent evidence obtained using the Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm for eliciting false memory experiences suggests that individuals can falsely believe that events occurred mere seconds in the past when they in fact did not. Subjects in these experiments endorsed unstudied critical lure words as having been studied, despite the fact that word lists were studied just moments before. We identified event-related brain potential (ERP) correlates of this experience, and included a repetition priming manipulation to better assess the functional significance of these ERPs. Behavioral and ERP data were collected from 21 Capital Normal University students using a short-term DRM task. Two categories of effects were identified that distinguished true from false short-term memory: (1) early semantic priming effects from 300 to 500 ms and (2) later retrieval and retrieval-monitoring effects after 500 ms. The repetition priming manipulation had distinct influences on these effects, consistent with their differential associations with semantic priming versus episodic retrieval. Characterization of ERPs related to semantic priming and episodic retrieval provides important information regarding the mechanisms of short-term false memory. In contrast, most studies examining false memory in standard long-delay DRM paradigms identify ERP effects related only to retrieval monitoring. These findings highlight the neural processing involved in illusions of memory after very brief delays and highlight the role of semantic processing in short-term false memory.

  1. MEG event-related desynchronization and synchronization deficits during basic somatosensory processing in individuals with ADHD

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Wang Frank

    2008-02-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD is a prevalent, complex disorder which is characterized by symptoms of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. Convergent evidence from neurobiological studies of ADHD identifies dysfunction in fronto-striatal-cerebellar circuitry as the source of behavioural deficits. Recent studies have shown that regions governing basic sensory processing, such as the somatosensory cortex, show abnormalities in those with ADHD suggesting that these processes may also be compromised. Methods We used event-related magnetoencephalography (MEG to examine patterns of cortical rhythms in the primary (SI and secondary (SII somatosensory cortices in response to median nerve stimulation, in 9 adults with ADHD and 10 healthy controls. Stimuli were brief (0.2 ms non-painful electrical pulses presented to the median nerve in two counterbalanced conditions: unpredictable and predictable stimulus presentation. We measured changes in strength, synchronicity, and frequency of cortical rhythms. Results Healthy comparison group showed strong event-related desynchrony and synchrony in SI and SII. By contrast, those with ADHD showed significantly weaker event-related desynchrony and event-related synchrony in the alpha (8–12 Hz and beta (15–30 Hz bands, respectively. This was most striking during random presentation of median nerve stimulation. Adults with ADHD showed significantly shorter duration of beta rebound in both SI and SII except for when the onset of the stimulus event could be predicted. In this case, the rhythmicity of SI (but not SII in the ADHD group did not differ from that of controls. Conclusion Our findings suggest that somatosensory processing is altered in individuals with ADHD. MEG constitutes a promising approach to profiling patterns of neural activity during the processing of sensory input (e.g., detection of a tactile stimulus, stimulus predictability and facilitating our

  2. Self-esteem modulates automatic attentional responses to self-relevant stimuli: evidence from event-related brain potentials

    OpenAIRE

    Chen, Jie; Shui, Qing; Zhong, Yiping

    2015-01-01

    Previous studies have widely shown that self-esteem modulates the attention bias towards social rejection or emotion-related information. However, little is known about the influences of self-esteem on attention bias towards self-relevant stimuli. We aimed to investigate neural correlates that underlie the modulation effect of self-esteem on self-relevant processing. Event-related potentials (ERP) were recorded for subjects’ own names and close others’ names (the names of their friends) while...

  3. Semantic Congruence Accelerates the Onset of the Neural Signals of Successful Memory Encoding.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Packard, Pau A; Rodríguez-Fornells, Antoni; Bunzeck, Nico; Nicolás, Berta; de Diego-Balaguer, Ruth; Fuentemilla, Lluís

    2017-01-11

    As the stream of experience unfolds, our memory system rapidly transforms current inputs into long-lasting meaningful memories. A putative neural mechanism that strongly influences how input elements are transformed into meaningful memory codes relies on the ability to integrate them with existing structures of knowledge or schemas. However, it is not yet clear whether schema-related integration neural mechanisms occur during online encoding. In the current investigation, we examined the encoding-dependent nature of this phenomenon in humans. We showed that actively integrating words with congruent semantic information provided by a category cue enhances memory for words and increases false recall. The memory effect of such active integration with congruent information was robust, even with an interference task occurring right after each encoding word list. In addition, via electroencephalography, we show in 2 separate studies that the onset of the neural signals of successful encoding appeared early (∼400 ms) during the encoding of congruent words. That the neural signals of successful encoding of congruent and incongruent information followed similarly ∼200 ms later suggests that this earlier neural response contributed to memory formation. We propose that the encoding of events that are congruent with readily available contextual semantics can trigger an accelerated onset of the neural mechanisms, supporting the integration of semantic information with the event input. This faster onset would result in a long-lasting and meaningful memory trace for the event but, at the same time, make it difficult to distinguish it from plausible but never encoded events (i.e., related false memories). Conceptual or schema congruence has a strong influence on long-term memory. However, the question of whether schema-related integration neural mechanisms occur during online encoding has yet to be clarified. We investigated the neural mechanisms reflecting how the active

  4. Causality in the association between P300 and alpha event-related desynchronization.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Weiwei Peng

    Full Text Available Recent findings indicated that both P300 and alpha event-related desynchronization (α-ERD were associated, and similarly involved in cognitive brain functioning, e.g., attention allocation and memory updating. However, an explicit causal influence between the neural generators of P300 and α-ERD has not yet been investigated. In the present study, using an oddball task paradigm, we assessed the task effect (target vs. non-target on P300 and α-ERD elicited by stimuli of four sensory modalities, i.e., audition, vision, somatosensory, and pain, estimated their respective neural generators, and investigated the information flow among their neural generators using time-varying effective connectivity in the target condition. Across sensory modalities, the scalp topographies of P300 and α-ERD were similar and respectively maximal at parietal and occipital regions in the target condition. Source analysis revealed that P300 and α-ERD were mainly generated from posterior cingulate cortex and occipital lobe respectively. As revealed by time-varying effective connectivity, the cortical information was consistently flowed from α-ERD sources to P300 sources in the target condition for all four sensory modalities. All these findings showed that P300 in the target condition is modulated by the changes of α-ERD, which would be useful to explore neural mechanism of cognitive information processing in the human brain.

  5. Identification of canonical neural events during continuous gameplay of an 8-bit style video game.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cavanagh, James F; Castellanos, Joel

    2016-06-01

    Cognitive neuroscience suffers from a unique and pervasive problem of generalizability. Since neural findings are often interpreted in the context of a specific manipulation during a carefully controlled task, it is hard to transfer knowledge from one task to another. In this report we address problems of generalizability with two methodological advancements. First, we aimed to transcend status quo experimental procedures with a continuous, engaging task environment. To this end, we created a novel 8-bit style continuous space shooter video game that elicits a multitude of goal-oriented events, such as crashing into a wall or blowing up an enemy with a missile. Second, we aimed to objectively define the psychological significance of these events. To achieve this aim, we used pattern classification of EEG data to derive predictive weights from carefully controlled pre-game exemplar events (oddball target detection and gambling wins and losses) and transferred those weights to EEG activities during video game events. All major goal-oriented events (crashes into the wall, crashes into an enemy, missile hit on an enemy) had a significant between-task transfer bias towards oddball target weights in the time range of the canonical P3, indicating the presence of similar salience detection processes. Missile hits on an enemy were specifically identified as gambling wins, confirming the hypothesis that this goal-oriented event was appetitive. These findings suggest that it is possible to identify the contribution of canonical neural activities during otherwise ambiguous and uncontrolled task performance. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  6. Cognitive control in adolescence: neural underpinnings and relation to self-report behaviors.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jessica R Andrews-Hanna

    Full Text Available Adolescence is commonly characterized by impulsivity, poor decision-making, and lack of foresight. However, the developmental neural underpinnings of these characteristics are not well established.To test the hypothesis that these adolescent behaviors are linked to under-developed proactive control mechanisms, the present study employed a hybrid block/event-related functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI Stroop paradigm combined with self-report questionnaires in a large sample of adolescents and adults, ranging in age from 14 to 25. Compared to adults, adolescents under-activated a set of brain regions implicated in proactive top-down control across task blocks comprised of difficult and easy trials. Moreover, the magnitude of lateral prefrontal activity in adolescents predicted self-report measures of impulse control, foresight, and resistance to peer pressure. Consistent with reactive compensatory mechanisms to reduced proactive control, older adolescents exhibited elevated transient activity in regions implicated in response-related interference resolution.Collectively, these results suggest that maturation of cognitive control may be partly mediated by earlier development of neural systems supporting reactive control and delayed development of systems supporting proactive control. Importantly, the development of these mechanisms is associated with cognitive control in real-life behaviors.

  7. The neural basis of analogical reasoning: an event-related potential study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Qiu, Jiang; Li, Hong; Chen, Antao; Zhang, Qinglin

    2008-10-01

    The spatiotemporal analysis of brain activation during the execution of easy analogy (EA) and difficult analogy (DA) tasks was investigated using high-density event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Results showed that reasoning tasks (schema induction) elicited a more negative ERP deflection (N500-1000) than did the baseline task (BS) between 500 and 1000 ms. Dipole source analysis of difference waves (EA-BS and DA-BS) indicated that the negative components were both localized near the left thalamus, possibly associated with the retrieval of alphabetical information. Furthermore, DA elicited a more positive ERP component (P600-1000) than did EA in the same time window. Two generators of P600-1000 were located in the medial prefrontal cortex (BA10) and the left frontal cortex (BA6) which was possibly involved in integrating information in schema abstraction. In the stage of analogy mapping, a greater negativity (N400-600) in the reasoning tasks as compared to BS was found over fronto-central scalp regions. A generator of this effect was located in the left fusiform gyrus and was possibly related to associative memory and activation of schema. Then, a greater negativity in the reasoning tasks, in comparison to BS task, developed between 900-1200 ms (LNC1) and 2000-2500 ms (LNC2). Dipole source analysis (EA-BS) localized the generator of LNC1 in the left prefrontal cortex (BA 10) which was possibly related to mapping the schema to the target problem, and the generator of LNC2 in the left prefrontal cortex (BA 9) which was possibly related to deciding whether a conclusion correctly follows from the schema.

  8. Event-related potentials to event-related words: grammatical class and semantic attributes in the representation of knowledge.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Barber, Horacio A; Kousta, Stavroula-Thaleia; Otten, Leun J; Vigliocco, Gabriella

    2010-05-21

    A number of recent studies have provided contradictory evidence on the question of whether grammatical class plays a role in the neural representation of lexical knowledge. Most of the previous studies comparing the processing of nouns and verbs, however, confounded word meaning and grammatical class by comparing verbs referring to actions with nouns referring to objects. Here, we recorded electrical brain activity from native Italian speakers reading single words all referring to events (e.g., corsa [the run]; correre [to run]), thus avoiding confounding nouns and verbs with objects and actions. We manipulated grammatical class (noun versus verb) as well as semantic attributes (motor versus sensory events). Activity between 300 and 450ms was more negative for nouns than verbs, and for sensory than motor words, over posterior scalp sites. These grammatical class and semantic effects were not dissociable in terms of latency, duration, or scalp distribution. In a later time window (450-110ms) and at frontal regions, grammatical class and semantic effects interacted; motor verbs were more positive than the other three word categories. We suggest that the lack of a temporal and topographical dissociation between grammatical class and semantic effects in the time range of the N400 component is compatible with an account in which both effects reflect the same underlying process related to meaning retrieval, and we link the later effect with working memory operations associated to the experimental task. Copyright 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  9. Applying Bayesian neural networks to separate neutrino events from backgrounds in reactor neutrino experiments

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Xu, Y; Meng, Y X; Xu, W W

    2008-01-01

    A toy detector has been designed to simulate central detectors in reactor neutrino experiments in the paper. The samples of neutrino events and three major backgrounds from the Monte-Carlo simulation of the toy detector are generated in the signal region. The Bayesian Neural Networks (BNN) are applied to separate neutrino events from backgrounds in reactor neutrino experiments. As a result, the most neutrino events and uncorrelated background events in the signal region can be identified with BNN, and the part events each of the fast neutron and 8 He/ 9 Li backgrounds in the signal region can be identified with BNN. Then, the signal to noise ratio in the signal region is enhanced with BNN. The neutrino discrimination increases with the increase of the neutrino rate in the training sample. However, the background discriminations decrease with the decrease of the background rate in the training sample

  10. Event-related brain potentials that distinguish false memory for events that occurred only seconds in the past

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Chen Hong

    2012-07-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background False memory often involves retrieving events from the distant past that did not actually happen. However, recent evidence obtained using the Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM paradigm for eliciting false memory experiences suggests that individuals can falsely believe that events occurred mere seconds in the past when they in fact did not. Subjects in these experiments endorsed unstudied critical lure words as having been studied, despite the fact that word lists were studied just moments before. We identified event-related brain potential (ERP correlates of this experience, and included a repetition priming manipulation to better assess the functional significance of these ERPs. Methods Behavioral and ERP data were collected from 21 Capital Normal University students using a short-term DRM task. Results Two categories of effects were identified that distinguished true from false short-term memory: (1 early semantic priming effects from 300 to 500 ms and (2 later retrieval and retrieval-monitoring effects after 500 ms. The repetition priming manipulation had distinct influences on these effects, consistent with their differential associations with semantic priming versus episodic retrieval. Conclusion Characterization of ERPs related to semantic priming and episodic retrieval provides important information regarding the mechanisms of short-term false memory. In contrast, most studies examining false memory in standard long-delay DRM paradigms identify ERP effects related only to retrieval monitoring. These findings highlight the neural processing involved in illusions of memory after very brief delays and highlight the role of semantic processing in short-term false memory.

  11. Early event related fields during visually evoked pain anticipation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gopalakrishnan, Raghavan; Burgess, Richard C; Plow, Ela B; Floden, Darlene P; Machado, Andre G

    2016-03-01

    Pain experience is not only a function of somatosensory inputs. Rather, it is strongly influenced by cognitive and affective pathways. Pain anticipatory phenomena, an important limitation to rehabilitative efforts in the chronic state, are processed by associative and limbic networks, along with primary sensory cortices. Characterization of neurophysiological correlates of pain anticipation, particularly during very early stages of neural processing is critical for development of therapeutic interventions. Here, we utilized magnetoencephalography to study early event-related fields (ERFs) in healthy subjects exposed to a 3 s visual countdown task that preceded a painful stimulus, a non-painful stimulus or no stimulus. We found that the first countdown cue, but not the last cue, evoked critical ERFs signaling anticipation, attention and alertness to the noxious stimuli. Further, we found that P2 and N2 components were significantly different in response to first-cues that signaled incoming painful stimuli when compared to non-painful or no stimuli. The findings indicate that early ERFs are relevant neural substrates of pain anticipatory phenomena and could be potentially serve as biomarkers. These measures could assist in the development of neurostimulation approaches aimed at curbing the negative effects of pain anticipation during rehabilitation. Copyright © 2015 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

  12. Neural correlates of economic value and valuation context: an event-related potential study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tyson-Carr, John; Kokmotou, Katerina; Soto, Vicente; Cook, Stephanie; Fallon, Nicholas; Giesbrecht, Timo; Stancak, Andrej

    2018-05-01

    The value of environmental cues and internal states is continuously evaluated by the human brain, and it is this subjective value that largely guides decision making. The present study aimed to investigate the initial value attribution process, specifically the spatiotemporal activation patterns associated with values and valuation context, using electroencephalographic event-related potentials (ERPs). Participants completed a stimulus rating task in which everyday household items marketed up to a price of £4 were evaluated with respect to their desirability or material properties. The subjective values of items were evaluated as willingness to pay (WTP) in a Becker-DeGroot-Marschak auction. On the basis of the individual's subjective WTP values, the stimuli were divided into high- and low-value items. Source dipole modeling was applied to estimate the cortical sources underlying ERP components modulated by subjective values (high vs. low WTP) and the evaluation condition (value-relevant vs. value-irrelevant judgments). Low-WTP items and value-relevant judgments both led to a more pronounced N2 visual evoked potential at right frontal scalp electrodes. Source activity in right anterior insula and left orbitofrontal cortex was larger for low vs. high WTP at ∼200 ms. At a similar latency, source activity in right anterior insula and right parahippocampal gyrus was larger for value-relevant vs. value-irrelevant judgments. A stronger response for low- than high-value items in anterior insula and orbitofrontal cortex appears to reflect aversion to low-valued item acquisition, which in an auction experiment would be perceived as a relative loss. This initial low-value bias occurs automatically irrespective of the valuation context. NEW & NOTEWORTHY We demonstrate the spatiotemporal characteristics of the brain valuation process using event-related potentials and willingness to pay as a measure of subjective value. The N2 component resolves values of objects with a

  13. Well-being and Anticipation for Future Positive Events: Evidences from an fMRI Study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Luo, Yangmei; Chen, Xuhai; Qi, Senqing; You, Xuqun; Huang, Xiting

    2017-01-01

    Anticipation for future confers great benefits to human well-being and mental health. However, previous work focus on how people's well-being correlate with brain activities during perception of emotional stimuli, rather than anticipation for the future events. Here, the current study investigated how well-being relates to neural circuitry underlying the anticipating process of future desired events. Using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging, 40 participants were scanned while they were performing an emotion anticipation task, in which they were instructed to anticipate the positive or neutral events. The results showed that bilateral medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) were activated during anticipation for positive events relative to neutral events, and the enhanced brain activation in MPFC was associated with higher level of well-being. The findings suggest a neural mechanism by which the anticipation process to future desired events correlates to human well-being, which provide a future-oriented view on the neural sources of well-being.

  14. Identification of pp→K±π-+ K0(K0) events using artificial neural networks

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Pavlopoulos, P.; Polivka, G.; Vlachos, S.; Wendler, H.

    1995-01-01

    An artificial neural network classifier has been developed in order to separate on-line events containing a decaying neutral kaon. The proposed system performs better than classical selection methods in real-time applications. The biases due to the on-line selection are smaller than few per cent and are known. The system is robust against calibration variations and missing information. A hardware implementation of the algorithm allows an event selection in less than 40 μs and provides a considerable on-line rate reduction in tagged neutral kaon experiments. This classifier has been developed within the framework of the CPLEAR experiment. (orig.)

  15. An Event-related Brain Potential Study of English Morphosyntactic Processing in Japanese Learners of English

    OpenAIRE

    Tatsuta, Natsuko

    2014-01-01

    This dissertation investigated the neural mechanisms underlying English morphosyntactic processing in Case, subject-verb agreement, and past tense inflection in Japanese learners of English (JLEs) using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in terms of the effects of the age of second language (L2) acquisition (the age of learning English), L2 proficiency level (the English proficiency level), and native/first language (L1) transfer. Researchers have debated for a number of years the question...

  16. How Social Ties Influence Consumer: Evidence from Event-Related Potentials.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jing Luan

    Full Text Available A considerable amount of marketing research has reported that consumers are more saliently influenced by friends (strong social ties than by acquaintances and strangers (weak social ties. To shed light on the neural and psychological processes underlying such phenomenon, in this study we designed an amended S1-S2 paradigm (product-[reviewer-review] that is based on realistic consumer purchase experiences. After incoming all given information (product, reviewer, review, participants were required to state their purchase intentions. The neurocognitive and emotional processes related to friend and stranger stimuli were delineated to suggest how social ties influence consumers during their shopping processes. Larger P2 (fronto-central scalp areas and P3 (central and posterior-parietal scalp areas components under stranger condition were elicited successfully. These findings demonstrate that the cognitive and emotional processing of friend and stranger stimuli occurs at stages of neural activity, and can be indicated by the P2 and P3 components. Electrophysiological data also support the hypothesis that different neural and emotional processing magnitude and strength underlie friend and stranger effect in the context of consumer purchase. During this process, the perception of stimuli evoked P2, subsequently emotional processing and attention modulation were activated and indicated by P2 and P3. The friend dominated phenomenon can be interpreted as the result of distinctive neurocognitive and emotional processing magnitude, which suggests that psychological and emotional factors can guide consumer decision making. This study consolidates that event related potential (ERP methodology is likely to be a more sensitive method for investigating consumer behaviors. From the perspectives of management and marketing, our findings show that the P2 and P3 components can be employed as an indicator to probe the influential factors of consumer purchase

  17. How Social Ties Influence Consumer: Evidence from Event-Related Potentials.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Luan, Jing; Yao, Zhong; Bai, Yan

    2017-01-01

    A considerable amount of marketing research has reported that consumers are more saliently influenced by friends (strong social ties) than by acquaintances and strangers (weak social ties). To shed light on the neural and psychological processes underlying such phenomenon, in this study we designed an amended S1-S2 paradigm (product-[reviewer-review]) that is based on realistic consumer purchase experiences. After incoming all given information (product, reviewer, review), participants were required to state their purchase intentions. The neurocognitive and emotional processes related to friend and stranger stimuli were delineated to suggest how social ties influence consumers during their shopping processes. Larger P2 (fronto-central scalp areas) and P3 (central and posterior-parietal scalp areas) components under stranger condition were elicited successfully. These findings demonstrate that the cognitive and emotional processing of friend and stranger stimuli occurs at stages of neural activity, and can be indicated by the P2 and P3 components. Electrophysiological data also support the hypothesis that different neural and emotional processing magnitude and strength underlie friend and stranger effect in the context of consumer purchase. During this process, the perception of stimuli evoked P2, subsequently emotional processing and attention modulation were activated and indicated by P2 and P3. The friend dominated phenomenon can be interpreted as the result of distinctive neurocognitive and emotional processing magnitude, which suggests that psychological and emotional factors can guide consumer decision making. This study consolidates that event related potential (ERP) methodology is likely to be a more sensitive method for investigating consumer behaviors. From the perspectives of management and marketing, our findings show that the P2 and P3 components can be employed as an indicator to probe the influential factors of consumer purchase intentions.

  18. Rejection in Bargaining Situations: An Event-Related Potential Study in Adolescents and Adults.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kiki Zanolie

    Full Text Available The neural correlates of rejection in bargaining situations when proposing a fair or unfair offer are not yet well understood. We measured neural responses to rejection and acceptance of monetary offers with event-related potentials (ERPs in mid-adolescents (14-17 years and early adults (19-24 years. Participants played multiple rounds of the Ultimatum Game as proposers, dividing coins between themselves and a second player (responder by making a choice between an unfair distribution (7 coins for proposer and 3 for responder; 7/3 and one of two alternatives: a fair distribution (5/5 or a hyperfair distribution (3/7. Participants mostly made fair offers (5/5 when the alternative was unfair (7/3, but made mostly unfair offers (7/3 when the alternative was hyperfair (3/7. When participants' fair offers (5/5; alternative was 7/3 were rejected this was associated with a larger Medial Frontal Negativity (MFN compared to acceptance of fair offers and rejection of unfair offers (7/3; alternative was 3/7. Also, the MFN was smaller after acceptance of unfair offers (7/3 compared to rejection. These neural responses did not differ between adults and mid-adolescents, suggesting that the MFN reacts as a neural alarm system to social prediction errors which is already prevalent during adolescence.

  19. Simultaneity and Temporal Order Judgments Are Coded Differently and Change With Age: An Event-Related Potential Study

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Aysha Basharat

    2018-04-01

    Full Text Available Multisensory integration is required for a number of daily living tasks where the inability to accurately identify simultaneity and temporality of multisensory events results in errors in judgment leading to poor decision-making and dangerous behavior. Previously, our lab discovered that older adults exhibited impaired timing of audiovisual events, particularly when making temporal order judgments (TOJs. Simultaneity judgments (SJs, however, were preserved across the lifespan. Here, we investigate the difference between the TOJ and SJ tasks in younger and older adults to assess neural processing differences between these two tasks and across the lifespan. Event-related potentials (ERPs were studied to determine between-task and between-age differences. Results revealed task specific differences in perceiving simultaneity and temporal order, suggesting that each task may be subserved via different neural mechanisms. Here, auditory N1 and visual P1 ERP amplitudes confirmed that unisensory processing of audiovisual stimuli did not differ between the two tasks within both younger and older groups, indicating that performance differences between tasks arise either from multisensory integration or higher-level decision-making. Compared to younger adults, older adults showed a sustained higher auditory N1 ERP amplitude response across SOAs, suggestive of broader response properties from an extended temporal binding window. Our work provides compelling evidence that different neural mechanisms subserve the SJ and TOJ tasks and that simultaneity and temporal order perception are coded differently and change with age.

  20. Applying Bayesian neural networks to event reconstruction in reactor neutrino experiments

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Xu Ye; Xu Weiwei; Meng Yixiong; Zhu Kaien; Xu Wei

    2008-01-01

    A toy detector has been designed to simulate central detectors in reactor neutrino experiments in the paper. The electron samples from the Monte-Carlo simulation of the toy detector have been reconstructed by the method of Bayesian neural networks (BNNs) and the standard algorithm, a maximum likelihood method (MLD), respectively. The result of the event reconstruction using BNN has been compared with the one using MLD. Compared to MLD, the uncertainties of the electron vertex are not improved, but the energy resolutions are significantly improved using BNN. And the improvement is more obvious for the high energy electrons than the low energy ones

  1. Sad facial cues inhibit temporal attention: evidence from an event-related potential study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kong, Xianxian; Chen, Xiaoqiang; Tan, Bo; Zhao, Dandan; Jin, Zhenlan; Li, Ling

    2013-06-19

    We examined the influence of different emotional cues (happy or sad) on temporal attention (short or long interval) using behavioral as well as event-related potential recordings during a Stroop task. Emotional stimuli cued short and long time intervals, inducing 'sad-short', 'sad-long', 'happy-short', and 'happy-long' conditions. Following the intervals, participants performed a numeric Stroop task. Behavioral results showed the temporal attention effects in the sad-long, happy-long, and happy-short conditions, in which valid cues quickened the reaction times, but not in the sad-short condition. N2 event-related potential components showed sad cues to have decreased activity for short intervals compared with long intervals, whereas happy cues did not. Taken together, these findings provide evidence for different modulation of sad and happy facial cues on temporal attention. Furthermore, sad cues inhibit temporal attention, resulting in longer reaction time and decreased neural activity in the short interval by diverting more attentional resources.

  2. Parametric models to relate spike train and LFP dynamics with neural information processing.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Banerjee, Arpan; Dean, Heather L; Pesaran, Bijan

    2012-01-01

    Spike trains and local field potentials (LFPs) resulting from extracellular current flows provide a substrate for neural information processing. Understanding the neural code from simultaneous spike-field recordings and subsequent decoding of information processing events will have widespread applications. One way to demonstrate an understanding of the neural code, with particular advantages for the development of applications, is to formulate a parametric statistical model of neural activity and its covariates. Here, we propose a set of parametric spike-field models (unified models) that can be used with existing decoding algorithms to reveal the timing of task or stimulus specific processing. Our proposed unified modeling framework captures the effects of two important features of information processing: time-varying stimulus-driven inputs and ongoing background activity that occurs even in the absence of environmental inputs. We have applied this framework for decoding neural latencies in simulated and experimentally recorded spike-field sessions obtained from the lateral intraparietal area (LIP) of awake, behaving monkeys performing cued look-and-reach movements to spatial targets. Using both simulated and experimental data, we find that estimates of trial-by-trial parameters are not significantly affected by the presence of ongoing background activity. However, including background activity in the unified model improves goodness of fit for predicting individual spiking events. Uncovering the relationship between the model parameters and the timing of movements offers new ways to test hypotheses about the relationship between neural activity and behavior. We obtained significant spike-field onset time correlations from single trials using a previously published data set where significantly strong correlation was only obtained through trial averaging. We also found that unified models extracted a stronger relationship between neural response latency and trial

  3. Emotional Granularity Effects on Event-Related Brain Potentials during Affective Picture Processing.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee, Ja Y; Lindquist, Kristen A; Nam, Chang S

    2017-01-01

    There is debate about whether emotional granularity , the tendency to label emotions in a nuanced and specific manner, is merely a product of labeling abilities, or a systematic difference in the experience of emotion during emotionally evocative events. According to the Conceptual Act Theory of Emotion (CAT) (Barrett, 2006), emotional granularity is due to the latter and is a product of on-going temporal differences in how individuals categorize and thus make meaning of their affective states. To address this question, the present study investigated the effects of individual differences in emotional granularity on electroencephalography-based brain activity during the experience of emotion in response to affective images. Event-related potentials (ERP) and event-related desynchronization and synchronization (ERD/ERS) analysis techniques were used. We found that ERP responses during the very early (60-90 ms), middle (270-300 ms), and later (540-570 ms) moments of stimulus presentation were associated with individuals' level of granularity. We also observed that highly granular individuals, compared to lowly granular individuals, exhibited relatively stable desynchronization of alpha power (8-12 Hz) and synchronization of gamma power (30-50 Hz) during the 3 s of stimulus presentation. Overall, our results suggest that emotional granularity is related to differences in neural processing throughout emotional experiences and that high granularity could be associated with access to executive control resources and a more habitual processing of affective stimuli, or a kind of "emotional complexity." Implications for models of emotion are also discussed.

  4. Separate representation of stimulus frequency, intensity, and duration in auditory sensory memory: an event-related potential and dipole-model analysis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Giard, M H; Lavikahen, J; Reinikainen, K; Perrin, F; Bertrand, O; Pernier, J; Näätänen, R

    1995-01-01

    Abstract The present study analyzed the neural correlates of acoustic stimulus representation in echoic sensory memory. The neural traces of auditory sensory memory were indirectly studied by using the mismatch negativity (MMN), an event-related potential component elicited by a change in a repetitive sound. The MMN is assumed to reflect change detection in a comparison process between the sensory input from a deviant stimulus and the neural representation of repetitive stimuli in echoic memory. The scalp topographies of the MMNs elicited by pure tones deviating from standard tones by either frequency, intensity, or duration varied according to the type of stimulus deviance, indicating that the MMNs for different attributes originate, at least in part, from distinct neural populations in the auditory cortex. This result was supported by dipole-model analysis. If the MMN generator process occurs where the stimulus information is stored, these findings strongly suggest that the frequency, intensity, and duration of acoustic stimuli have a separate neural representation in sensory memory.

  5. ALADDIN: a neural model for event classification in dynamic processes

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Roverso, Davide

    1998-02-01

    ALADDIN is a prototype system which combines fuzzy clustering techniques and artificial neural network (ANN) models in a novel approach to the problem of classifying events in dynamic processes. The main motivation for the development of such a system derived originally from the problem of finding new principled methods to perform alarm structuring/suppression in a nuclear power plant (NPP) alarm system. One such method consists in basing the alarm structuring/suppression on a fast recognition of the event generating the alarms, so that a subset of alarms sufficient to efficiently handle the current fault can be selected to be presented to the operator, minimizing in this way the operator's workload in a potentially stressful situation. The scope of application of a system like ALADDIN goes however beyond alarm handling, to include diagnostic tasks in general. The eventual application of the system to domains other than NPPs was also taken into special consideration during the design phase. In this document we report on the first phase of the ALADDIN project which consisted mainly in a comparative study of a series of ANN-based approaches to event classification, and on the proposal of a first system prototype which is to undergo further tests and, eventually, be integrated in existing alarm, diagnosis, and accident management systems such as CASH, IDS, and CAMS. (author)

  6. Measurement of the relative fraction of ttbar events produced via gluon fusion in ppbar collision at s**(1/2) = 1.96 TeV at CDF

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Yamaoka, Jared Andrew; Rutgers U., Piscataway

    2007-01-01

    In this thesis we present a measurement of the relative fraction of t(bar t) events produced via gluon-fusion to the total number of t(bar t) events. Using the kinematics of the production and decay of the top and antitop quark pair, we trained a Neural Network to discriminate the gluon-fusion events. The Neural Network was then used as a template to fit for the gluon-fusion fraction in data. Using a total integrated luminosity of 955 pb -1 we find σ(gg→t(bar t))/σ(p(bar p)→t(bar t)) < 0.33 at 68% confidence level and σ(gg→t(bar t))/σ(p(bar p)→t(bar t)) < 0.61 at 95% confidence level

  7. An event-related potential study of working memory in children

    Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

    LIU Rong; GUO Chunyan; JIANG Yang

    2006-01-01

    To examine the neural mechanisms of working memory in children, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from the 12―13 year-old while they performed a delayed match-to-sample task. The ERP results revealed that new and studied objects both evoked a late positive ERP component peaking around 350 ms during the working memory process. New objects evoke a more positive ERP waveform than the studied objects. The scalp distribution showed that the frontal-central electrode sites were associated with object working memory processes. When tracking new or studied targets among visual distracters, ERPs of targets and distracters revealed differential responses as early as 150 ms. The visual targets evoked larger and more positive ERP responses than the distracters. The typical old-new effect was observed between ERPs of studied and new distracters. However, ERPs of new and studied targets differed at about 250 ms, in which new targets evoked more positive-going and slightly earlier ERP responses. In addition, a P3a component was found for new targets only, and was absent in ERPs of studied targets at frontal and central sites. The present study results reveal the spatial and temporal characteristics of neural mechanisms underlying working memory in children, some of which are distinct from those in adults.

  8. Single-Trial Event-Related Potential Based Rapid Image Triage System

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ke Yu

    2011-06-01

    Full Text Available Searching for points of interest (POI in large-volume imagery is a challenging problem with few good solutions. In this work, a neural engineering approach called rapid image triage (RIT which could offer about a ten-fold speed up in POI searching is developed. It is essentially a cortically-coupled computer vision technique, whereby the user is presented bursts of images at a speed of 6–15 images per second and then neural signals called event-related potential (ERP is used as the ‘cue’ for user seeing images of high relevance likelihood. Compared to past efforts, the implemented system has several unique features: (1 it applies overlapping frames in image chip preparation, to ensure rapid image triage performance; (2 a novel common spatial-temporal pattern (CSTP algorithm that makes use of both spatial and temporal patterns of ERP topography is proposed for high-accuracy single-trial ERP detection; (3 a weighted version of probabilistic support-vector-machine (SVM is used to address the inherent unbalanced nature of single-trial ERP detection for RIT. High accuracy, fast learning, and real-time capability of the developed system shown on 20 subjects demonstrate the feasibility of a brainmachine integrated rapid image triage system for fast detection of POI from large-volume imagery.

  9. Neural network approach to the prediction of seismic events based on low-frequency signal monitoring of the Kuril-Kamchatka and Japanese regions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Irina Popova

    2013-08-01

    Full Text Available Very-low-frequency/ low-frequency (VLF/LF sub-ionospheric radiowave monitoring has been widely used in recent years to analyze earthquake preparatory processes. The connection between earthquakes with M ≥5.5 and nighttime disturbances of signal amplitude and phase has been established. Thus, it is possible to use nighttime anomalies of VLF/LF signals as earthquake precursors. Here, we propose a method for estimation of the VLF/LF signal sensitivity to seismic processes using a neural network approach. We apply the error back-propagation technique based on a three-level perceptron to predict a seismic event. The back-propagation technique involves two main stages to solve the problem; namely, network training, and recognition (the prediction itself. To train a neural network, we first create a so-called ‘training set’. The ‘teacher’ specifies the correspondence between the chosen input and the output data. In the present case, a representative database includes both the LF data received over three years of monitoring at the station in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky (2005-2007, and the seismicity parameters of the Kuril-Kamchatka and Japanese regions. At the first stage, the neural network established the relationship between the characteristic features of the LF signal (the mean and dispersion of a phase and an amplitude at nighttime for a few days before a seismic event and the corresponding level of correlation with a seismic event, or the absence of a seismic event. For the second stage, the trained neural network was applied to predict seismic events from the LF data using twelve time intervals in 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007. The results of the prediction are discussed.

  10. Event-Related Potentials and Emotion Processing in Child Psychopathology

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Georgia eChronaki

    2016-04-01

    Full Text Available In recent years there has been increasing interest in the neural mechanisms underlying altered emotional processes in children and adolescents with psychopathology. This review provides a brief overview of the most up-to-date findings in the field of Event-Related Potentials (ERPs to facial and vocal emotional expressions in the most common child psychopathological conditions. In regards to externalising behaviour (i.e. ADHD, CD, ERP studies show enhanced early components to anger, reflecting enhanced sensory processing, followed by reductions in later components to anger, reflecting reduced cognitive-evaluative processing. In regards to internalising behaviour, research supports models of increased processing of threat stimuli especially at later more elaborate and effortful stages. Finally, in autism spectrum disorders abnormalities have been observed at early visual-perceptual stages of processing. An affective neuroscience framework for understanding child psychopathology can be valuable in elucidating underlying mechanisms and inform preventive intervention.

  11. The definition of exertion-related cardiac events.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rai, M; Thompson, P D

    2011-02-01

    Vigorous physical activity increases the risk of sudden cardiac death (SCD) and acute myocardial infarction (AMI) but there is no standard definition as to what constitutes an exertion-related cardiac event, specifically the time interval between physical exertion and cardiac event. A systematic review of studies related to exertion-related cardiac events was performed and the time interval between exertion and the event or the symptoms leading to the event was looked for in all the articles selected for inclusion. A total of 12 of 26 articles "suggested" or "defined" exertion-related events as those events whose symptoms started during or within 1 h of exertion. Others used definitions of 0.5 h, 2 h, "during exertion", "during or immediately post exertion" and "during or within several hours after exertion". It is suggested, therefore, that the definition of an exertion-related cardiac event be established as a cardiac event in which symptoms started during or within 1 h of physical exertion.

  12. A convolutional neural network neutrino event classifier

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Aurisano, A.; Sousa, A.; Radovic, A.; Vahle, P.; Rocco, D.; Pawloski, G.; Himmel, A.; Niner, E.; Messier, M.D.; Psihas, F.

    2016-01-01

    Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have been widely applied in the computer vision community to solve complex problems in image recognition and analysis. We describe an application of the CNN technology to the problem of identifying particle interactions in sampling calorimeters used commonly in high energy physics and high energy neutrino physics in particular. Following a discussion of the core concepts of CNNs and recent innovations in CNN architectures related to the field of deep learning, we outline a specific application to the NOvA neutrino detector. This algorithm, CVN (Convolutional Visual Network) identifies neutrino interactions based on their topology without the need for detailed reconstruction and outperforms algorithms currently in use by the NOvA collaboration.

  13. Automatic processing of semantic relations in fMRI: neural activation during semantic priming of taxonomic and thematic categories.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sachs, Olga; Weis, Susanne; Zellagui, Nadia; Huber, Walter; Zvyagintsev, Mikhail; Mathiak, Klaus; Kircher, Tilo

    2008-07-07

    Most current models of knowledge organization are based on hierarchical or taxonomic categories (animals, tools). Another important organizational pattern is thematic categorization, i.e. categories held together by external relations, a unifying scene or event (car and garage). The goal of this study was to compare the neural correlates of these categories under automatic processing conditions that minimize strategic influences. We used fMRI to examine neural correlates of semantic priming for category members with a short stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of 200 ms as subjects performed a lexical decision task. Four experimental conditions were compared: thematically related words (car-garage); taxonomically related (car-bus); unrelated (car-spoon); non-word trials (car-derf). We found faster reaction times for related than for unrelated prime-target pairs for both thematic and taxonomic categories. However, the size of the thematic priming effect was greater than that of the taxonomic. The imaging data showed signal changes for the taxonomic priming effects in the right precuneus, postcentral gyrus, middle frontal and superior frontal gyri and thematic priming effects in the right middle frontal gyrus and anterior cingulate. The contrast of neural priming effects showed larger signal changes in the right precuneus associated with the taxonomic but not with thematic priming response. We suggest that the greater involvement of precuneus in the processing of taxonomic relations indicates their reduced salience in the knowledge structure compared to more prominent thematic relations.

  14. Alternative splicing events identified in human embryonic stem cells and neural progenitors.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gene W Yeo

    2007-10-01

    Full Text Available Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs and neural progenitor (NP cells are excellent models for recapitulating early neuronal development in vitro, and are key to establishing strategies for the treatment of degenerative disorders. While much effort had been undertaken to analyze transcriptional and epigenetic differences during the transition of hESC to NP, very little work has been performed to understand post-transcriptional changes during neuronal differentiation. Alternative RNA splicing (AS, a major form of post-transcriptional gene regulation, is important in mammalian development and neuronal function. Human ESC, hESC-derived NP, and human central nervous system stem cells were compared using Affymetrix exon arrays. We introduced an outlier detection approach, REAP (Regression-based Exon Array Protocol, to identify 1,737 internal exons that are predicted to undergo AS in NP compared to hESC. Experimental validation of REAP-predicted AS events indicated a threshold-dependent sensitivity ranging from 56% to 69%, at a specificity of 77% to 96%. REAP predictions significantly overlapped sets of alternative events identified using expressed sequence tags and evolutionarily conserved AS events. Our results also reveal that focusing on differentially expressed genes between hESC and NP will overlook 14% of potential AS genes. In addition, we found that REAP predictions are enriched in genes encoding serine/threonine kinase and helicase activities. An example is a REAP-predicted alternative exon in the SLK (serine/threonine kinase 2 gene that is differentially included in hESC, but skipped in NP as well as in other differentiated tissues. Lastly, comparative sequence analysis revealed conserved intronic cis-regulatory elements such as the FOX1/2 binding site GCAUG as being proximal to candidate AS exons, suggesting that FOX1/2 may participate in the regulation of AS in NP and hESC. In summary, a new methodology for exon array analysis was introduced

  15. A hybrid model based on neural networks for biomedical relation extraction.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Yijia; Lin, Hongfei; Yang, Zhihao; Wang, Jian; Zhang, Shaowu; Sun, Yuanyuan; Yang, Liang

    2018-05-01

    Biomedical relation extraction can automatically extract high-quality biomedical relations from biomedical texts, which is a vital step for the mining of biomedical knowledge hidden in the literature. Recurrent neural networks (RNNs) and convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are two major neural network models for biomedical relation extraction. Neural network-based methods for biomedical relation extraction typically focus on the sentence sequence and employ RNNs or CNNs to learn the latent features from sentence sequences separately. However, RNNs and CNNs have their own advantages for biomedical relation extraction. Combining RNNs and CNNs may improve biomedical relation extraction. In this paper, we present a hybrid model for the extraction of biomedical relations that combines RNNs and CNNs. First, the shortest dependency path (SDP) is generated based on the dependency graph of the candidate sentence. To make full use of the SDP, we divide the SDP into a dependency word sequence and a relation sequence. Then, RNNs and CNNs are employed to automatically learn the features from the sentence sequence and the dependency sequences, respectively. Finally, the output features of the RNNs and CNNs are combined to detect and extract biomedical relations. We evaluate our hybrid model using five public (protein-protein interaction) PPI corpora and a (drug-drug interaction) DDI corpus. The experimental results suggest that the advantages of RNNs and CNNs in biomedical relation extraction are complementary. Combining RNNs and CNNs can effectively boost biomedical relation extraction performance. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  16. A Longitudinal Investigation of Mandarin-speaking Preschoolers' Relation of Events in Narratives: From Unrelated to Related Events

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Wen-hui Sah

    2007-06-01

    Full Text Available This study focuses on the way preschoolers relate events in a story. Twelve Mandarin-speaking preschoolers served as subjects; their narratives were elicited through the use of a picture book, Frog, where are you? Our data suggest that children’s progression from treating single, unrelated events to related ones requires proper linguistic and cognitive capacities. The data also support earlier findings that most 5-year-olds are not able to relate a chain of events well. Additionally, it is found that there is dissociation in abilities for producing linguistic expressions and for inferring relations between events. We try to interpret the dissociation in terms of Karmiloff-Smith’s problem-solving model.

  17. They all do it, will you? Event-related potential evidence of herding behavior in online peer-to-peer lending.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yu, Haihong; Dan, MengHan; Ma, Qingguo; Jin, Jia

    2018-05-14

    As herding is a typical characteristic of human behavior, many researchers have found the existence of herding behavior in online peer-to-peer lending through empirical surveys. However, the underlying neural basis of this phenomenon is still unclear. In the current study, we studied the neural activities of herding at decision-making stage and feedback stage using event-related potentials (ERPs). Our results showed that at decision-making stage, larger error related negativity (ERN) amplitude was induced under low-proportion conditions than that of high-proportion conditions. Meanwhile, during feedback stage, negative feedback elicited larger feedback related negativity (FRN) amplitude than that of positive feedback under low-proportion conditions, however, there was no significant FRN difference under high-proportion conditions. The current study suggests that herding behavior in online peer-to-peer lending is related to individual's risk perception and is possible to avoid negative emotions brought by failed investments. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  18. Experiencing Past and Future Personal Events: Functional Neuroimaging Evidence on the Neural Bases of Mental Time Travel

    Science.gov (United States)

    Botzung, Anne; Denkova, Ekaterina; Manning, Lilianne

    2008-01-01

    Functional MRI was used in healthy subjects to investigate the existence of common neural structures supporting re-experiencing the past and pre-experiencing the future. Past and future events evocation appears to involve highly similar patterns of brain activation including, in particular, the medial prefrontal cortex, posterior regions and the…

  19. Neural dynamics of event segmentation in music: converging evidence for dissociable ventral and dorsal networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sridharan, Devarajan; Levitin, Daniel J; Chafe, Chris H; Berger, Jonathan; Menon, Vinod

    2007-08-02

    The real world presents our sensory systems with a continuous stream of undifferentiated information. Segmentation of this stream at event boundaries is necessary for object identification and feature extraction. Here, we investigate the neural dynamics of event segmentation in entire musical symphonies under natural listening conditions. We isolated time-dependent sequences of brain responses in a 10 s window surrounding transitions between movements of symphonic works. A strikingly right-lateralized network of brain regions showed peak response during the movement transitions when, paradoxically, there was no physical stimulus. Model-dependent and model-free analysis techniques provided converging evidence for activity in two distinct functional networks at the movement transition: a ventral fronto-temporal network associated with detecting salient events, followed in time by a dorsal fronto-parietal network associated with maintaining attention and updating working memory. Our study provides direct experimental evidence for dissociable and causally linked ventral and dorsal networks during event segmentation of ecologically valid auditory stimuli.

  20. Neural representations of emotion are organized around abstract event features.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Skerry, Amy E; Saxe, Rebecca

    2015-08-03

    Research on emotion attribution has tended to focus on the perception of overt expressions of at most five or six basic emotions. However, our ability to identify others' emotional states is not limited to perception of these canonical expressions. Instead, we make fine-grained inferences about what others feel based on the situations they encounter, relying on knowledge of the eliciting conditions for different emotions. In the present research, we provide convergent behavioral and neural evidence concerning the representations underlying these concepts. First, we find that patterns of activity in mentalizing regions contain information about subtle emotional distinctions conveyed through verbal descriptions of eliciting situations. Second, we identify a space of abstract situation features that well captures the emotion discriminations subjects make behaviorally and show that this feature space outperforms competing models in capturing the similarity space of neural patterns in these regions. Together, the data suggest that our knowledge of others' emotions is abstract and high dimensional, that brain regions selective for mental state reasoning support relatively subtle distinctions between emotion concepts, and that the neural representations in these regions are not reducible to more primitive affective dimensions such as valence and arousal. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  1. Event-related potentials elicited by social commerce and electronic-commerce reviews.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bai, Yan; Yao, Zhong; Cong, Fengyu; Zhang, Linlin

    2015-12-01

    There is an increasing interest regarding the use of electroencephalography (EEG) in social commerce and electronic commerce (e-commerce) research. There are several reviews in the field of social commerce or e-commerce; these have great potential value and mining them is fundamental and significant. To our knowledge, EEG is rarely applied to study these. In this study, we examined the neural correlates of social commerce reviews (SCRs) and e-commerce reviews (ECRs) by using them as stimuli to evoke event-related potentials. All SCRs were from friends through a social media platform, whereas ECRs were from strangers through an e-commerce platform. The experimental design was similar to that of a priming paradigm, and included 40 pairs of stimuli consisting of product information (prime stimulus) and reviews (target stimulus). The results showed that the P300 component was successfully evoked by SCR and ECR stimuli. Moreover, the P300 components elicited by SCRs had higher amplitudes than those elicited by ECRs. These findings indicate that participants paid more attention to SCRs than to ECRs. In addition, the associations between neural responses and reviews in social commerce have the potential to assist companies in studying consumer behaviors, thus permitting them to enhance their social commerce strategies.

  2. Social network size relates to developmental neural sensitivity to biological motion

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    L.A. Kirby

    2018-04-01

    Full Text Available The ability to perceive others’ actions and goals from human motion (i.e., biological motion perception is a critical component of social perception and may be linked to the development of real-world social relationships. Adult research demonstrates two key nodes of the brain’s biological motion perception system—amygdala and posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS—are linked to variability in social network properties. The relation between social perception and social network properties, however, has not yet been investigated in middle childhood—a time when individual differences in social experiences and social perception are growing. The aims of this study were to (1 replicate past work showing amygdala and pSTS sensitivity to biological motion in middle childhood; (2 examine age-related changes in the neural sensitivity for biological motion, and (3 determine whether neural sensitivity for biological motion relates to social network characteristics in children. Consistent with past work, we demonstrate a significant relation between social network size and neural sensitivity for biological motion in left pSTS, but do not find age-related change in biological motion perception. This finding offers evidence for the interplay between real-world social experiences and functional brain development and has important implications for understanding disorders of atypical social experience. Keywords: Biological motion, Social networks, Middle childhood, Neural specialization, Brain-behavior relations, pSTS

  3. Neural Correlates of Opposing Effects of Emotional Distraction on Working Memory and Episodic Memory: An Event Related fMRI Investigation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Florin eDolcos

    2013-06-01

    Full Text Available A fundamental question in the emotional memory literature is why emotion enhances memory in some conditions but disrupts memory in other conditions. For example, separate studies have shown that emotional stimuli tend to be better remembered in long-term episodic memory (EM, whereas emotional distracters tend to impair working memory (WM maintenance. The first goal of this study was to directly compare the neural correlates of EM enhancement (EME and WM impairing (WMI effects, and the second goal was to explore individual differences in these mechanisms. During event-related fMRI, participants maintained faces in WM while being distracted by emotional or neutral pictures presented during the delay period. EM for the distracting pictures was tested after scanning and was used to identify successful encoding activity for the picture distracters. The first goal yielded two findings: (1 Emotional pictures that disrupted face WM but enhanced subsequent EM were associated with increased amygdala and hippocampal activity (ventral system coupled with reduced dorsolateral PFC activity (dorsal system; (2 Trials in which emotion enhanced EM without disrupting WM were associated with increased ventrolateral PFC activity. The ventral-dorsal switch can explain EME and WMI, while the ventrolateral PFC effect suggests a coping mechanism. The second goal yielded two additional findings: (3 Participants who were more susceptible to WMI showed greater amygdala increases and PFC reductions; (4 Amygdala activity increased and dlPFC activity decreased with measures of impulsivity. Taken together, the results clarify the mechanisms linking the enhancing and impairing effects of emotion on memory.

  4. Obesity-related differences in neural correlates of force control.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mehta, Ranjana K; Shortz, Ashley E

    2014-01-01

    Greater body segment mass due to obesity has shown to impair gross and fine motor functions and reduce balance control. While recent studies suggest that obesity may be linked with altered brain functions involved in fine motor tasks, this association is not well investigated. The purpose of this study was to examine the neural correlates of motor performance in non-obese and obese adults during force control of two upper extremity muscles. Nine non-obese and eight obese young adults performed intermittent handgrip and elbow flexion exertions at 30% of their respective muscle strengths for 4 min. Functional near infrared spectroscopy was employed to measure neural activity in the prefrontal cortex bilaterally, joint steadiness was computed using force fluctuations, and ratings of perceived exertions (RPEs) were obtained to assess perceived effort. Obesity was associated with higher force fluctuations and lower prefrontal cortex activation during handgrip exertions, while RPE scores remained similar across both groups. No obesity-related differences in neural activity, force fluctuation, or RPE scores were observed during elbow flexion exertions. The study is one of the first to examine obesity-related differences on prefrontal cortex activation during force control of the upper extremity musculature. The study findings indicate that the neural correlates of motor activity in the obese may be muscle-specific. Future work is warranted to extend the investigation to monitoring multiple motor-function related cortical regions and examining obesity differences with different task parameters (e.g., longer duration, increased precision demands, larger muscles, etc.).

  5. How culture gets embrained: Cultural differences in event-related potentials of social norm violations.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mu, Yan; Kitayama, Shinobu; Han, Shihui; Gelfand, Michele J

    2015-12-15

    Humans are unique among all species in their ability to develop and enforce social norms, but there is wide variation in the strength of social norms across human societies. Despite this fundamental aspect of human nature, there has been surprisingly little research on how social norm violations are detected at the neurobiological level. Building on the emerging field of cultural neuroscience, we combine noninvasive electroencephalography (EEG) with a new social norm violation paradigm to examine the neural mechanisms underlying the detection of norm violations and how they vary across cultures. EEG recordings from Chinese and US participants (n = 50) showed consistent negative deflection of event-related potential around 400 ms (N400) over the central and parietal regions that served as a culture-general neural marker of detecting norm violations. The N400 at the frontal and temporal regions, however, was only observed among Chinese but not US participants, illustrating culture-specific neural substrates of the detection of norm violations. Further, the frontal N400 predicted a variety of behavioral and attitudinal measurements related to the strength of social norms that have been found at the national and state levels, including higher culture superiority and self-control but lower creativity. There were no cultural differences in the N400 induced by semantic violation, suggesting a unique cultural influence on social norm violation detection. In all, these findings provided the first evidence, to our knowledge, for the neurobiological foundations of social norm violation detection and its variation across cultures.

  6. Neural activation patterns during retrieval of schema-related memories: differences and commonalities between children and adults.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brod, Garvin; Lindenberger, Ulman; Shing, Yee Lee

    2017-11-01

    Schemas represent stable properties of individuals' experiences, and allow them to classify new events as being congruent or incongruent with existing knowledge. Research with adults indicates that the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is involved in memory retrieval of schema-related information. However, developmental differences between children and adults in the neural correlates of schema-related memories are not well understood. One reason for this is the inherent confound between schema-relevant experience and maturation, as both are related to time. To overcome this limitation, we used a novel paradigm that experimentally induces, and then probes for, task-relevant knowledge during encoding of new information. Thirty-one children aged 8-12 years and 26 young adults participated in the experiment. While successfully retrieving schema-congruent events, children showed less medial PFC activity than adults. In addition, medial PFC activity during successful retrieval correlated positively with children's age. While successfully retrieving schema-incongruent events, children showed stronger hippocampus (HC) activation as well as weaker connectivity between the striatum and the dorsolateral PFC than adults. These findings were corroborated by an exploratory full-factorial analysis investigating age differences in the retrieval of schema-congruent versus schema-incongruent events, comparing the two conditions directly. Consistent with the findings of the separate analyses, two clusters, one in the medial PFC, one in the HC, were identified that exhibited a memory × congruency × age group interaction. In line with the two-component model of episodic memory development, the present findings point to an age-related shift from a more HC-bound processing to an increasing recruitment of prefrontal brain regions in the retrieval of schema-related events. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  7. INES rating of radiation protection related events

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Hort, M.

    2009-01-01

    In this presentation, based on the draft Manual, a short review of the use of the INES rating of events concerning radiation protection is given, based on a new INES User's Manual edition. The presentation comprises a brief history of the scale development, general description of the scale and the main principles of the INES rating. Several examples of the use of the scale for radiation protection related events are mentioned. In the presentation, the term 'radiation protection related events' is used for radiation source and transport related events outside the nuclear installations. (authors)

  8. Effects of turbidity on the neural structures of two closely related ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    The neural structures of the sister species Pseudobarbus afer and P. asper were compared. P. afer, a redfin minnow which inhabits clear, perennial mountain streams, was found to have larger neural structures related to vision than P. asper, which inhabits turbid, intermittent streams of the Gamtoos River system, ...

  9. A systematic review of the neural bases of psychotherapy for anxiety and related disorders.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brooks, Samantha J; Stein, Dan J

    2015-09-01

    Brain imaging studies over two decades have delineated the neural circuitry of anxiety and related disorders, particularly regions involved in fear processing and in obsessive-compulsive symptoms. The neural circuitry of fear processing involves the amygdala, anterior cingulate, and insular cortex, while cortico-striatal-thalamic circuitry plays a key role in obsessive-compulsive disorder. More recently, neuroimaging studies have examined how psychotherapy for anxiety and related disorders impacts on these neural circuits. Here we conduct a systematic review of the findings of such work, which yielded 19 functional magnetic resonance imaging studies examining the neural bases of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) in 509 patients with anxiety and related disorders. We conclude that, although each of these related disorders is mediated by somewhat different neural circuitry, CBT may act in a similar way to increase prefrontal control of subcortical structures. These findings are consistent with an emphasis in cognitive-affective neuroscience on the potential therapeutic value of enhancing emotional regulation in various psychiatric conditions.

  10. The Neural Cell Adhesion Molecule NCAM2/OCAM/RNCAM, a Close Relative to NCAM

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Kulahin, Nikolaj; Walmod, Peter

    2008-01-01

    molecule (NCAM) is a well characterized, ubiquitously expressed CAM that is highly expressed in the nervous system. In addition to mediating cell adhesion, NCAM participates in a multitude of cellular events, including survival, migration, and differentiation of cells, outgrowth of neurites, and formation......Cell adhesion molecules (CAMs) constitute a large class of plasma membrane-anchored proteins that mediate attachment between neighboring cells and between cells and the surrounding extracellular matrix (ECM). However, CAMs are more than simple mediators of cell adhesion. The neural cell adhesion...... and plasticity of synapses. NCAM shares an overall sequence identity of approximately 44% with the neural cell adhesion molecule 2 (NCAM2), a protein also known as olfactory cell adhesion molecule (OCAM) and Rb-8 neural cell adhesion molecule (RNCAM), and the region-for-region sequence homology between the two...

  11. Relation Classification via Recurrent Neural Network

    OpenAIRE

    Zhang, Dongxu; Wang, Dong

    2015-01-01

    Deep learning has gained much success in sentence-level relation classification. For example, convolutional neural networks (CNN) have delivered competitive performance without much effort on feature engineering as the conventional pattern-based methods. Thus a lot of works have been produced based on CNN structures. However, a key issue that has not been well addressed by the CNN-based method is the lack of capability to learn temporal features, especially long-distance dependency between no...

  12. Accident sequence precursor events with age-related contributors

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Murphy, G.A.; Kohn, W.E.

    1995-12-31

    The Accident Sequence Precursor (ASP) Program at ORNL analyzed about 14.000 Licensee Event Reports (LERs) filed by US nuclear power plants 1987--1993. There were 193 events identified as precursors to potential severe core accident sequences. These are reported in G/CR-4674. Volumes 7 through 20. Under the NRC Nuclear Plant Aging Research program, the authors evaluated these events to determine the extent to which component aging played a role. Events were selected that involved age-related equipment degradation that initiated an event or contributed to an event sequence. For the 7-year period, ORNL identified 36 events that involved aging degradation as a contributor to an ASP event. Except for 1992, the percentage of age-related events within the total number of ASP events over the 7-year period ({approximately}19%) appears fairly consistent up to 1991. No correlation between plant ape and number of precursor events was found. A summary list of the age-related events is presented in the report.

  13. Neural chips, neural computers and application in high and superhigh energy physics experiments

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Nikityuk, N.M.; )

    2001-01-01

    Architecture peculiarity and characteristics of series of neural chips and neural computes used in scientific instruments are considered. Tendency of development and use of them in high energy and superhigh energy physics experiments are described. Comparative data which characterize the efficient use of neural chips for useful event selection, classification elementary particles, reconstruction of tracks of charged particles and for search of hypothesis Higgs particles are given. The characteristics of native neural chips and accelerated neural boards are considered [ru

  14. Safety related events at nuclear installations in 1995

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Korsbech, Uffe C C

    1996-01-01

    Nuclear safety related events of significance at least corresponding to level 2 of the International Nuclear Event Scale are described. In 1995 only two events occured at nuclear power plants, and four events occured at plants using ionizing radiation for processing or research.......Nuclear safety related events of significance at least corresponding to level 2 of the International Nuclear Event Scale are described. In 1995 only two events occured at nuclear power plants, and four events occured at plants using ionizing radiation for processing or research....

  15. A feasibility study of using event-related potential as a biometrics.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yih-Choung Yu; Sicheng Wang; Gabel, Lisa A

    2016-08-01

    The use of an individual's neural response to stimuli (the event-related potential or ERP) has potential as a biometric because it is highly resistant to fraud relative to other conventional authentication systems. P300 is an ERP in human electroencephalography (EEG) that occurs in response to an oddball stimulus when an individual is actively engaged in a target detection task. Because P300 is consistently detectable from almost every subject, it is considered a potential signal for biometric applications. This paper presents a feasibility study of using topological plots of P300 as a biometric in subject authentication. The variation in latency and location of P300 response of 24 participants performing the P300Speller task were studied. Data sets from four participants were used for algorithm training; data from the other 20 participants were used as imposters for algorithm validation. The result showed that the algorithm was able to correctly identify three out of these four participants. Validation test also proved that the algorithm was able to reject 95% of the imposters for those three authenticated participants.

  16. Mining e-cigarette adverse events in social media using Bi-LSTM recurrent neural network with word embedding representation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Xie, Jiaheng; Liu, Xiao; Dajun Zeng, Daniel

    2018-01-01

    Recent years have seen increased worldwide popularity of e-cigarette use. However, the risks of e-cigarettes are underexamined. Most e-cigarette adverse event studies have achieved low detection rates due to limited subject sample sizes in the experiments and surveys. Social media provides a large data repository of consumers' e-cigarette feedback and experiences, which are useful for e-cigarette safety surveillance. However, it is difficult to automatically interpret the informal and nontechnical consumer vocabulary about e-cigarettes in social media. This issue hinders the use of social media content for e-cigarette safety surveillance. Recent developments in deep neural network methods have shown promise for named entity extraction from noisy text. Motivated by these observations, we aimed to design a deep neural network approach to extract e-cigarette safety information in social media. Our deep neural language model utilizes word embedding as the representation of text input and recognizes named entity types with the state-of-the-art Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (Bi-LSTM) Recurrent Neural Network. Our Bi-LSTM model achieved the best performance compared to 3 baseline models, with a precision of 94.10%, a recall of 91.80%, and an F-measure of 92.94%. We identified 1591 unique adverse events and 9930 unique e-cigarette components (ie, chemicals, flavors, and devices) from our research testbed. Although the conditional random field baseline model had slightly better precision than our approach, our Bi-LSTM model achieved much higher recall, resulting in the best F-measure. Our method can be generalized to extract medical concepts from social media for other medical applications. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com

  17. Internal mechanisms underlying anticipatory language processing: Evidence from event-related-potentials and neural oscillations.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Xiaoqing; Zhang, Yuping; Xia, Jinyan; Swaab, Tamara Y

    2017-07-28

    Although numerous studies have demonstrated that the language processing system can predict upcoming content during comprehension, there is still no clear picture of the anticipatory stage of predictive processing. This electroencephalograph study examined the cognitive and neural oscillatory mechanisms underlying anticipatory processing during language comprehension, and the consequences of this prediction for bottom-up processing of predicted/unpredicted content. Participants read Mandarin Chinese sentences that were either strongly or weakly constraining and that contained critical nouns that were congruent or incongruent with the sentence contexts. We examined the effects of semantic predictability on anticipatory processing prior to the onset of the critical nouns and on integration of the critical nouns. The results revealed that, at the integration stage, the strong-constraint condition (compared to the weak-constraint condition) elicited a reduced N400 and reduced theta activity (4-7Hz) for the congruent nouns, but induced beta (13-18Hz) and theta (4-7Hz) power decreases for the incongruent nouns, indicating benefits of confirmed predictions and potential costs of disconfirmed predictions. More importantly, at the anticipatory stage, the strongly constraining context elicited an enhanced sustained anterior negativity and beta power decrease (19-25Hz), which indicates that strong prediction places a higher processing load on the anticipatory stage of processing. The differences (in the ease of processing and the underlying neural oscillatory activities) between anticipatory and integration stages of lexical processing were discussed with regard to predictive processing models. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  18. Validation of the Revised Stressful Life Event Questionnaire Using a Hybrid Model of Genetic Algorithm and Artificial Neural Networks

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Rasoul Sali

    2013-01-01

    Full Text Available Objectives. Stressors have a serious role in precipitating mental and somatic disorders and are an interesting subject for many clinical and community-based studies. Hence, the proper and accurate measurement of them is very important. We revised the stressful life event (SLE questionnaire by adding weights to the events in order to measure and determine a cut point. Methods. A total of 4569 adults aged between 18 and 85 years completed the SLE questionnaire and the general health questionnaire-12 (GHQ-12. A hybrid model of genetic algorithm (GA and artificial neural networks (ANNs was applied to extract the relation between the stressful life events (evaluated by a 6-point Likert scale and the GHQ score as a response variable. In this model, GA is used in order to set some parameter of ANN for achieving more accurate results. Results. For each stressful life event, the number is defined as weight. Among all stressful life events, death of parents, spouse, or siblings is the most important and impactful stressor in the studied population. Sensitivity of 83% and specificity of 81% were obtained for the cut point 100. Conclusion. The SLE-revised (SLE-R questionnaire despite simplicity is a high-performance screening tool for investigating the stress level of life events and its management in both community and primary care settings. The SLE-R questionnaire is user-friendly and easy to be self-administered. This questionnaire allows the individuals to be aware of their own health status.

  19. Iconic Meaning in Music: An Event-Related Potential Study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cai, Liman; Huang, Ping; Luo, Qiuling; Huang, Hong; Mo, Lei

    2015-01-01

    Although there has been extensive research on the processing of the emotional meaning of music, little is known about other aspects of listeners' experience of music. The present study investigated the neural correlates of the iconic meaning of music. Event-related potentials (ERP) were recorded while a group of 20 music majors and a group of 20 non-music majors performed a lexical decision task in the context of implicit musical iconic meaning priming. ERP analysis revealed a significant N400 effect of congruency in time window 260-510 ms following the onset of the target word only in the group of music majors. Time-course analysis using 50 ms windows indicated significant N400 effects both within the time window 410-460 ms and 460-510 ms for music majors, whereas only a partial N400 effect during time window 410-460 ms was observed for non-music majors. There was also a trend for the N400 effects in the music major group to be stronger than those in the non-major group in the sub-windows of 310-360 ms and 410-460 ms. Especially in the sub-window of 410-460 ms, the topographical map of the difference waveforms between congruent and incongruent conditions revealed different N400 distribution between groups; the effect was concentrated in bilateral frontal areas for music majors, but in central-parietal areas for non-music majors. These results imply probable neural mechanism differences underlying automatic iconic meaning priming of music. Our findings suggest that processing of the iconic meaning of music can be accomplished automatically and that musical training may facilitate the understanding of the iconic meaning of music.

  20. Feature Extraction of Event-Related Potentials Using Wavelets: An Application to Human Performance Monitoring

    Science.gov (United States)

    Trejo, Leonard J.; Shensa, Mark J.; Remington, Roger W. (Technical Monitor)

    1998-01-01

    This report describes the development and evaluation of mathematical models for predicting human performance from discrete wavelet transforms (DWT) of event-related potentials (ERP) elicited by task-relevant stimuli. The DWT was compared to principal components analysis (PCA) for representation of ERPs in linear regression and neural network models developed to predict a composite measure of human signal detection performance. Linear regression models based on coefficients of the decimated DWT predicted signal detection performance with half as many f ree parameters as comparable models based on PCA scores. In addition, the DWT-based models were more resistant to model degradation due to over-fitting than PCA-based models. Feed-forward neural networks were trained using the backpropagation,-, algorithm to predict signal detection performance based on raw ERPs, PCA scores, or high-power coefficients of the DWT. Neural networks based on high-power DWT coefficients trained with fewer iterations, generalized to new data better, and were more resistant to overfitting than networks based on raw ERPs. Networks based on PCA scores did not generalize to new data as well as either the DWT network or the raw ERP network. The results show that wavelet expansions represent the ERP efficiently and extract behaviorally important features for use in linear regression or neural network models of human performance. The efficiency of the DWT is discussed in terms of its decorrelation and energy compaction properties. In addition, the DWT models provided evidence that a pattern of low-frequency activity (1 to 3.5 Hz) occurring at specific times and scalp locations is a reliable correlate of human signal detection performance.

  1. Reciprocal Benefits of Mass-Univariate and Multivariate Modeling in Brain Mapping: Applications to Event-Related Functional MRI, H215O-, and FDG-PET

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    James R. Moeller

    2006-01-01

    Full Text Available In brain mapping studies of sensory, cognitive, and motor operations, specific waveforms of dynamic neural activity are predicted based on theoretical models of human information processing. For example in event-related functional MRI (fMRI, the general linear model (GLM is employed in mass-univariate analyses to identify the regions whose dynamic activity closely matches the expected waveforms. By comparison multivariate analyses based on PCA or ICA provide greater flexibility in detecting spatiotemporal properties of experimental data that may strongly support alternative neuroscientific explanations. We investigated conjoint multivariate and mass-univariate analyses that combine the capabilities to (1 verify activation of neural machinery we already understand and (2 discover reliable signatures of new neural machinery. We examined combinations of GLM and PCA that recover latent neural signals (waveforms and footprints with greater accuracy than either method alone. Comparative results are illustrated with analyses of real fMRI data, adding to Monte Carlo simulation support.

  2. Neurophysiological correlates of response inhibition predict relapse in detoxified alcoholic patients: some preliminary evidence from event-related potentials

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Petit G

    2014-06-01

    Full Text Available Géraldine Petit, Agnieszka Cimochowska, Charles Kornreich, Catherine Hanak, Paul Verbanck, Salvatore CampanellaLaboratory of Psychological Medicine and Addictology, ULB Neuroscience Institute (UNI, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB, Brussels, BelgiumBackground: Alcohol dependence is a chronic relapsing disease. The impairment of response inhibition and alcohol-cue reactivity are the main cognitive mechanisms that trigger relapse. Despite the interaction suggested between the two processes, they have long been investigated as two different lines of research. The present study aimed to investigate the interaction between response inhibition and alcohol-cue reactivity and their potential link with relapse.Materials and methods: Event-related potentials were recorded during a variant of a “go/no-go” task. Frequent and rare stimuli (to be inhibited were superimposed on neutral, nonalcohol-related, and alcohol-related contexts. The task was administered following a 3-week detoxification course. Relapse outcome was measured after 3 months, using self-reported abstinence. There were 27 controls (seven females and 27 patients (seven females, among whom 13 relapsed during the 3-month follow-up period. The no-go N2, no-go P3, and the “difference” wave (P3d were examined with the aim of linking neural correlates of response inhibition on alcohol-related contexts to the observed relapse rate.Results: Results showed that 1 at the behavioral level, alcohol-dependent patients made significantly more commission errors than controls (P<0.001, independently of context; 2 through the subtraction no-go P3 minus go P3, this inhibition deficit was neurophysiologically indexed in patients with greater P3d amplitudes (P=0.034; and 3 within the patient group, increased P3d amplitude enabled us to differentiate between future relapsers and nonrelapsers (P=0.026.Conclusion: Our findings suggest that recently detoxified alcoholics are characterized by poorer

  3. An Event-Driven Classifier for Spiking Neural Networks Fed with Synthetic or Dynamic Vision Sensor Data

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Evangelos Stromatias

    2017-06-01

    Full Text Available This paper introduces a novel methodology for training an event-driven classifier within a Spiking Neural Network (SNN System capable of yielding good classification results when using both synthetic input data and real data captured from Dynamic Vision Sensor (DVS chips. The proposed supervised method uses the spiking activity provided by an arbitrary topology of prior SNN layers to build histograms and train the classifier in the frame domain using the stochastic gradient descent algorithm. In addition, this approach can cope with leaky integrate-and-fire neuron models within the SNN, a desirable feature for real-world SNN applications, where neural activation must fade away after some time in the absence of inputs. Consequently, this way of building histograms captures the dynamics of spikes immediately before the classifier. We tested our method on the MNIST data set using different synthetic encodings and real DVS sensory data sets such as N-MNIST, MNIST-DVS, and Poker-DVS using the same network topology and feature maps. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach by achieving the highest classification accuracy reported on the N-MNIST (97.77% and Poker-DVS (100% real DVS data sets to date with a spiking convolutional network. Moreover, by using the proposed method we were able to retrain the output layer of a previously reported spiking neural network and increase its performance by 2%, suggesting that the proposed classifier can be used as the output layer in works where features are extracted using unsupervised spike-based learning methods. In addition, we also analyze SNN performance figures such as total event activity and network latencies, which are relevant for eventual hardware implementations. In summary, the paper aggregates unsupervised-trained SNNs with a supervised-trained SNN classifier, combining and applying them to heterogeneous sets of benchmarks, both synthetic and from real DVS chips.

  4. An Event-Driven Classifier for Spiking Neural Networks Fed with Synthetic or Dynamic Vision Sensor Data.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stromatias, Evangelos; Soto, Miguel; Serrano-Gotarredona, Teresa; Linares-Barranco, Bernabé

    2017-01-01

    This paper introduces a novel methodology for training an event-driven classifier within a Spiking Neural Network (SNN) System capable of yielding good classification results when using both synthetic input data and real data captured from Dynamic Vision Sensor (DVS) chips. The proposed supervised method uses the spiking activity provided by an arbitrary topology of prior SNN layers to build histograms and train the classifier in the frame domain using the stochastic gradient descent algorithm. In addition, this approach can cope with leaky integrate-and-fire neuron models within the SNN, a desirable feature for real-world SNN applications, where neural activation must fade away after some time in the absence of inputs. Consequently, this way of building histograms captures the dynamics of spikes immediately before the classifier. We tested our method on the MNIST data set using different synthetic encodings and real DVS sensory data sets such as N-MNIST, MNIST-DVS, and Poker-DVS using the same network topology and feature maps. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach by achieving the highest classification accuracy reported on the N-MNIST (97.77%) and Poker-DVS (100%) real DVS data sets to date with a spiking convolutional network. Moreover, by using the proposed method we were able to retrain the output layer of a previously reported spiking neural network and increase its performance by 2%, suggesting that the proposed classifier can be used as the output layer in works where features are extracted using unsupervised spike-based learning methods. In addition, we also analyze SNN performance figures such as total event activity and network latencies, which are relevant for eventual hardware implementations. In summary, the paper aggregates unsupervised-trained SNNs with a supervised-trained SNN classifier, combining and applying them to heterogeneous sets of benchmarks, both synthetic and from real DVS chips.

  5. Pattern recognition based on time-frequency analysis and convolutional neural networks for vibrational events in φ-OTDR

    Science.gov (United States)

    Xu, Chengjin; Guan, Junjun; Bao, Ming; Lu, Jiangang; Ye, Wei

    2018-01-01

    Based on vibration signals detected by a phase-sensitive optical time-domain reflectometer distributed optical fiber sensing system, this paper presents an implement of time-frequency analysis and convolutional neural network (CNN), used to classify different types of vibrational events. First, spectral subtraction and the short-time Fourier transform are used to enhance time-frequency features of vibration signals and transform different types of vibration signals into spectrograms, which are input to the CNN for automatic feature extraction and classification. Finally, by replacing the soft-max layer in the CNN with a multiclass support vector machine, the performance of the classifier is enhanced. Experiments show that after using this method to process 4000 vibration signal samples generated by four different vibration events, namely, digging, walking, vehicles passing, and damaging, the recognition rates of vibration events are over 90%. The experimental results prove that this method can automatically make an effective feature selection and greatly improve the classification accuracy of vibrational events in distributed optical fiber sensing systems.

  6. Event-Based Impulsive Control of Continuous-Time Dynamic Systems and Its Application to Synchronization of Memristive Neural Networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhu, Wei; Wang, Dandan; Liu, Lu; Feng, Gang

    2017-08-18

    This paper investigates exponential stabilization of continuous-time dynamic systems (CDSs) via event-based impulsive control (EIC) approaches, where the impulsive instants are determined by certain state-dependent triggering condition. The global exponential stability criteria via EIC are derived for nonlinear and linear CDSs, respectively. It is also shown that there is no Zeno-behavior for the concerned closed loop control system. In addition, the developed event-based impulsive scheme is applied to the synchronization problem of master and slave memristive neural networks. Furthermore, a self-triggered impulsive control scheme is developed to avoid continuous communication between the master system and slave system. Finally, two numerical simulation examples are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed event-based impulsive controllers.

  7. Event-Triggered Asynchronous Guaranteed Cost Control for Markov Jump Discrete-Time Neural Networks With Distributed Delay and Channel Fading.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yan, Huaicheng; Zhang, Hao; Yang, Fuwen; Zhan, Xisheng; Peng, Chen

    2017-08-18

    This paper is concerned with the guaranteed cost control problem for a class of Markov jump discrete-time neural networks (NNs) with event-triggered mechanism, asynchronous jumping, and fading channels. The Markov jump NNs are introduced to be close to reality, where the modes of the NNs and guaranteed cost controller are determined by two mutually independent Markov chains. The asynchronous phenomenon is considered, which increases the difficulty of designing required mode-dependent controller. The event-triggered mechanism is designed by comparing the relative measurement error with the last triggered state at the process of data transmission, which is used to eliminate dispensable transmission and reduce the networked energy consumption. In addition, the signal fading is considered for the effect of signal reflection and shadow in wireless networks, which is modeled by the novel Rice fading models. Some novel sufficient conditions are obtained to guarantee that the closed-loop system reaches a specified cost value under the designed jumping state feedback control law in terms of linear matrix inequalities. Finally, some simulation results are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

  8. Sensitivity to structure in action sequences: An infant event-related potential study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Monroy, Claire D; Gerson, Sarah A; Domínguez-Martínez, Estefanía; Kaduk, Katharina; Hunnius, Sabine; Reid, Vincent

    2017-05-06

    Infants are sensitive to structure and patterns within continuous streams of sensory input. This sensitivity relies on statistical learning, the ability to detect predictable regularities in spatial and temporal sequences. Recent evidence has shown that infants can detect statistical regularities in action sequences they observe, but little is known about the neural process that give rise to this ability. In the current experiment, we combined electroencephalography (EEG) with eye-tracking to identify electrophysiological markers that indicate whether 8-11-month-old infants detect violations to learned regularities in action sequences, and to relate these markers to behavioral measures of anticipation during learning. In a learning phase, infants observed an actor performing a sequence featuring two deterministic pairs embedded within an otherwise random sequence. Thus, the first action of each pair was predictive of what would occur next. One of the pairs caused an action-effect, whereas the second did not. In a subsequent test phase, infants observed another sequence that included deviant pairs, violating the previously observed action pairs. Event-related potential (ERP) responses were analyzed and compared between the deviant and the original action pairs. Findings reveal that infants demonstrated a greater Negative central (Nc) ERP response to the deviant actions for the pair that caused the action-effect, which was consistent with their visual anticipations during the learning phase. Findings are discussed in terms of the neural and behavioral processes underlying perception and learning of structured action sequences. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  9. Pleasant and unpleasant odors influence hedonic evaluations of human faces: an event-related potential study.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Stephanie Jane Cook

    2015-12-01

    Full Text Available Odors can alter hedonic evaluations of human faces, but the neural mechanisms of such effects are poorly understood. The present study aimed to analyze the neural underpinning of odor-induced changes in evaluations of human faces in an odor-priming paradigm, using event-related potentials (ERPs. Healthy, young participants (N = 20 rated neutral faces presented after a three second pulse of a pleasant odor (jasmine, unpleasant odor (methylmercaptan, or no-odor control (clean air. Neutral faces presented in the pleasant odor condition were rated more pleasant than the same faces presented in the no-odor control condition, which in turn were rated more pleasant than faces in the unpleasant odor condition. Analysis of face-related potentials revealed four clusters of electrodes significantly affected by odor condition at specific time points during long-latency epochs (600−950 ms. In the 620−640 ms interval, two scalp-time clusters showed greater negative potential in the right parietal electrodes in response to faces in the pleasant odor condition, compared to those in the no-odor and unpleasant odor conditions. At 926 ms, face-related potentials showed greater positivity in response to faces in the pleasant and unpleasant odor conditions at the left and right lateral frontal-temporal electrodes, respectively. Our data shows that odor-induced shifts in evaluations of faces were associated with amplitude changes in the late (> 600 and ultra-late (> 900 ms latency epochs. The observed amplitude changes during the ultra-late epoch are consistent with a left/right hemisphere bias towards pleasant/unpleasant odor effects. Odors alter evaluations of human faces, even when there is a temporal lag between presentation of odors and faces. Our results provide an initial understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying effects of odors on hedonic evaluations.

  10. Speaking Two Languages Enhances an Auditory but Not a Visual Neural Marker of Cognitive Inhibition

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mercedes Fernandez

    2014-09-01

    Full Text Available The purpose of the present study was to replicate and extend our original findings of enhanced neural inhibitory control in bilinguals. We compared English monolinguals to Spanish/English bilinguals on a non-linguistic, auditory Go/NoGo task while recording event-related brain potentials. New to this study was the visual Go/NoGo task, which we included to investigate whether enhanced neural inhibition in bilinguals extends from the auditory to the visual modality. Results confirmed our original findings and revealed greater inhibition in bilinguals compared to monolinguals. As predicted, compared to monolinguals, bilinguals showed increased N2 amplitude during the auditory NoGo trials, which required inhibitory control, but no differences during the Go trials, which required a behavioral response and no inhibition. Interestingly, during the visual Go/NoGo task, event related brain potentials did not distinguish the two groups, and behavioral responses were similar between the groups regardless of task modality. Thus, only auditory trials that required inhibitory control revealed between-group differences indicative of greater neural inhibition in bilinguals. These results show that experience-dependent neural changes associated with bilingualism are specific to the auditory modality and that the N2 event-related brain potential is a sensitive marker of this plasticity.

  11. Acute low-level alcohol consumption reduces phase locking of event-related oscillations in rodents.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Amodeo, Leslie R; Wills, Derek N; Ehlers, Cindy L

    2017-07-14

    Event-related oscillations (EROs) are rhythmic changes that are evoked by a sensory and/or cognitive stimulus that can influence the dynamics of the EEG. EROs are defined by the decomposition of the EEG signal into magnitude (energy) and phase information and can be elicited in both humans and animals. EROs have been linked to several relevant genes associated with ethanol dependence phenotypes in humans and are altered in selectively bred alcohol-preferring rats. However, pharmacological studies are only beginning to emerge investigating the impact low intoxicating doses of ethanol can have on event-related neural oscillations. The main goal of this study was to investigate the effects of low levels of voluntary consumption of ethanol, in rats, on phase locking of EROs in order to give further insight into the acute intoxicating effects of ethanol on the brain. To this end, we allow rats to self-administer unsweetened 20% ethanol over 15 intermittent sessions. This method results in a stable low-dose consumption of ethanol. Using an auditory event-related potential "oddball" paradigm, we investigated the effects of alcohol on the phase variability of EROs from electrodes implanted into the frontal cortex, dorsal hippocampus, and amygdala. We found that intermittent ethanol self-administration was sufficient to produce a significant reduction in overall intraregional synchrony across all targeted regions. These data suggest that phase locking of EROs within brain regions known to be impacted by alcohol may represent a sensitive biomarker of low levels of alcohol intoxication. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  12. Neural differentiation of lexico-syntactic categories or semantic features? event-related potential evidence for both.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kellenbach, Marion L; Wijers, Albertus A; Hovius, Marjolijn; Mulder, Juul; Mulder, Gijsbertus

    2002-05-15

    Event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to investigate whether processing differences between nouns and verbs can be accounted for by the differential salience of visual-perceptual and motor attributes in their semantic specifications. Three subclasses of nouns and verbs were selected, which differed in their semantic attribute composition (abstract, high visual, high visual and motor). Single visual word presentation with a recognition memory task was used. While multiple robust and parallel ERP effects were observed for both grammatical class and attribute type, there were no interactions between these. This pattern of effects provides support for lexical-semantic knowledge being organized in a manner that takes account both of category-based (grammatical class) and attribute-based distinctions.

  13. Neural Substrates for Processing Task-Irrelevant Sad Images in Adolescents

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Lihong; Huettel, Scott; De Bellis, Michael D.

    2008-01-01

    Neural systems related to cognitive and emotional processing were examined in adolescents using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Ten healthy adolescents performed an emotional oddball task. Subjects detected infrequent circles (targets) within a continual stream of phase-scrambled images (standards). Sad and neutral…

  14. Cough event classification by pretrained deep neural network.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Jia-Ming; You, Mingyu; Wang, Zheng; Li, Guo-Zheng; Xu, Xianghuai; Qiu, Zhongmin

    2015-01-01

    Cough is an essential symptom in respiratory diseases. In the measurement of cough severity, an accurate and objective cough monitor is expected by respiratory disease society. This paper aims to introduce a better performed algorithm, pretrained deep neural network (DNN), to the cough classification problem, which is a key step in the cough monitor. The deep neural network models are built from two steps, pretrain and fine-tuning, followed by a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) decoder to capture tamporal information of the audio signals. By unsupervised pretraining a deep belief network, a good initialization for a deep neural network is learned. Then the fine-tuning step is a back propogation tuning the neural network so that it can predict the observation probability associated with each HMM states, where the HMM states are originally achieved by force-alignment with a Gaussian Mixture Model Hidden Markov Model (GMM-HMM) on the training samples. Three cough HMMs and one noncough HMM are employed to model coughs and noncoughs respectively. The final decision is made based on viterbi decoding algorihtm that generates the most likely HMM sequence for each sample. A sample is labeled as cough if a cough HMM is found in the sequence. The experiments were conducted on a dataset that was collected from 22 patients with respiratory diseases. Patient dependent (PD) and patient independent (PI) experimental settings were used to evaluate the models. Five criteria, sensitivity, specificity, F1, macro average and micro average are shown to depict different aspects of the models. From overall evaluation criteria, the DNN based methods are superior to traditional GMM-HMM based method on F1 and micro average with maximal 14% and 11% error reduction in PD and 7% and 10% in PI, meanwhile keep similar performances on macro average. They also surpass GMM-HMM model on specificity with maximal 14% error reduction on both PD and PI. In this paper, we tried pretrained deep neural network in

  15. Event-related potential evidence of form and meaning coding during online speech recognition.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Friedrich, Claudia K; Kotz, Sonja A

    2007-04-01

    It is still a matter of debate whether initial analysis of speech is independent of contextual influences or whether meaning can modulate word activation directly. Utilizing event-related brain potentials (ERPs), we tested the neural correlates of speech recognition by presenting sentences that ended with incomplete words, such as To light up the dark she needed her can-. Immediately following the incomplete words, subjects saw visual words that (i) matched form and meaning, such as candle; (ii) matched meaning but not form, such as lantern; (iii) matched form but not meaning, such as candy; or (iv) mismatched form and meaning, such as number. We report ERP evidence for two distinct cohorts of lexical tokens: (a) a left-lateralized effect, the P250, differentiates form-matching words (i, iii) and form-mismatching words (ii, iv); (b) a right-lateralized effect, the P220, differentiates words that match in form and/or meaning (i, ii, iii) from mismatching words (iv). Lastly, fully matching words (i) reduce the amplitude of the N400. These results accommodate bottom-up and top-down accounts of human speech recognition. They suggest that neural representations of form and meaning are activated independently early on and are integrated at a later stage during sentence comprehension.

  16. Iconic Meaning in Music: An Event-Related Potential Study

    Science.gov (United States)

    Luo, Qiuling; Huang, Hong; Mo, Lei

    2015-01-01

    Although there has been extensive research on the processing of the emotional meaning of music, little is known about other aspects of listeners’ experience of music. The present study investigated the neural correlates of the iconic meaning of music. Event-related potentials (ERP) were recorded while a group of 20 music majors and a group of 20 non-music majors performed a lexical decision task in the context of implicit musical iconic meaning priming. ERP analysis revealed a significant N400 effect of congruency in time window 260-510 ms following the onset of the target word only in the group of music majors. Time-course analysis using 50 ms windows indicated significant N400 effects both within the time window 410-460 ms and 460-510 ms for music majors, whereas only a partial N400 effect during time window 410-460 ms was observed for non-music majors. There was also a trend for the N400 effects in the music major group to be stronger than those in the non-major group in the sub-windows of 310-360ms and 410-460ms. Especially in the sub-window of 410-460 ms, the topographical map of the difference waveforms between congruent and incongruent conditions revealed different N400 distribution between groups; the effect was concentrated in bilateral frontal areas for music majors, but in central-parietal areas for non-music majors. These results imply probable neural mechanism differences underlying automatic iconic meaning priming of music. Our findings suggest that processing of the iconic meaning of music can be accomplished automatically and that musical training may facilitate the understanding of the iconic meaning of music. PMID:26161561

  17. Decomposing interference during Stroop performance into different conflict factors: an event-related fMRI study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Melcher, Tobias; Gruber, Oliver

    2009-02-01

    In the current event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, we sought to trace back Stroop-interference to circumscribed properties of task-irrelevant word information - response-incompatibility, semantic incongruency and task-reference - that we conceive as conflict factors. Thereby, we particularly wanted to disentangle intermingled contributions of semantic conflict and response conflict to the overall Stroop-interference effect. To delineate neural substrates of single factors, we referred to the logics of cognitive subtraction and cognitive conjunction. Moreover, in a second step, we conducted correlation analyses to determine the relationship between neural activations and behavioral interference costs (i.e., conflict-related reaction time (RT) slowing) so as to further elucidate the functional role of the respective brain regions in conflict processing. Response-incompatibility was associated with activation in the left premotor cortex which can be interpreted as indicating motor competition or conflict, i.e., the presence of competing response tendencies. Accordingly, this activation was positively correlated with behavioral conflict costs. Semantic incongruency exhibited specific activation in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), the bilateral insula, and thalamus as well as in left somatosensory cortex. As supported by the consistent negative correlation with behavioral conflict costs, these activations most probably reflect strengthened control efforts to overcome interference and to ensure adequate task performance. Finally, task-reference elicited activation in the left temporo-polar cortex (TPC) and the right medial superior as well as in left rostroventral prefrontal cortex (rvPFC, sub-threshold activation). As strongly supported by prior studies' findings, this neural activation pattern may underlie residual semantic processing of the task-irrelevant word information.

  18. Distant supervision for neural relation extraction integrated with word attention and property features.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Qu, Jianfeng; Ouyang, Dantong; Hua, Wen; Ye, Yuxin; Li, Ximing

    2018-04-01

    Distant supervision for neural relation extraction is an efficient approach to extracting massive relations with reference to plain texts. However, the existing neural methods fail to capture the critical words in sentence encoding and meanwhile lack useful sentence information for some positive training instances. To address the above issues, we propose a novel neural relation extraction model. First, we develop a word-level attention mechanism to distinguish the importance of each individual word in a sentence, increasing the attention weights for those critical words. Second, we investigate the semantic information from word embeddings of target entities, which can be developed as a supplementary feature for the extractor. Experimental results show that our model outperforms previous state-of-the-art baselines. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  19. Dissociation between morality and disgust: an event-related potential study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yang, Qun; Li, An; Xiao, Xiao; Zhang, Ye; Tian, Xuehong

    2014-10-01

    This study explored the neural correlates of morality and disgust, particularly, how the mechanisms that mediate our avoidance of physically disgusting and morally abhorrent behaviors are neurologically dissociated during the time-course of processing. Twelve participants were asked to judge the acceptability of different types of behaviors, which varied in their level of moral wrongness and physical disgust, while event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. The main results showed that the two morally wrong conditions elicited greater amplitudes of P300-400 at frontal sites than the neutral condition and the physically disgusting, but not morally wrong, condition. The physically disgusting conditions (with and without moral content) elicited significantly more positive deflections in the 500-600 ms timeframe than the neutral condition at central-posterior sites. These findings indicate that our aversion to harmful substances in the physical environment and offensive behaviors in the social environment may be neurologically dissociable in the temporal dimension. Furthermore, the detection of moral violations may be processed earlier in time than that of physical disgust. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  20. Processing of visual semantic information to concrete words : temporal dynamics and neural mechanisms indicated by event-related brain potentials

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    van Schie, Hein T.; Wijers, Albertus A.; Mars, Rogier B.; Benjamins, Jeroen S.; Stowe, Laurie A.

    2005-01-01

    Event-related brain potentials were used to study the retrieval of visual semantic information to concrete words, and to investigate possible structural overlap between visual object working memory and concreteness effects in word processing. Subjects performed an object working memory task that

  1. Processing of visual semantic information to concrete words: temporal dynamics and neural mechanisms indicated by event-related brain potentials

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Schie, H.T. van; Wijers, A.A.; Mars, R.B.; Benjamins, J.S.; Stowe, L.A.

    2005-01-01

    Event-related brain potentials were used to study the retrieval of visual semantic information to concrete words, and to investigate possible structural overlap between visual object working memory and concreteness effects in word processing. Subjects performed an object working memory task that

  2. Repetition-related reductions in neural activity reveal component processes of mental simulation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Szpunar, Karl K; St Jacques, Peggy L; Robbins, Clifford A; Wig, Gagan S; Schacter, Daniel L

    2014-05-01

    In everyday life, people adaptively prepare for the future by simulating dynamic events about impending interactions with people, objects and locations. Previous research has consistently demonstrated that a distributed network of frontal-parietal-temporal brain regions supports this ubiquitous mental activity. Nonetheless, little is known about the manner in which specific regions of this network contribute to component features of future simulation. In two experiments, we used a functional magnetic resonance (fMR)-repetition suppression paradigm to demonstrate that distinct frontal-parietal-temporal regions are sensitive to processing the scenarios or what participants imagined was happening in an event (e.g., medial prefrontal, posterior cingulate, temporal-parietal and middle temporal cortices are sensitive to the scenarios associated with future social events), people (medial prefrontal cortex), objects (inferior frontal and premotor cortices) and locations (posterior cingulate/retrosplenial, parahippocampal and posterior parietal cortices) that typically constitute simulations of personal future events. This pattern of results demonstrates that the neural substrates of these component features of event simulations can be reliably identified in the context of a task that requires participants to simulate complex, everyday future experiences.

  3. Increased reaction time variability in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder as a response-related phenomenon: evidence from single-trial event-related potentials.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Saville, Christopher W N; Feige, Bernd; Kluckert, Christian; Bender, Stephan; Biscaldi, Monica; Berger, Andrea; Fleischhaker, Christian; Henighausen, Klaus; Klein, Christoph

    2015-07-01

    Increased intra-subject variability (ISV) in reaction times (RTs) is a promising endophenotype for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and among the most robust hallmarks of the disorder. ISV has been assumed to represent an attentional deficit, either reflecting lapses in attention or increased neural noise. Here, we use an innovative single-trial event-related potential approach to assess whether the increased ISV associated with ADHD is indeed attributable to attention, or whether it is related to response-related processing. We measured electroencephalographic responses to working memory oddball tasks in patients with ADHD (N = 20, aged 11.3 ± 1.1) and healthy controls (N = 25, aged 11.7 ± 1.1), and analysed these data with a recently developed method of single-trial event-related potential analysis. Estimates of component latency variability were computed for the stimulus-locked and response-locked forms of the P3b and the lateralised readiness potential (LRP). ADHD patients showed significantly increased ISV in behavioural ISV. This increased ISV was paralleled by an increase in variability in response-locked event-related potential latencies, while variability in stimulus-locked latencies was equivalent between groups. This result held across the P3b and LRP. Latency of all components predicted RTs on a single-trial basis, confirming that all were relevant for speed of processing. These data suggest that the increased ISV found in ADHD could be associated with response-end, rather than stimulus-end processes, in contrast to prevailing conceptions about the endophenotype. This mental chronometric approach may also be useful for exploring whether the existing lack of specificity of ISV to particular psychiatric conditions can be improved upon. © 2014 Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health.

  4. Healthy brooders employ more attentional resources when disengaging from the negative: an event-related fMRI study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vanderhasselt, Marie-Anne; Kühn, Simone; De Raedt, Rudi

    2011-06-01

    Depressive brooding is considered a maladaptive ruminative-thinking style that has been shown to be highly correlated with major depression. The present study in healthy participants employed event-related fMRI to uncover the neural underpinnings of emotional disengagement as it relates to depressive brooding. Thirty-four healthy, never depressed individuals performed an emotional go/no-go task with a rapid presentation of emotional faces. We focused on the contrast of inhibiting sad (happy/no-go) versus inhibiting happy (sad/no-go) information. This contrast allowed us to assess possible difficulties in disengaging from emotionally negative, as compared with emotionally positive, faces. At the behavioral level, only in high brooders were higher self-reported brooding scores correlated with more errors when sad information was inhibited, relative to happy information. At the neural level, across all participants, brooding scores were positively correlated with activity in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC; BA 46), implying that high brooders show higher DLPFC involvement when successfully disengaging from a series of negative stimuli. These results may suggest that healthy individuals who report a high brooding thinking style need to recruit more attentional control in order to disengage successfully from negative information, in a way that may be related to emotion regulation strategies. These mechanisms might protect them from developing depressive symptoms.

  5. Event-related potentials to visual, auditory, and bimodal (combined auditory-visual) stimuli.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Isoğlu-Alkaç, Ummühan; Kedzior, Karina; Keskindemirci, Gonca; Ermutlu, Numan; Karamursel, Sacit

    2007-02-01

    The purpose of this study was to investigate the response properties of event related potentials to unimodal and bimodal stimulations. The amplitudes of N1 and P2 were larger during bimodal evoked potentials (BEPs) than auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) in the anterior sites and the amplitudes of P1 were larger during BEPs than VEPs especially at the parieto-occipital locations. Responses to bimodal stimulation had longer latencies than responses to unimodal stimulation. The N1 and P2 components were larger in amplitude and longer in latency during the bimodal paradigm and predominantly occurred at the anterior sites. Therefore, the current bimodal paradigm can be used to investigate the involvement and location of specific neural generators that contribute to higher processing of sensory information. Moreover, this paradigm may be a useful tool to investigate the level of sensory dysfunctions in clinical samples.

  6. Neural Correlates of Belief- and Desire-Reasoning in 7- and 8-Year-Old Children: An Event-Related Potential Study

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bowman, Lindsay C.; Liu, David; Meltzoff, Andrew N.; Wellman, Henry M.

    2012-01-01

    Theory of mind requires belief- "and" desire-understanding. Event-related brain potential (ERP) research on belief- and desire-reasoning in adults found mid-frontal activations for both desires and beliefs, and selective right-posterior activations "only" for beliefs. Developmentally, children understand desires before beliefs; thus, a critical…

  7. Pattern recognition of state variables by neural networks

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Faria, Eduardo Fernandes; Pereira, Claubia

    1996-01-01

    An artificial intelligence system based on artificial neural networks can be used to classify predefined events and emergency procedures. These systems are being used in different areas. In the nuclear reactors safety, the goal is the classification of events whose data can be processed and recognized by neural networks. In this works we present a preliminary simple system, using neural networks in the recognition of patterns the recognition of variables which define a situation. (author)

  8. Event-related oscillations (EROs) and event-related potentials (ERPs) comparison in facial expression recognition.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Balconi, Michela; Pozzoli, Uberto

    2007-09-01

    The study aims to explore the significance of event-related potentials (ERPs) and event-related brain oscillations (EROs) (delta, theta, alpha, beta, gamma power) in response to emotional (fear, happiness, sadness) when compared with neutral faces during 180-250 post-stimulus time interval. The ERP results demonstrated that the emotional face elicited a negative peak at approximately 230 ms (N2). Moreover, EEG measures showed that motivational significance of face (emotional vs. neutral) could modulate the amplitude of EROs, but only for some frequency bands (i.e. theta and gamma bands). In a second phase, we considered the resemblance of the two EEG measures by a regression analysis. It revealed that theta and gamma oscillations mainly effect as oscillation activity at the N2 latency. Finally, a posterior increased power of theta was found for emotional faces.

  9. Neural correlates of cued recall in young and older adults: an event-related potential study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Angel, Lucie; Fay, Séverine; Bouazzaoui, Badiâa; Granjon, Lionel; Isingrini, Michel

    2009-01-07

    This experiment investigated age differences in electrophysiological correlates of retrieval success in a word-stem cued recall task. Young adults (M+/-SD: 21.4 years+/-1.9) performed this memory task more accurately than older participants (M+/-SD: 65.1 years+/-3.3). Robust event-related brain potential (ERP) old/new effects were identified in both age groups. The main age differences were observed in latency and lateralization of ERP effects. Young adults exhibited a parietal effect that became focused over left parietal electrodes, whereas no asymmetry was observed in older adults. Moreover, ERP effects were more delayed in the older group. Overall, these findings provide some evidence of the reduction of processing speed during aging and suggest that young and older adults may recruit distinct cerebral patterns during episodic cued recall.

  10. Aging memory for pictures: Using high-density event-related potentials to understand the effect of aging on the picture superiority effect

    OpenAIRE

    Ally, Brandon A.; Waring, Jill D.; Beth, Ellen H.; McKeever, Joshua D.; Milberg, William P.; Budson, Andrew E.

    2007-01-01

    High-density event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to understand the effect of aging on the neural correlates of the picture superiority effect. Pictures and words were systematically varied at study and test while ERPs were recorded at retrieval. Here, the results of the word-word and picture-picture study-test conditions are presented. Behavioral results showed that older adults demonstrated the picture superiority effect to a greater extent than younger adults. The ERP data helped to e...

  11. Age-Related Reversals in Neural Recruitment across Memory Retrieval Phases.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ford, Jaclyn H; Kensinger, Elizabeth A

    2017-05-17

    Over the last several decades, neuroimaging research has identified age-related neural changes that occur during cognitive tasks. These changes are used to help researchers identify functional changes that contribute to age-related impairments in cognitive performance. One commonly reported example of such a change is an age-related decrease in the recruitment of posterior sensory regions coupled with an increased recruitment of prefrontal regions across multiple cognitive tasks. This shift is often described as a compensatory recruitment of prefrontal regions due to age-related sensory-processing deficits in posterior regions. However, age is not only associated with spatial shifts in recruitment, but also with temporal shifts, in which younger and older adults recruit the same neural region at different points in a task trial. The current study examines the possible contribution of temporal modifications in the often-reported posterior-anterior shift. Participants, ages 19-85, took part in a memory retrieval task with a protracted retrieval trial consisting of an initial memory search phase and a subsequent detail elaboration phase. Age-related neural patterns during search replicated prior reports of age-related decreases in posterior recruitment and increases in prefrontal recruitment. However, during the later elaboration phase, the same posterior regions were associated with age-related increases in activation. Further, ROI and functional connectivity results suggest that these posterior regions function similarly during search and elaboration. These results suggest that the often-reported posterior-anterior shift may not reflect the inability of older adults to engage in sensory processing, but rather a change in when they recruit this processing. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The current study provides evidence that the often-reported posterior-anterior shift in aging may not reflect a global sensory-processing deficit, as has often been reported, but rather a

  12. Final Report on LDRD project 130784 : functional brain imaging by tunable multi-spectral Event-Related Optical Signal (EROS).

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Speed, Ann Elizabeth; Spahn, Olga Blum; Hsu, Alan Yuan-Chun

    2009-09-01

    Functional brain imaging is of great interest for understanding correlations between specific cognitive processes and underlying neural activity. This understanding can provide the foundation for developing enhanced human-machine interfaces, decision aides, and enhanced cognition at the physiological level. The functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) based event-related optical signal (EROS) technique can provide direct, high-fidelity measures of temporal and spatial characteristics of neural networks underlying cognitive behavior. However, current EROS systems are hampered by poor signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) and depth of measure, limiting areas of the brain and associated cognitive processes that can be investigated. We propose to investigate a flexible, tunable, multi-spectral fNIRS EROS system which will provide up to 10x greater SNR as well as improved spatial and temporal resolution through significant improvements in electronics, optoelectronics and optics, as well as contribute to the physiological foundation of higher-order cognitive processes and provide the technical foundation for miniaturized portable neuroimaging systems.

  13. Modulation of neural activity during object naming: Effects of time and practice

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Turennout, M.I. van; Bielamowicz, L.; Martin, A.

    2003-01-01

    Repeated exposure to objects improves our ability to identify and name them, even after a long delay. Previous brain imaging studies have demonstrated that this experience-related facilitation of object naming is associated with neural changes in distinct brain regions. We used event-related

  14. Age-related difference in the effective neural connectivity associated with probabilistic category learning

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Yoon, Eun Jin; Cho, Sang Soo; Kim, Hee Jung; Bang, Seong Ae; Park, Hyun Soo; Kim, Yu Kyeong; Kim, Sang Eun

    2007-01-01

    Although it is well known that explicit memory is affected by the deleterious changes in brain with aging, but effect of aging in implicit memory such as probabilistic category learning (PCL) is not clear. To identify the effect of aging on the neural interaction for successful PCL, we investigated the neural substrates of PCL and the age-related changes of the neural network between these brain regions. 23 young (age, 252 y; 11 males) and 14 elderly (673 y; 7 males) healthy subjects underwent FDG PET during a resting state and 150-trial weather prediction (WP) task. Correlations between the WP hit rates and regional glucose metabolism were assessed using SPM2 (P diff (37) = 142.47, P<0.005), Systematic comparisons of each path revealed that frontal crosscallosal and the frontal to parahippocampal connection were most responsible for the model differences (P<0.05). For the successful PCL, the elderly recruits the basal ganglia implicit memory system but MTL recruitment differs from the young. The inadequate MTL correlation pattern in the elderly is may be caused by the changes of the neural pathway related with explicit memory. These neural changes can explain the decreased performance of PCL in elderly subjects

  15. Event-Related Potentials during a Gambling Task in Young Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mesrobian, Sarah K.; Villa, Alessandro E. P.; Bader, Michel; Götte, Lorenz; Lintas, Alessandra

    2018-01-01

    Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is characterized by deficits in executive functions and decision making during childhood and adolescence. Contradictory results exist whether altered event-related potentials (ERPs) in adults are associated with the tendency of ADHD patients toward risky behavior. Clinically diagnosed ADHD patients (n = 18) and healthy controls (n = 18), aged between 18 and 29 (median 22 Yo), were screened with the Conners' Adult ADHD Rating Scales and assessed by the Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview, adult ADHD Self-Report Scale, and by the 60-item HEXACO Personality Inventory. The characteristic personality traits of ADHD patients were the high level of impulsiveness associated with lower values of agreeableness. All participants performed a probability gambling task (PGT) with two frequencies of the feedback information of the outcome. For each trial, ERPs were triggered by the self-paced trial onset and by the gamble selection. After trial onset, N2-P3a ERP component associated with the attentional load peaked earlier in the ADHD group than in controls. An N500 component related to the feedback frequency condition after trial onset and an N400-like component after gamble selection suggest a large affective stake of the decision making and an emphasized post-decisional evaluation of the choice made by the ADHD participants. By combining ERPs, related to the emotions associated with the feedback frequency condition, and behavioral analyses during completion of PGT, this study provides new findings on the neural dynamics that differentiate controls and young ADHD adults. In the patients' group, we raise the hypothesis that the activity of frontocentral and centroparietal neural circuits drive the decision-making processes dictated by an impaired cognitive workload followed by the build-up of large emotional feelings generated by the conflict toward the outcome of the gambling choice. Our results can be used for new

  16. Event-Related Potentials during a Gambling Task in Young Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sarah K. Mesrobian

    2018-02-01

    Full Text Available Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD is characterized by deficits in executive functions and decision making during childhood and adolescence. Contradictory results exist whether altered event-related potentials (ERPs in adults are associated with the tendency of ADHD patients toward risky behavior. Clinically diagnosed ADHD patients (n = 18 and healthy controls (n = 18, aged between 18 and 29 (median 22 Yo, were screened with the Conners' Adult ADHD Rating Scales and assessed by the Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview, adult ADHD Self-Report Scale, and by the 60-item HEXACO Personality Inventory. The characteristic personality traits of ADHD patients were the high level of impulsiveness associated with lower values of agreeableness. All participants performed a probability gambling task (PGT with two frequencies of the feedback information of the outcome. For each trial, ERPs were triggered by the self-paced trial onset and by the gamble selection. After trial onset, N2-P3a ERP component associated with the attentional load peaked earlier in the ADHD group than in controls. An N500 component related to the feedback frequency condition after trial onset and an N400-like component after gamble selection suggest a large affective stake of the decision making and an emphasized post-decisional evaluation of the choice made by the ADHD participants. By combining ERPs, related to the emotions associated with the feedback frequency condition, and behavioral analyses during completion of PGT, this study provides new findings on the neural dynamics that differentiate controls and young ADHD adults. In the patients' group, we raise the hypothesis that the activity of frontocentral and centroparietal neural circuits drive the decision-making processes dictated by an impaired cognitive workload followed by the build-up of large emotional feelings generated by the conflict toward the outcome of the gambling choice. Our results can be used

  17. Runoff Modelling in Urban Storm Drainage by Neural Networks

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Rasmussen, Michael R.; Brorsen, Michael; Schaarup-Jensen, Kjeld

    1995-01-01

    A neural network is used to simulate folw and water levels in a sewer system. The calibration of th neural network is based on a few measured events and the network is validated against measureed events as well as flow simulated with the MOUSE model (Lindberg and Joergensen, 1986). The neural...... network is used to compute flow or water level at selected points in the sewer system, and to forecast the flow from a small residential area. The main advantages of the neural network are the build-in self calibration procedure and high speed performance, but the neural network cannot be used to extract...... knowledge of the runoff process. The neural network was found to simulate 150 times faster than e.g. the MOUSE model....

  18. Attribution of extreme weather and climate-related events.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stott, Peter A; Christidis, Nikolaos; Otto, Friederike E L; Sun, Ying; Vanderlinden, Jean-Paul; van Oldenborgh, Geert Jan; Vautard, Robert; von Storch, Hans; Walton, Peter; Yiou, Pascal; Zwiers, Francis W

    2016-01-01

    Extreme weather and climate-related events occur in a particular place, by definition, infrequently. It is therefore challenging to detect systematic changes in their occurrence given the relative shortness of observational records. However, there is a clear interest from outside the climate science community in the extent to which recent damaging extreme events can be linked to human-induced climate change or natural climate variability. Event attribution studies seek to determine to what extent anthropogenic climate change has altered the probability or magnitude of particular events. They have shown clear evidence for human influence having increased the probability of many extremely warm seasonal temperatures and reduced the probability of extremely cold seasonal temperatures in many parts of the world. The evidence for human influence on the probability of extreme precipitation events, droughts, and storms is more mixed. Although the science of event attribution has developed rapidly in recent years, geographical coverage of events remains patchy and based on the interests and capabilities of individual research groups. The development of operational event attribution would allow a more timely and methodical production of attribution assessments than currently obtained on an ad hoc basis. For event attribution assessments to be most useful, remaining scientific uncertainties need to be robustly assessed and the results clearly communicated. This requires the continuing development of methodologies to assess the reliability of event attribution results and further work to understand the potential utility of event attribution for stakeholder groups and decision makers. WIREs Clim Change 2016, 7:23-41. doi: 10.1002/wcc.380 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.

  19. Deficient multisensory integration in schizophrenia: an event-related potential study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stekelenburg, Jeroen J; Maes, Jan Pieter; Van Gool, Arthur R; Sitskoorn, Margriet; Vroomen, Jean

    2013-07-01

    In many natural audiovisual events (e.g., the sight of a face articulating the syllable /ba/), the visual signal precedes the sound and thus allows observers to predict the onset and the content of the sound. In healthy adults, the N1 component of the event-related brain potential (ERP), reflecting neural activity associated with basic sound processing, is suppressed if a sound is accompanied by a video that reliably predicts sound onset. If the sound does not match the content of the video (e.g., hearing /ba/ while lipreading /fu/), the later occurring P2 component is affected. Here, we examined whether these visual information sources affect auditory processing in patients with schizophrenia. The electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded in 18 patients with schizophrenia and compared with that of 18 healthy volunteers. As stimuli we used video recordings of natural actions in which visual information preceded and predicted the onset of the sound that was either congruent or incongruent with the video. For the healthy control group, visual information reduced the auditory-evoked N1 if compared to a sound-only condition, and stimulus-congruency affected the P2. This reduction in N1 was absent in patients with schizophrenia, and the congruency effect on the P2 was diminished. Distributed source estimations revealed deficits in the network subserving audiovisual integration in patients with schizophrenia. The results show a deficit in multisensory processing in patients with schizophrenia and suggest that multisensory integration dysfunction may be an important and, to date, under-researched aspect of schizophrenia. Copyright © 2013. Published by Elsevier B.V.

  20. Spatial and Time Domain Feature of ERP Speller System Extracted via Convolutional Neural Network.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yoon, Jaehong; Lee, Jungnyun; Whang, Mincheol

    2018-01-01

    Feature of event-related potential (ERP) has not been completely understood and illiteracy problem remains unsolved. To this end, P300 peak has been used as the feature of ERP in most brain-computer interface applications, but subjects who do not show such peak are common. Recent development of convolutional neural network provides a way to analyze spatial and temporal features of ERP. Here, we train the convolutional neural network with 2 convolutional layers whose feature maps represented spatial and temporal features of event-related potential. We have found that nonilliterate subjects' ERP show high correlation between occipital lobe and parietal lobe, whereas illiterate subjects only show correlation between neural activities from frontal lobe and central lobe. The nonilliterates showed peaks in P300, P500, and P700, whereas illiterates mostly showed peaks in around P700. P700 was strong in both subjects. We found that P700 peak may be the key feature of ERP as it appears in both illiterate and nonilliterate subjects.

  1. Investigating neural efficiency of elite karate athletes during a mental arithmetic task using EEG.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Duru, Adil Deniz; Assem, Moataz

    2018-02-01

    Neural efficiency is proposed as one of the neural mechanisms underlying elite athletic performances. Previous sports studies examined neural efficiency using tasks that involve motor functions. In this study we investigate the extent of neural efficiency beyond motor tasks by using a mental subtraction task. A group of elite karate athletes are compared to a matched group of non-athletes. Electroencephalogram is used to measure cognitive dynamics during resting and increased mental workload periods. Mainly posterior alpha band power of the karate players was found to be higher than control subjects under both tasks. Moreover, event related synchronization/desynchronization has been computed to investigate the neural efficiency hypothesis among subjects. Finally, this study is the first study to examine neural efficiency related to a cognitive task, not a motor task, in elite karate players using ERD/ERS analysis. The results suggest that the effect of neural efficiency in the brain is global rather than local and thus might be contributing to the elite athletic performances. Also the results are in line with the neural efficiency hypothesis tested for motor performance studies.

  2. Effects of white noise on event-related potentials in somatosensory Go/No-go paradigms.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ohbayashi, Wakana; Kakigi, Ryusuke; Nakata, Hiroki

    2017-09-06

    Exposure to auditory white noise has been shown to facilitate human cognitive function. This phenomenon is termed stochastic resonance, and a moderate amount of auditory noise has been suggested to benefit individuals in hypodopaminergic states. The present study investigated the effects of white noise on the N140 and P300 components of event-related potentials in somatosensory Go/No-go paradigms. A Go or No-go stimulus was presented to the second or fifth digit of the left hand, respectively, at the same probability. Participants performed somatosensory Go/No-go paradigms while hearing three different white noise levels (45, 55, and 65 dB conditions). The peak amplitudes of Go-P300 and No-go-P300 in ERP waveforms were significantly larger under 55 dB than 45 and 65 dB conditions. White noise did not affect the peak latency of N140 or P300, or the peak amplitude of N140. Behavioral data for the reaction time, SD of reaction time, and error rates showed the absence of an effect by white noise. This is the first event-related potential study to show that exposure to auditory white noise at 55 dB enhanced the amplitude of P300 during Go/No-go paradigms, reflecting changes in the neural activation of response execution and inhibition processing.

  3. Event-by-event simulation of single-neutron experiments to test uncertainty relations

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Raedt, H De; Michielsen, K

    2014-01-01

    Results from a discrete-event simulation of a recent single-neutron experiment that tests Ozawa's generalization of Heisenberg's uncertainty relation are presented. The event-based simulation algorithm reproduces the results of the quantum theoretical description of the experiment but does not require the knowledge of the solution of a wave equation, nor does it rely on detailed concepts of quantum theory. In particular, the data from these non-quantum simulations satisfy uncertainty relations derived in the context of quantum theory. (paper)

  4. The neural basis of financial risk taking.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kuhnen, Camelia M; Knutson, Brian

    2005-09-01

    Investors systematically deviate from rationality when making financial decisions, yet the mechanisms responsible for these deviations have not been identified. Using event-related fMRI, we examined whether anticipatory neural activity would predict optimal and suboptimal choices in a financial decision-making task. We characterized two types of deviations from the optimal investment strategy of a rational risk-neutral agent as risk-seeking mistakes and risk-aversion mistakes. Nucleus accumbens activation preceded risky choices as well as risk-seeking mistakes, while anterior insula activation preceded riskless choices as well as risk-aversion mistakes. These findings suggest that distinct neural circuits linked to anticipatory affect promote different types of financial choices and indicate that excessive activation of these circuits may lead to investing mistakes. Thus, consideration of anticipatory neural mechanisms may add predictive power to the rational actor model of economic decision making.

  5. Neural Darwinism and consciousness.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Seth, Anil K; Baars, Bernard J

    2005-03-01

    Neural Darwinism (ND) is a large scale selectionist theory of brain development and function that has been hypothesized to relate to consciousness. According to ND, consciousness is entailed by reentrant interactions among neuronal populations in the thalamocortical system (the 'dynamic core'). These interactions, which permit high-order discriminations among possible core states, confer selective advantages on organisms possessing them by linking current perceptual events to a past history of value-dependent learning. Here, we assess the consistency of ND with 16 widely recognized properties of consciousness, both physiological (for example, consciousness is associated with widespread, relatively fast, low amplitude interactions in the thalamocortical system), and phenomenal (for example, consciousness involves the existence of a private flow of events available only to the experiencing subject). While no theory accounts fully for all of these properties at present, we find that ND and its recent extensions fare well.

  6. Distinct Neural Substrates for Maintaining Locations and Spatial Relations in Working Memory

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kara J Blacker

    2016-11-01

    Full Text Available Previous work has demonstrated a distinction between maintenance of two types of spatial information in working memory (WM: spatial locations and spatial relations. While a body of work has investigated the neural mechanisms of sensory-based information like spatial locations, little is known about how spatial relations are maintained in WM. In two experiments, we used fMRI to investigate the involvement of early visual cortex in the maintenance of spatial relations in WM. In both experiments, we found less quadrant-specific BOLD activity in visual cortex when a single spatial relation, compared to a single spatial location, was held in WM. Also across both experiments, we found a consistent set of brain regions that were differentially activated during maintenance of locations versus relations. Maintaining a location, compared to a relation, was associated with greater activity in typical spatial WM regions like posterior parietal cortex and prefrontal regions. Whereas maintaining a relation, compared to a location, was associated with greater activity in the parahippocampal gyrus and precuneus/retrosplenial cortex. Further, in Experiment 2 we manipulated WM load and included trials where participants had to maintain three spatial locations or relations. Under this high load condition, the regions sensitive to locations versus relations were somewhat different than under low load. We also identified regions that were sensitive to load specifically for location or relation maintenance, as well as overlapping regions sensitive to load more generally. These results suggest that the neural substrates underlying WM maintenance of spatial locations and relations are distinct from one another and that the neural representations of these distinct types of spatial information change with load.

  7. Sex differences in the neural basis of emotional memories.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Canli, Turhan; Desmond, John E; Zhao, Zuo; Gabrieli, John D E

    2002-08-06

    Psychological studies have found better memory in women than men for emotional events, but the neural basis for this difference is unknown. We used event-related functional MRI to assess whether sex differences in memory for emotional stimuli is associated with activation of different neural systems in men and women. Brain activation in 12 men and 12 women was recorded while they rated their experience of emotional arousal in response to neutral and emotionally negative pictures. In a recognition memory test 3 weeks after scanning, highly emotional pictures were remembered best, and remembered better by women than by men. Men and women activated different neural circuits to encode stimuli effectively into memory even when the analysis was restricted to pictures rated equally arousing by both groups. Men activated significantly more structures than women in a network that included the right amygdala, whereas women activated significantly fewer structures in a network that included the left amygdala. Women had significantly more brain regions where activation correlated with both ongoing evaluation of emotional experience and with subsequent memory for the most emotionally arousing pictures. Greater overlap in brain regions sensitive to current emotion and contributing to subsequent memory may be a neural mechanism for emotions to enhance memory more powerfully in women than in men.

  8. Component Neural Systems for the Creation of Emotional Memories during Free Viewing of a Complex, Real-World Event.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Botzung, Anne; Labar, Kevin S; Kragel, Philip; Miles, Amanda; Rubin, David C

    2010-01-01

    To investigate the neural systems that contribute to the formation of complex, self-relevant emotional memories, dedicated fans of rival college basketball teams watched a competitive game while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). During a subsequent recognition memory task, participants were shown video clips depicting plays of the game, stemming either from previously-viewed game segments (targets) or from non-viewed portions of the same game (foils). After an old-new judgment, participants provided emotional valence and intensity ratings of the clips. A data driven approach was first used to decompose the fMRI signal acquired during free viewing of the game into spatially independent components. Correlations were then calculated between the identified components and post-scanning emotion ratings for successfully encoded targets. Two components were correlated with intensity ratings, including temporal lobe regions implicated in memory and emotional functions, such as the hippocampus and amygdala, as well as a midline fronto-cingulo-parietal network implicated in social cognition and self-relevant processing. These data were supported by a general linear model analysis, which revealed additional valence effects in fronto-striatal-insular regions when plays were divided into positive and negative events according to the fan's perspective. Overall, these findings contribute to our understanding of how emotional factors impact distributed neural systems to successfully encode dynamic, personally-relevant event sequences.

  9. Component neural systems for the creation of emotional memories during free viewing of a complex, real-world event

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Anne Botzung

    2010-05-01

    Full Text Available To investigate the neural systems that contribute to the formation of complex, self-relevant emotional memories, dedicated fans of rival college basketball teams watched a competitive game while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI. During a subsequent recognition memory task, participants were shown video clips depicting plays of the game, stemming either from previously-viewed game segments (targets or from non-viewed portions of the same game (foils. After an old-new judgment, participants provided emotional valence and intensity ratings of the clips. A data driven approach was first used to decompose the fMRI signal acquired during free viewing of the game into spatially independent components. Correlations were then calculated between the identified components and post-scanning emotion ratings for successfully encoded targets. Two components were correlated with intensity ratings, including temporal lobe regions implicated in memory and emotional functions, such as the hippocampus and amygdala, as well as a midline fronto-cingulo-parietal network implicated in social cognition and self-relevant processing. These data were supported by a general linear model analysis, which revealed additional valence effects in fronto-striatal-insular regions when plays were divided into positive and negative events according to the fan’s perspective. Overall, these findings contribute to our understanding of how emotional factors impact distributed neural systems to successfully encode dynamic, personally-relevant event sequences.

  10. Impact of load-related neural processes on feature binding in visuospatial working memory.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nicole A Kochan

    Full Text Available BACKGROUND: The capacity of visual working memory (WM is substantially limited and only a fraction of what we see is maintained as a temporary trace. The process of binding visual features has been proposed as an adaptive means of minimising information demands on WM. However the neural mechanisms underlying this process, and its modulation by task and load effects, are not well understood. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the neural correlates of feature binding and its modulation by WM load during the sequential phases of encoding, maintenance and retrieval. METHODS AND FINDINGS: 18 young healthy participants performed a visuospatial WM task with independent factors of load and feature conjunction (object identity and position in an event-related functional MRI study. During stimulus encoding, load-invariant conjunction-related activity was observed in left prefrontal cortex and left hippocampus. During maintenance, greater activity for task demands of feature conjunction versus single features, and for increased load was observed in left-sided regions of the superior occipital cortex, precuneus and superior frontal cortex. Where these effects were expressed in overlapping cortical regions, their combined effect was additive. During retrieval, however, an interaction of load and feature conjunction was observed. This modulation of feature conjunction activity under increased load was expressed through greater deactivation in medial structures identified as part of the default mode network. CONCLUSIONS AND SIGNIFICANCE: The relationship between memory load and feature binding qualitatively differed through each phase of the WM task. Of particular interest was the interaction of these factors observed within regions of the default mode network during retrieval which we interpret as suggesting that at low loads, binding processes may be 'automatic' but at higher loads it becomes a resource-intensive process leading to disengagement of activity in this

  11. Religious Fundamentalism Modulates Neural Responses to Error-Related Words: The Role of Motivation Toward Closure

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Małgorzata Kossowska

    2018-03-01

    Full Text Available Examining the relationship between brain activity and religious fundamentalism, this study explores whether fundamentalist religious beliefs increase responses to error-related words among participants intolerant to uncertainty (i.e., high in the need for closure in comparison to those who have a high degree of toleration for uncertainty (i.e., those who are low in the need for closure. We examine a negative-going event-related brain potentials occurring 400 ms after stimulus onset (the N400 due to its well-understood association with the reactions to emotional conflict. Religious fundamentalism and tolerance of uncertainty were measured on self-report measures, and electroencephalographic neural reactivity was recorded as participants were performing an emotional Stroop task. In this task, participants read neutral words and words related to uncertainty, errors, and pondering, while being asked to name the color of the ink with which the word is written. The results confirm that among people who are intolerant of uncertainty (i.e., those high in the need for closure, religious fundamentalism is associated with an increased N400 on error-related words compared with people who tolerate uncertainty well (i.e., those low in the need for closure.

  12. Religious Fundamentalism Modulates Neural Responses to Error-Related Words: The Role of Motivation Toward Closure.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kossowska, Małgorzata; Szwed, Paulina; Wyczesany, Miroslaw; Czarnek, Gabriela; Wronka, Eligiusz

    2018-01-01

    Examining the relationship between brain activity and religious fundamentalism, this study explores whether fundamentalist religious beliefs increase responses to error-related words among participants intolerant to uncertainty (i.e., high in the need for closure) in comparison to those who have a high degree of toleration for uncertainty (i.e., those who are low in the need for closure). We examine a negative-going event-related brain potentials occurring 400 ms after stimulus onset (the N400) due to its well-understood association with the reactions to emotional conflict. Religious fundamentalism and tolerance of uncertainty were measured on self-report measures, and electroencephalographic neural reactivity was recorded as participants were performing an emotional Stroop task. In this task, participants read neutral words and words related to uncertainty, errors, and pondering, while being asked to name the color of the ink with which the word is written. The results confirm that among people who are intolerant of uncertainty (i.e., those high in the need for closure), religious fundamentalism is associated with an increased N400 on error-related words compared with people who tolerate uncertainty well (i.e., those low in the need for closure).

  13. Religious Fundamentalism Modulates Neural Responses to Error-Related Words: The Role of Motivation Toward Closure

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kossowska, Małgorzata; Szwed, Paulina; Wyczesany, Miroslaw; Czarnek, Gabriela; Wronka, Eligiusz

    2018-01-01

    Examining the relationship between brain activity and religious fundamentalism, this study explores whether fundamentalist religious beliefs increase responses to error-related words among participants intolerant to uncertainty (i.e., high in the need for closure) in comparison to those who have a high degree of toleration for uncertainty (i.e., those who are low in the need for closure). We examine a negative-going event-related brain potentials occurring 400 ms after stimulus onset (the N400) due to its well-understood association with the reactions to emotional conflict. Religious fundamentalism and tolerance of uncertainty were measured on self-report measures, and electroencephalographic neural reactivity was recorded as participants were performing an emotional Stroop task. In this task, participants read neutral words and words related to uncertainty, errors, and pondering, while being asked to name the color of the ink with which the word is written. The results confirm that among people who are intolerant of uncertainty (i.e., those high in the need for closure), religious fundamentalism is associated with an increased N400 on error-related words compared with people who tolerate uncertainty well (i.e., those low in the need for closure). PMID:29636709

  14. Social power and approach-related neural activity.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Boksem, Maarten A S; Smolders, Ruud; De Cremer, David

    2012-06-01

    It has been argued that power activates a general tendency to approach whereas powerlessness activates a tendency to inhibit. The assumption is that elevated power involves reward-rich environments, freedom and, as a consequence, triggers an approach-related motivational orientation and attention to rewards. In contrast, reduced power is associated with increased threat, punishment and social constraint and thereby activates inhibition-related motivation. Moreover, approach motivation has been found to be associated with increased relative left-sided frontal brain activity, while withdrawal motivation has been associated with increased right sided activations. We measured EEG activity while subjects engaged in a task priming either high or low social power. Results show that high social power is indeed associated with greater left-frontal brain activity compared to low social power, providing the first neural evidence for the theory that high power is associated with approach-related motivation. We propose a framework accounting for differences in both approach motivation and goal-directed behaviour associated with different levels of power.

  15. A comparative study of event-related coupling patterns during an auditory oddball task in schizophrenia

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bachiller, Alejandro; Poza, Jesús; Gómez, Carlos; Molina, Vicente; Suazo, Vanessa; Hornero, Roberto

    2015-02-01

    Objective. The aim of this research is to explore the coupling patterns of brain dynamics during an auditory oddball task in schizophrenia (SCH). Approach. Event-related electroencephalographic (ERP) activity was recorded from 20 SCH patients and 20 healthy controls. The coupling changes between auditory response and pre-stimulus baseline were calculated in conventional EEG frequency bands (theta, alpha, beta-1, beta-2 and gamma), using three coupling measures: coherence, phase-locking value and Euclidean distance. Main results. Our results showed a statistically significant increase from baseline to response in theta coupling and a statistically significant decrease in beta-2 coupling in controls. No statistically significant changes were observed in SCH patients. Significance. Our findings support the aberrant salience hypothesis, since SCH patients failed to change their coupling dynamics between stimulus response and baseline when performing an auditory cognitive task. This result may reflect an impaired communication among neural areas, which may be related to abnormal cognitive functions.

  16. The Use of Convolutional Neural Network in Relating Precipitation to Circulation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pan, B.; Hsu, K. L.; AghaKouchak, A.; Sorooshian, S.

    2017-12-01

    Precipitation prediction in dynamical weather and climate models depends on 1) the predictability of pressure or geopotential height for the forecasting period and 2) the successive work of interpreting the pressure field in terms of precipitation events. The later task is represented as parameterization schemes in numerical models, where detailed computing inevitably blurs the hidden cause-and-effect relationship in precipitation generation. The "big data" provided by numerical simulation, reanalysis and observation networks requires better causation analysis for people to digest and realize their use. While classic synoptical analysis methods are very-often insufficient for spatially distributed high dimensional data, a Convolutional Neural Network(CNN) is developed here to directly relate precipitation with circulation. Case study carried over west coast United States during boreal winter showed that CNN can locate and capture key pressure zones of different structures to project precipitation spatial distribution with high accuracy across hourly to monthly scales. This direct connection between atmospheric circulation and precipitation offers a probe for attributing precipitation to the coverage, location, intensity and spatial structure of characteristic pressure zones, which can be used for model diagnosis and improvement.

  17. Neural principles of memory and a neural theory of analogical insight

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lawson, David I.; Lawson, Anton E.

    1993-12-01

    Grossberg's principles of neural modeling are reviewed and extended to provide a neural level theory to explain how analogies greatly increase the rate of learning and can, in fact, make learning and retention possible. In terms of memory, the key point is that the mind is able to recognize and recall when it is able to match sensory input from new objects, events, or situations with past memory records of similar objects, events, or situations. When a match occurs, an adaptive resonance is set up in which the synaptic strengths of neurons are increased; thus a long term record of the new input is formed in memory. Systems of neurons called outstars and instars are presumably the underlying units that enable this to occur. Analogies can greatly facilitate learning and retention because they activate the outstars (i.e., the cells that are sampling the to-be-learned pattern) and cause the neural activity to grow exponentially by forming feedback loops. This increased activity insures the boost in synaptic strengths of neurons, thus causing storage and retention in long-term memory (i.e., learning).

  18. Neural tube defects – disorders of neurulation and related embryonic processes

    Science.gov (United States)

    Copp, Andrew J.; Greene, Nicholas D. E.

    2014-01-01

    Neural tube defects (NTDs) are severe congenital malformations affecting 1 in every 1000 pregnancies. ‘Open’ NTDs result from failure of primary neurulation as seen in anencephaly, myelomeningocele (open spina bifida) and craniorachischisis. Degeneration of the persistently open neural tube in utero leads to loss of neurological function below the lesion level. ‘Closed’ NTDs are skin-covered disorders of spinal cord structure, ranging from asymptomatic spina bifida occulta to severe spinal cord tethering, and usually traceable to disruption of secondary neurulation. ‘Herniation’ NTDs are those in which meninges, with or without brain or spinal cord tissue, become exteriorised through a pathological opening in the skull or vertebral column (e.g. encephalocele and meningocele). NTDs have multifactorial etiology, with genes and environmental factors interacting to determine individual risk of malformation. While over 200 mutant genes cause open NTDs in mice, much less is known about the genetic causation of human NTDs. Recent evidence has implicated genes of the planar cell polarity signalling pathway in a proportion of cases. The embryonic development of NTDs is complex, with diverse cellular and molecular mechanisms operating at different levels of the body axis. Molecular regulatory events include the BMP and Sonic hedgehog pathways which have been implicated in control of neural plate bending. Primary prevention of NTDs has been implemented clinically following the demonstration that folic acid, when taken as a peri-conceptional supplement, can prevent many cases. Not all NTDs respond to folic acid, however, and adjunct therapies are required for prevention of this folic acid-resistant category. PMID:24009034

  19. Neural mirroring and social interaction: Motor system involvement during action observation relates to early peer cooperation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Endedijk, H M; Meyer, M; Bekkering, H; Cillessen, A H N; Hunnius, S

    2017-04-01

    Whether we hand over objects to someone, play a team sport, or make music together, social interaction often involves interpersonal action coordination, both during instances of cooperation and entrainment. Neural mirroring is thought to play a crucial role in processing other's actions and is therefore considered important for social interaction. Still, to date, it is unknown whether interindividual differences in neural mirroring play a role in interpersonal coordination during different instances of social interaction. A relation between neural mirroring and interpersonal coordination has particularly relevant implications for early childhood, since successful early interaction with peers is predictive of a more favorable social development. We examined the relation between neural mirroring and children's interpersonal coordination during peer interaction using EEG and longitudinal behavioral data. Results showed that 4-year-old children with higher levels of motor system involvement during action observation (as indicated by lower beta-power) were more successful in early peer cooperation. This is the first evidence for a relation between motor system involvement during action observation and interpersonal coordination during other instances of social interaction. The findings suggest that interindividual differences in neural mirroring are related to interpersonal coordination and thus successful social interaction. Copyright © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

  20. Short-term effects of prosocial video games on aggression: an event-related potential study

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Yanling; Teng, Zhaojun; Lan, Haiying; Zhang, Xin; Yao, Dezhong

    2015-01-01

    Previous research has shown that exposure to violent video games increases aggression, whereas exposure to prosocial video games can reduce aggressive behavior. However, little is known about the neural correlates of these behavioral effects. This work is the first to investigate the electrophysiological features of the relationship between playing a prosocial video game and inhibition of aggressive behavior. Forty-nine subjects played either a prosocial or a neutral video game for 20 min, then participated in an event-related potential (ERP) experiment based on an oddball paradigm and designed to test electrophysiological responses to prosocial and violent words. Finally, subjects completed a competitive reaction time task (CRTT) which based on Taylor's Aggression Paradigm and contains reaction time and noise intensity chosen as a measure of aggressive behavior. The results show that the prosocial video game group (compared to the neutral video game group) displayed smaller P300 amplitudes, were more accurate in distinguishing violent words, and were less aggressive as evaluated by the CRTT of noise intensity chosen. A mediation analysis shows that the P300 amplitude evoked by violent words partially mediates the relationship between type of video game and subsequent aggressive behavior. The results support theories based on the General Learning Model. We provide converging behavioral and neural evidence that exposure to prosocial media may reduce aggression. PMID:26257620

  1. Short-Term Effects of Prosocial Video Games on Aggression: An Event-Related Potential Study

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yanling eLiu

    2015-07-01

    Full Text Available Previous research has shown that exposure to violent video games increases aggression, whereas exposure to prosocial video games can reduce aggressive behavior. However, little is known about the neural correlates of these behavioral effects. This work is the first to investigate the electrophysiological features of the relationship between playing a prosocial video game and inhibition of aggressive behavior. Forty-nine subjects played either a prosocial or a neutral video game for 20 minutes, then participated in an event-related potential (ERP experiment based on an oddball paradigm and designed to test electrophysiological responses to prosocial and violent words. Finally, subjects completed a competitive reaction time task (CRTT, which is based on Taylor’s Aggression Paradigm and measures both reaction time and noise intensity preference as indices of aggressive behavior. The results show that the prosocial video game group (compared to the neutral video game group displayed smaller P300 amplitudes, were more accurate in distinguishing violent words, and were less aggressive as evaluated by the CRTT (noise intensity preference. A mediation analysis shows that the P300 amplitude evoked by violent words partially mediates the relationship between type of video game and subsequent aggressive behavior. The results support theories based on the General Learning Model. We provide converging behavioral and neural evidence that exposure to prosocial media may reduce aggression.

  2. The impact of perceived quality on online buying decisions: an event-related potentials perspective.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Jing; Han, Weiwei

    2014-10-01

    Consumer neuroscience can provide useful insights into the neural foundations of consumer decisions, such as perceived quality. One of the applications is to guide attribute configuration of products to fit consumers' expectations on the basis of individual preferences. In this study, we required 20 participants to decide whether to buy the product provided in the stimuli and to respond as soon as possible. According to their reports of expectations after the experiment, we subdivided the stimuli into two conditions. Condition 1 contained the stimuli that fit individual preferences, whereas Condition 2 contained the other stimuli. An essential component of event-related potentials (ERPs), the P300, was elicited in the two conditions and distributed over almost all parietal and occipital regions. Products in Condition 1 induced a higher P300 amplitude than those in Condition 2. The results show that evaluating product attributes is a cognitive process that modulates attention in the aforementioned regions. When participants evaluate the alternatives, categorical processing occurred on the basis of similarity judgment. The situation in Condition 1 produced a similarity overlap between the product and the expectation and resulted in a higher P300. Otherwise, there was no overlap, leading to a smaller P300. Hence, the P300 may be a useful neural endogenous indicator for measuring consumers' evaluations of products in marketing research.

  3. Short-term effects of prosocial video games on aggression: an event-related potential study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Yanling; Teng, Zhaojun; Lan, Haiying; Zhang, Xin; Yao, Dezhong

    2015-01-01

    Previous research has shown that exposure to violent video games increases aggression, whereas exposure to prosocial video games can reduce aggressive behavior. However, little is known about the neural correlates of these behavioral effects. This work is the first to investigate the electrophysiological features of the relationship between playing a prosocial video game and inhibition of aggressive behavior. Forty-nine subjects played either a prosocial or a neutral video game for 20 min, then participated in an event-related potential (ERP) experiment based on an oddball paradigm and designed to test electrophysiological responses to prosocial and violent words. Finally, subjects completed a competitive reaction time task (CRTT) which based on Taylor's Aggression Paradigm and contains reaction time and noise intensity chosen as a measure of aggressive behavior. The results show that the prosocial video game group (compared to the neutral video game group) displayed smaller P300 amplitudes, were more accurate in distinguishing violent words, and were less aggressive as evaluated by the CRTT of noise intensity chosen. A mediation analysis shows that the P300 amplitude evoked by violent words partially mediates the relationship between type of video game and subsequent aggressive behavior. The results support theories based on the General Learning Model. We provide converging behavioral and neural evidence that exposure to prosocial media may reduce aggression.

  4. Event-related potentials for gender discrimination: an examination between differences in gender discrimination between males and females.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Suyama, Natsuka; Hoshiyama, Minoru; Shimizu, Hideki; Saito, Hirofumi

    2008-09-01

    The event-related potentials (ERP) following presentation of male and female faces were investigated to study differences in the gender discrimination process. Visual stimuli from four categories including male and female faces were presented. For the male subjects, the P220 amplitude of the T5 area following viewing of a female face was significantly larger than that following viewing of a male face. On the other hand for female subjects, the P170 amplitude of the Cz area following observation of a male face was larger than that for a female face. The results indicate that the neural processes, including responsive brain areas used for gender discrimination by observing faces, are different between males and females.

  5. Additive effects of repetition and predictability during comprehension: evidence from event-related potentials.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Wing-Yee Chow

    Full Text Available Previous research has shown that neural responses to words during sentence comprehension are sensitive to both lexical repetition and a word's predictability in context. While previous research has often contrasted the effects of these variables (e.g. by looking at cases in which word repetition violates sentence-level constraints, little is known about how they work in tandem. In the current study we examine how recent exposure to a word and its predictability in context combine to impact lexical semantic processing. We devise a novel paradigm that combines reading comprehension with a recognition memory task, allowing for an orthogonal manipulation of a word's predictability and its repetition status. Using event-related brain potentials (ERPs, we show that word repetition and predictability have qualitatively similar and additive effects on the N400 amplitude. We propose that prior exposure to a word and predictability impact lexical semantic processing in an additive and independent fashion.

  6. Training Deep Spiking Neural Networks Using Backpropagation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee, Jun Haeng; Delbruck, Tobi; Pfeiffer, Michael

    2016-01-01

    Deep spiking neural networks (SNNs) hold the potential for improving the latency and energy efficiency of deep neural networks through data-driven event-based computation. However, training such networks is difficult due to the non-differentiable nature of spike events. In this paper, we introduce a novel technique, which treats the membrane potentials of spiking neurons as differentiable signals, where discontinuities at spike times are considered as noise. This enables an error backpropagation mechanism for deep SNNs that follows the same principles as in conventional deep networks, but works directly on spike signals and membrane potentials. Compared with previous methods relying on indirect training and conversion, our technique has the potential to capture the statistics of spikes more precisely. We evaluate the proposed framework on artificially generated events from the original MNIST handwritten digit benchmark, and also on the N-MNIST benchmark recorded with an event-based dynamic vision sensor, in which the proposed method reduces the error rate by a factor of more than three compared to the best previous SNN, and also achieves a higher accuracy than a conventional convolutional neural network (CNN) trained and tested on the same data. We demonstrate in the context of the MNIST task that thanks to their event-driven operation, deep SNNs (both fully connected and convolutional) trained with our method achieve accuracy equivalent with conventional neural networks. In the N-MNIST example, equivalent accuracy is achieved with about five times fewer computational operations.

  7. Computation of optimal transport and related hedging problems via penalization and neural networks

    OpenAIRE

    Eckstein, Stephan; Kupper, Michael

    2018-01-01

    This paper presents a widely applicable approach to solving (multi-marginal, martingale) optimal transport and related problems via neural networks. The core idea is to penalize the optimization problem in its dual formulation and reduce it to a finite dimensional one which corresponds to optimizing a neural network with smooth objective function. We present numerical examples from optimal transport, martingale optimal transport, portfolio optimization under uncertainty and generative adversa...

  8. An on-line non-leptonic neural trigger applied to an experiment looking for beauty

    CERN Document Server

    Baldanza, C; Cotta-Ramusino, A; D'Antone, I; Malferrari, L; Mazzanti, P; Odorici, F; Odorico, R; Zuffa, M; Bruschini, C; Musico, P; Novelli, P; Passaseo, M

    1994-01-01

    Results from a non-leptonic neural-network trigger hosted by experiment WA92, looking for beauty particle production from 350 GeV 1t- on a Cu target, are presented. The neural trigger has been used to send on a special data stream (the Fast Stream) events to be analyzed with high priority. The non-leptonic signature uses microvertex detector data and was devised so as to enrich the fraction of events containing C3 secondary vertices (i.e, vertices having three tracks whith sum of electric charges equal to +1 or -1). The neural trigger module consists of a VME crate hosting two ET ANN analog neural chips from Intel. The neural trigger operated for two continuous weeks during the WA92 1 993 run. For an acceptance of 15% for C3 events, the neural trigger yields a C3 enrichment factor of 6.6-7.l (depending on the event sample considered), which multiplied by that already provided by the standard non-leptonic trigger leads to a global C3 enrichment factor of -1 50. In the event sample selected by the neural trigge...

  9. Self-Referential Processing in Adolescents: Stability of Behavioral and Event-Related Potential Markers

    Science.gov (United States)

    Auerbach, Randy P.; Bondy, Erin; Stanton, Colin H.; Webb, Christian A.; Shankman, Stewart A.; Pizzagalli, Diego A.

    2016-01-01

    The self-referential encoding task (SRET)—an implicit measure of self-schema—has been used widely to probe cognitive biases associated with depression, including among adolescents. However, research testing the stability of behavioral and electrocortical effects is sparse. Therefore, the current study sought to evaluate the stability of behavioral markers and event-related potentials (ERP) elicited from the SRET over time in healthy, female adolescents (n = 31). At baseline, participants were administered a diagnostic interview and a self-report measure of depression severity. In addition, they completed the SRET while 128-channel event-related potential (ERP) data were recorded to examine early (P1) and late (late positive potential [LPP]) ERPs. Three months later, participants were re-administered the depression self-report measure and the SRET in conjunction with ERPs. Results revealed that healthy adolescents endorsed, recalled, and recognized more positive and fewer negative words at each assessment, and these effects were stable over time (rs = 0.44–0.83). Similarly, they reported a faster reaction time when endorsing self-relevant positive words, as opposed to negative words, at both the initial and follow-up assessment (r = 0.82). Second, ERP responses, specifically potentiated P1 and late LPP positivity to positive versus negative words, were consistent over time (rs = 0.56–0.83), and the internal reliability of ERPs were robust at each time point (rs = 0.52–0.80). As a whole, these medium-to-large effects suggest that the SRET is a reliable behavioral and neural probe of self-referential processing. PMID:27302282

  10. Analysis for Human-related Events during the Overhaul

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Kim, Ji Tae; Kim, Min Chull; Choi, Dong Won; Lee, Durk Hun [Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety, Daejeon (Korea, Republic of)

    2011-10-15

    The event frequency due to human error is decreasing among 20 operating Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) excluding the NPP (Shin-Kori unit-1) in the commissioning stage since 2008. However, the events due to human error during an overhaul (O/H) occur annually (see Table I). An analysis for human-related events during the O/H was performed. Similar problems were identified for each event from the analysis and also, organizational and safety cultural factors were also identified

  11. Spatial and Time Domain Feature of ERP Speller System Extracted via Convolutional Neural Network

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jaehong Yoon

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available Feature of event-related potential (ERP has not been completely understood and illiteracy problem remains unsolved. To this end, P300 peak has been used as the feature of ERP in most brain–computer interface applications, but subjects who do not show such peak are common. Recent development of convolutional neural network provides a way to analyze spatial and temporal features of ERP. Here, we train the convolutional neural network with 2 convolutional layers whose feature maps represented spatial and temporal features of event-related potential. We have found that nonilliterate subjects’ ERP show high correlation between occipital lobe and parietal lobe, whereas illiterate subjects only show correlation between neural activities from frontal lobe and central lobe. The nonilliterates showed peaks in P300, P500, and P700, whereas illiterates mostly showed peaks in around P700. P700 was strong in both subjects. We found that P700 peak may be the key feature of ERP as it appears in both illiterate and nonilliterate subjects.

  12. Cortical excitability correlates with the event-related desynchronization during brain-computer interface control

    Science.gov (United States)

    Daly, Ian; Blanchard, Caroline; Holmes, Nicholas P.

    2018-04-01

    Objective. Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) based on motor control have been suggested as tools for stroke rehabilitation. Some initial successes have been achieved with this approach, however the mechanism by which they work is not yet fully understood. One possible part of this mechanism is a, previously suggested, relationship between the strength of the event-related desynchronization (ERD), a neural correlate of motor imagination and execution, and corticospinal excitability. Additionally, a key component of BCIs used in neurorehabilitation is the provision of visual feedback to positively reinforce attempts at motor control. However, the ability of visual feedback of the ERD to modulate the activity in the motor system has not been fully explored. Approach. We investigate these relationships via transcranial magnetic stimulation delivered at different moments in the ongoing ERD related to hand contraction and relaxation during BCI control of a visual feedback bar. Main results. We identify a significant relationship between ERD strength and corticospinal excitability, and find that our visual feedback does not affect corticospinal excitability. Significance. Our results imply that efforts to promote functional recovery in stroke by targeting increases in corticospinal excitability may be aided by accounting for the time course of the ERD.

  13. Auditory stream segregation using bandpass noises: evidence from event-related potentials

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yingjiu eNie

    2014-09-01

    Full Text Available The current study measured neural responses to investigate auditory stream segregation of noise stimuli with or without clear spectral contrast. Sequences of alternating A and B noise bursts were presented to elicit stream segregation in normal-hearing listeners. The successive B bursts in each sequence maintained an equal amount of temporal separation with manipulations introduced on the last stimulus. The last B burst was either delayed for 50% of the sequences or not delayed for the other 50%. The A bursts were jittered in between every two adjacent B bursts. To study the effects of spectral separation on streaming, the A and B bursts were further manipulated by using either bandpass-filtered noises widely spaced in center frequency or broadband noises. Event-related potentials (ERPs to the last B bursts were analyzed to compare the neural responses to the delay vs. no-delay trials in both passive and attentive listening conditions. In the passive listening condition, a trend for a possible late mismatch negativity (MMN or late discriminative negativity (LDN response was observed only when the A and B bursts were spectrally separate, suggesting that spectral separation in the A and B burst sequences could be conducive to stream segregation at the pre-attentive level. In the attentive condition, a P300 response was consistently elicited regardless of whether there was spectral separation between the A and B bursts, indicating the facilitative role of voluntary attention in stream segregation. The results suggest that reliable ERP measures can be used as indirect indicators for auditory stream segregation in conditions of weak spectral contrast. These findings have important implications for cochlear implant (CI studies – as spectral information available through a CI device or simulation is substantially degraded, it may require more attention to achieve stream segregation.

  14. A model of microsaccade-related neural responses induced by short-term depression in thalamocortical synapses

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Wujie eYuan

    2013-04-01

    Full Text Available Microsaccades during fixation have been suggested to counteract visual fading. Recent experi- ments have also observed microsaccade-related neural responses from cellular record, scalp elec- troencephalogram (EEG and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI. The underlying mechanism, however, is not yet understood and highly debated. It has been proposed that the neural activity of primary visual cortex (V1 is a crucial component for counteracting visual adaptation. In this paper, we use computational modeling to investigate how short-term depres- sion (STD in thalamocortical synapses might affect the neural responses of V1 in the presence of microsaccades. Our model not only gives a possible synaptic explanation for microsaccades in counteracting visual fading, but also reproduces several features in experimental findings. These modeling results suggest that STD in thalamocortical synapses plays an important role in microsaccade-related neural responses and the model may be useful for further investigation of behavioral properties and functional roles of microsaccades.

  15. A model of microsaccade-related neural responses induced by short-term depression in thalamocortical synapses

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yuan, Wu-Jie; Dimigen, Olaf; Sommer, Werner; Zhou, Changsong

    2013-01-01

    Microsaccades during fixation have been suggested to counteract visual fading. Recent experiments have also observed microsaccade-related neural responses from cellular record, scalp electroencephalogram (EEG), and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The underlying mechanism, however, is not yet understood and highly debated. It has been proposed that the neural activity of primary visual cortex (V1) is a crucial component for counteracting visual adaptation. In this paper, we use computational modeling to investigate how short-term depression (STD) in thalamocortical synapses might affect the neural responses of V1 in the presence of microsaccades. Our model not only gives a possible synaptic explanation for microsaccades in counteracting visual fading, but also reproduces several features in experimental findings. These modeling results suggest that STD in thalamocortical synapses plays an important role in microsaccade-related neural responses and the model may be useful for further investigation of behavioral properties and functional roles of microsaccades. PMID:23630494

  16. Auditory event-related potentials associated with perceptual reversals of bistable pitch motion.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Davidson, Gray D; Pitts, Michael A

    2014-01-01

    Previous event-related potential (ERP) experiments have consistently identified two components associated with perceptual transitions of bistable visual stimuli, the "reversal negativity" (RN) and the "late positive complex" (LPC). The RN (~200 ms post-stimulus, bilateral occipital-parietal distribution) is thought to reflect transitions between neural representations that form the moment-to-moment contents of conscious perception, while the LPC (~400 ms, central-parietal) is considered an index of post-perceptual processing related to accessing and reporting one's percept. To explore the generality of these components across sensory modalities, the present experiment utilized a novel bistable auditory stimulus. Pairs of complex tones with ambiguous pitch relationships were presented sequentially while subjects reported whether they perceived the tone pairs as ascending or descending in pitch. ERPs elicited by the tones were compared according to whether perceived pitch motion changed direction or remained the same across successive trials. An auditory reversal negativity (aRN) component was evident at ~170 ms post-stimulus over bilateral fronto-central scalp locations. An auditory LPC component (aLPC) was evident at subsequent latencies (~350 ms, fronto-central distribution). These two components may be auditory analogs of the visual RN and LPC, suggesting functionally equivalent but anatomically distinct processes in auditory vs. visual bistable perception.

  17. Anger under control: neural correlates of frustration as a function of trait aggression.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Christina M Pawliczek

    Full Text Available Antisocial behavior and aggression are prominent symptoms in several psychiatric disorders including antisocial personality disorder. An established precursor to aggression is a frustrating event, which can elicit anger or exasperation, thereby prompting aggressive responses. While some studies have investigated the neural correlates of frustration and aggression, examination of their relation to trait aggression in healthy populations are rare. Based on a screening of 550 males, we formed two extreme groups, one including individuals reporting high (n=21 and one reporting low (n=18 trait aggression. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI at 3T, all participants were put through a frustration task comprising unsolvable anagrams of German nouns. Despite similar behavioral performance, males with high trait aggression reported higher ratings of negative affect and anger after the frustration task. Moreover, they showed relatively decreased activation in the frontal brain regions and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC as well as relatively less amygdala activation in response to frustration. Our findings indicate distinct frontal and limbic processing mechanisms following frustration modulated by trait aggression. In response to a frustrating event, HA individuals show some of the personality characteristics and neural processing patterns observed in abnormally aggressive populations. Highlighting the impact of aggressive traits on the behavioral and neural responses to frustration in non-psychiatric extreme groups can facilitate further characterization of neural dysfunctions underlying psychiatric disorders that involve abnormal frustration processing and aggression.

  18. Classifying medical relations in clinical text via convolutional neural networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    He, Bin; Guan, Yi; Dai, Rui

    2018-05-16

    Deep learning research on relation classification has achieved solid performance in the general domain. This study proposes a convolutional neural network (CNN) architecture with a multi-pooling operation for medical relation classification on clinical records and explores a loss function with a category-level constraint matrix. Experiments using the 2010 i2b2/VA relation corpus demonstrate these models, which do not depend on any external features, outperform previous single-model methods and our best model is competitive with the existing ensemble-based method. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier B.V.

  19. Altered Neural Activity during Irony Comprehension in Unaffected First-Degree Relatives of Schizophrenia Patients—An fMRI Study

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Róbert Herold

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available Irony is a type of figurative language in which the literal meaning of the expression is the opposite of what the speaker intends to communicate. Even though schizophrenic patients are known as typically impaired in irony comprehension and in the underlying neural functions, to date no one has explored the neural correlates of figurative language comprehension in first-degree relatives of schizophrenic patients. In the present study, we examined the neural correlates of irony understanding in schizophrenic patients and in unaffected first-degree relatives of patients compared to healthy adults with functional MRI. Our aim was to investigate if possible alterations of the neural circuits supporting irony comprehension in first-degree relatives of patients with schizophrenia would fulfill the familiality criterion of an endophenotype. We examined 12 schizophrenic patients, 12 first-degree relatives of schizophrenia patients and 12 healthy controls with functional MRI while they were performing irony and control tasks. Different phases of irony processing were examined, such as context processing and ironic statement comprehension. Patients had significantly more difficulty understanding irony than controls or relatives. Patients also showed markedly different neural activation pattern compared to controls in both stages of irony processing. Although no significant differences were found in the performance of the irony tasks between the control group and the relative group, during the fMRI analysis, the relatives showed stronger brain activity in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during the context processing phase of irony tasks than the control group. However, the controls demonstrated higher activations in the left dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and in the right inferior frontal gyrus during the ironic statement phase of the irony tasks than the relative group. Our results show that despite good task performance, first-degree relatives of

  20. Neural mechanisms of reinforcement learning in unmedicated patients with major depressive disorder.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rothkirch, Marcus; Tonn, Jonas; Köhler, Stephan; Sterzer, Philipp

    2017-04-01

    According to current concepts, major depressive disorder is strongly related to dysfunctional neural processing of motivational information, entailing impairments in reinforcement learning. While computational modelling can reveal the precise nature of neural learning signals, it has not been used to study learning-related neural dysfunctions in unmedicated patients with major depressive disorder so far. We thus aimed at comparing the neural coding of reward and punishment prediction errors, representing indicators of neural learning-related processes, between unmedicated patients with major depressive disorder and healthy participants. To this end, a group of unmedicated patients with major depressive disorder (n = 28) and a group of age- and sex-matched healthy control participants (n = 30) completed an instrumental learning task involving monetary gains and losses during functional magnetic resonance imaging. The two groups did not differ in their learning performance. Patients and control participants showed the same level of prediction error-related activity in the ventral striatum and the anterior insula. In contrast, neural coding of reward prediction errors in the medial orbitofrontal cortex was reduced in patients. Moreover, neural reward prediction error signals in the medial orbitofrontal cortex and ventral striatum showed negative correlations with anhedonia severity. Using a standard instrumental learning paradigm we found no evidence for an overall impairment of reinforcement learning in medication-free patients with major depressive disorder. Importantly, however, the attenuated neural coding of reward in the medial orbitofrontal cortex and the relation between anhedonia and reduced reward prediction error-signalling in the medial orbitofrontal cortex and ventral striatum likely reflect an impairment in experiencing pleasure from rewarding events as a key mechanism of anhedonia in major depressive disorder. © The Author (2017). Published by Oxford

  1. Artificial Neural Network applied to lightning flashes

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gin, R. B.; Guedes, D.; Bianchi, R.

    2013-05-01

    The development of video cameras enabled cientists to study lightning discharges comportment with more precision. The main goal of this project is to create a system able to detect images of lightning discharges stored in videos and classify them using an Artificial Neural Network (ANN)using C Language and OpenCV libraries. The developed system, can be split in two different modules: detection module and classification module. The detection module uses OpenCV`s computer vision libraries and image processing techniques to detect if there are significant differences between frames in a sequence, indicating that something, still not classified, occurred. Whenever there is a significant difference between two consecutive frames, two main algorithms are used to analyze the frame image: brightness and shape algorithms. These algorithms detect both shape and brightness of the event, removing irrelevant events like birds, as well as detecting the relevant events exact position, allowing the system to track it over time. The classification module uses a neural network to classify the relevant events as horizontal or vertical lightning, save the event`s images and calculates his number of discharges. The Neural Network was implemented using the backpropagation algorithm, and was trained with 42 training images , containing 57 lightning events (one image can have more than one lightning). TheANN was tested with one to five hidden layers, with up to 50 neurons each. The best configuration achieved a success rate of 95%, with one layer containing 20 neurons (33 test images with 42 events were used in this phase). This configuration was implemented in the developed system to analyze 20 video files, containing 63 lightning discharges previously manually detected. Results showed that all the lightning discharges were detected, many irrelevant events were unconsidered, and the event's number of discharges was correctly computed. The neural network used in this project achieved a

  2. Using a neural network approach for muon reconstruction and triggering

    CERN Document Server

    Etzion, E; Abramowicz, H; Benhammou, Ya; Horn, D; Levinson, L; Livneh, R

    2004-01-01

    The extremely high rate of events that will be produced in the future Large Hadron Collider requires the triggering mechanism to take precise decisions in a few nano-seconds. We present a study which used an artificial neural network triggering algorithm and compared it to the performance of a dedicated electronic muon triggering system. Relatively simple architecture was used to solve a complicated inverse problem. A comparison with a realistic example of the ATLAS first level trigger simulation was in favour of the neural network. A similar architecture trained after the simulation of the electronics first trigger stage showed a further background rejection.

  3. Auditory selective attention in adolescents with major depression: An event-related potential study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Greimel, E; Trinkl, M; Bartling, J; Bakos, S; Grossheinrich, N; Schulte-Körne, G

    2015-02-01

    Major depression (MD) is associated with deficits in selective attention. Previous studies in adults with MD using event-related potentials (ERPs) reported abnormalities in the neurophysiological correlates of auditory selective attention. However, it is yet unclear whether these findings can be generalized to MD in adolescence. Thus, the aim of the present ERP study was to explore the neural mechanisms of auditory selective attention in adolescents with MD. 24 male and female unmedicated adolescents with MD and 21 control subjects were included in the study. ERPs were collected during an auditory oddball paradigm. Depressive adolescents tended to show a longer N100 latency to target and non-target tones. Moreover, MD subjects showed a prolonged latency of the P200 component to targets. Across groups, longer P200 latency was associated with a decreased tendency of disinhibited behavior as assessed by a behavioral questionnaire. To be able to draw more precise conclusions about differences between the neural bases of selective attention in adolescents vs. adults with MD, future studies should include both age groups and apply the same experimental setting across all subjects. The study provides strong support for abnormalities in the neurophysiolgical bases of selective attention in adolecents with MD at early stages of auditory information processing. Absent group differences in later ERP components reflecting voluntary attentional processes stand in contrast to results reported in adults with MD and may suggest that adolescents with MD possess mechanisms to compensate for abnormalities in the early stages of selective attention. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  4. Extension of relational event algebra to a general decision making setting

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Goodman, I.R.; Kramer, G.F.

    1996-12-31

    Relational Event Algebra (REA) is a new mathematical tool which provides an explicit algebraic reconstruction of events (appropriately designated as relational events) when initially only the formal probability values of such events are given as functions of known contributing event probabilities. In turn, once such relational events are obtained, one can then determine the probability of any finite logical combination, and in particular, various probabilistic distance measures among the events. A basic application of REA is to test hypotheses for the similarity of distinct models attempting to describe the same events such as in data fusion and combination of evidence. This paper considers new motivation for the use of REA, as well as a more general decision-making framework where system performance and redundancy / consistency tradeoffs are considered.

  5. Histological characterization and quantification of cellular events following neural and fibroblast(-like) stem cell grafting in healty and demyelinated CNS tissue

    OpenAIRE

    Praet, J.; SANTERMANS, Eva; Reekmans, K.; de Vocht, N.; Le Blon, D.; Hoornaert, C.; Daans, J.; Goossens, H.; Berneman, Z.; HENS, Niel; Van der Linden, A.; Ponsaerts, P.

    2014-01-01

    Preclinical animal studies involving intracerebral (stem) cell grafting are gaining popularity in many laboratories due to the reported beneficial effects of cell grafting on various diseases or traumata of the central nervous system (CNS). In this chapter, we describe a histological workflow to characterize and quantify cellular events following neural and fibroblast(-like) stem cell grafting in healthy and demyelinated CNS tissue. First, we provide standardized protocols to isolate and cult...

  6. Mining known attack patterns from security-related events

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nicandro Scarabeo

    2015-10-01

    Full Text Available Managed Security Services (MSS have become an essential asset for companies to have in order to protect their infrastructure from hacking attempts such as unauthorized behaviour, denial of service (DoS, malware propagation, and anomalies. A proliferation of attacks has determined the need for installing more network probes and collecting more security-related events in order to assure the best coverage, necessary for generating incident responses. The increase in volume of data to analyse has created a demand for specific tools that automatically correlate events and gather them in pre-defined scenarios of attacks. Motivated by Above Security, a specialized company in the sector, and by National Research Council Canada (NRC, we propose a new data mining system that employs text mining techniques to dynamically relate security-related events in order to reduce analysis time, increase the quality of the reports, and automatically build correlated scenarios.

  7. Neural network tagging in a toy model

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Milek, Marko; Patel, Popat

    1999-01-01

    The purpose of this study is a comparison of Artificial Neural Network approach to HEP analysis against the traditional methods. A toy model used in this analysis consists of two types of particles defined by four generic properties. A number of 'events' was created according to the model using standard Monte Carlo techniques. Several fully connected, feed forward multi layered Artificial Neural Networks were trained to tag the model events. The performance of each network was compared to the standard analysis mechanisms and significant improvement was observed

  8. Results from an on-line non-leptonic neural trigger implemented in an experiment looking for beauty

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Baldanza, C.; Musico, P.; Novelli, P.; Passaseo, M.

    1995-01-01

    Results from a non-leptonic neural-network trigger hosted by experiment WA92, looking for beauty particle production from 350 GeV negative pions on a fixed Cu target, are presented. The neural trigger has been used to send events selected by means of a non-leptonic signature based on microvertex detector information to a special data stream, meant for early analysis. The non-leptonic signature, defined in a neural-network fashion, was devised so as to enrich the selected sample in the number of events containing C3 secondary vertices (i.e, vertices having three tracks with sum of electric charges equal to +1 or -1), which are sought for further analysis to identify charm and beauty non-leptonic decays. The neural trigger module consists of a VME crate hosting two MA16 digital neural chips from Siemens and two ETANN analog neural chips from Intel. During the experimental run, only the ETANN chips were operational. The neural trigger operated for two continuous weeks during the WA92 1993 run. For an acceptance of 15% for C3 events, the neural trigger yields a C3 enrichment factor of 6.6-7.1 (depending on the event sample considered), which multiplied by that already provided by the standard trigger leads to a global C3 enrichment factor of similar 150. In the event sample selected by the neural trigger, one every similar 7 events contains a C3 vertex. The response time of the neural trigger module is 5.8 μs. (orig.)

  9. Results from an on-line non-leptonic neural trigger implemented in an experiment looking for beauty

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Baldanza, C. [INFN, Bologna (Italy). ANNETTHE; Bisi, F. [INFN, Bologna (Italy). ANNETTHE; Cotta-Ramusino, A. [INFN, Bologna (Italy). ANNETTHE; D`Antone, I. [INFN, Bologna (Italy). ANNETTHE; Malferrari, L. [INFN, Bologna (Italy). ANNETTHE; Mazzanti, P. [INFN, Bologna (Italy). ANNETTHE; Odorici, F. [INFN, Bologna (Italy). ANNETTHE; Odorico, R. [INFN, Bologna (Italy). ANNETTHE; Zuffa, M. [INFN, Bologna (Italy). ANNETTHE; Bruschini, C. [Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Genoa (Italy); Musico, P. [Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Genoa (Italy); Novelli, P. [Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Genoa (Italy); Passaseo, M. [European Organization for Nuclear Research, Geneva (Switzerland)

    1995-07-15

    Results from a non-leptonic neural-network trigger hosted by experiment WA92, looking for beauty particle production from 350 GeV negative pions on a fixed Cu target, are presented. The neural trigger has been used to send events selected by means of a non-leptonic signature based on microvertex detector information to a special data stream, meant for early analysis. The non-leptonic signature, defined in a neural-network fashion, was devised so as to enrich the selected sample in the number of events containing C3 secondary vertices (i.e, vertices having three tracks with sum of electric charges equal to +1 or -1), which are sought for further analysis to identify charm and beauty non-leptonic decays. The neural trigger module consists of a VME crate hosting two MA16 digital neural chips from Siemens and two ETANN analog neural chips from Intel. During the experimental run, only the ETANN chips were operational. The neural trigger operated for two continuous weeks during the WA92 1993 run. For an acceptance of 15% for C3 events, the neural trigger yields a C3 enrichment factor of 6.6-7.1 (depending on the event sample considered), which multiplied by that already provided by the standard trigger leads to a global C3 enrichment factor of similar 150. In the event sample selected by the neural trigger, one every similar 7 events contains a C3 vertex. The response time of the neural trigger module is 5.8 {mu}s. (orig.).

  10. The wandering mood: psychological and neural determinants of rest-related negative affect

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Michal eGruberger

    2013-12-01

    Full Text Available Rest related negative affect (RRNA has gained scientific interest in the past decade. However, it is mostly studied within the context of mind-wandering (MW, and the relevance of other psychological and neural aspects of the resting state to its' occurrence has never been studied. Several indications associate RRNA with internally directed attention, yet the nature of this relation remains largely unknown. Moreover, the role of neural networks associated with rest related phenomenology - the default mode (DMN, executive (EXE and salience (SAL networks, has not been studied in this context. To this end, we explored two 5- (baseline and 15-minute resting-state simultaneous fMRI-EEG scans of 29 participants. As vigilance has been shown to affect attention, and thus its availability for inward allocation, EEG-based vigilance levels were computed for each participant. Questionnaires for affective assessment were administered before and after scans, and retrospective reports of MW were additionally collected. Results revealed increased negative affect following rest, but only among participants who retained high vigilance levels. Among low-vigilance participants, changes in negative affect were negligible, despite reports of MW occurrence in both groups. In addition, in the high-vigilance group only, a significant increase in functional connectivity (FC levels was found between the DMN-related ventral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC,associated with emotional processing, and the EXE-related dorsal ACC, associated with monitoring of self and other's behavior. These heightened FC levels further correlated with reported negative affect among this group. Taken together, these results demonstrate that, rather than an unavoidable outcome of the resting state, RRNA depends on internal allocation of attention at rest. Results are discussed in terms of two rest-related possible scenarios which defer in mental and neural processing, and subsequently, in the

  11. The wandering mood: psychological and neural determinants of rest-related negative affect.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gruberger, Michal; Maron-Katz, Adi; Sharon, Haggai; Hendler, Talma; Ben-Simon, Eti

    2013-01-01

    Rest related negative affect (RRNA) has gained scientific interest in the past decade. However, it is mostly studied within the context of mind-wandering (MW), and the relevance of other psychological and neural aspects of the resting state to its' occurrence has never been studied. Several indications associate RRNA with internally directed attention, yet the nature of this relation remains largely unknown. Moreover, the role of neural networks associated with rest related phenomenology - the default mode (DMN), executive (EXE), and salience (SAL) networks, has not been studied in this context. To this end, we explored two 5 (baseline) and 15-minute resting-state simultaneous fMRI-EEG scans of 29 participants. As vigilance has been shown to affect attention, and thus its availability for inward allocation, EEG-based vigilance levels were computed for each participant. Questionnaires for affective assessment were administered before and after scans, and retrospective reports of MW were additionally collected. Results revealed increased negative affect following rest, but only among participants who retained high vigilance levels. Among low-vigilance participants, changes in negative affect were negligible, despite reports of MW occurrence in both groups. In addition, in the high-vigilance group only, a significant increase in functional connectivity (FC) levels was found between the DMN-related ventral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), associated with emotional processing, and the EXE-related dorsal ACC, associated with monitoring of self and other's behavior. These heightened FC levels further correlated with reported negative affect among this group. Taken together, these results demonstrate that, rather than an unavoidable outcome of the resting state, RRNA depends on internal allocation of attention at rest. Results are discussed in terms of two rest-related possible scenarios which defer in mental and neural processing, and subsequently, in the occurrence of

  12. The time course of implicit processing of erotic pictures: an event-related potential study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Feng, Chunliang; Wang, Lili; Wang, Naiyi; Gu, Ruolei; Luo, Yue-Jia

    2012-12-13

    The current study investigated the time course of the implicit processing of erotic stimuli using event-related potentials (ERPs). ERPs elicited by erotic pictures were compared with those by three other types of pictures: non-erotic positive, negative, and neutral pictures. We observed that erotic pictures evoked enhanced neural responses compared with other pictures at both early (P2/N2) and late (P3/positive slow wave) temporal stages. These results suggested that erotic pictures selectively captured individuals' attention at early stages and evoked deeper processing at late stages. More importantly, the amplitudes of P2, N2, and P3 only discriminated between erotic and non-erotic (i.e., positive, neutral, and negative) pictures. That is, no difference was revealed among non-erotic pictures, although these pictures differed in both valence and arousal. Thus, our results suggest that the erotic picture processing is beyond the valence and arousal. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  13. Neural correlates of processing "self-conscious" vs. "basic" emotions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gilead, Michael; Katzir, Maayan; Eyal, Tal; Liberman, Nira

    2016-01-29

    Self-conscious emotions are prevalent in our daily lives and play an important role in both normal and pathological behavior. Despite their immense significance, the neural substrates that are involved in the processing of such emotions are surprisingly under-studied. In light of this, we conducted an fMRI study in which participants thought of various personal events which elicited feelings of negative and positive self-conscious (i.e., guilt, pride) or basic (i.e., anger, joy) emotions. We performed a conjunction analysis to investigate the neural correlates associated with processing events that are related to self-conscious vs. basic emotions, irrespective of valence. The results show that processing self-conscious emotions resulted in activation within frontal areas associated with self-processing and self-control, namely, the mPFC extending to the dACC, and within the lateral-dorsal prefrontal cortex. Processing basic emotions resulted in activation throughout relatively phylogenetically-ancient regions of the cortex, namely in visual and tactile processing areas and in the insular cortex. Furthermore, self-conscious emotions differentially activated the mPFC such that the negative self-conscious emotion (guilt) was associated with a more dorsal activation, and the positive self-conscious emotion (pride) was associated with a more ventral activation. We discuss how these results shed light on the nature of mental representations and neural systems involved in self-reflective and affective processing. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  14. My friends have a word for it: Event-related potentials evidence of how social risk inhibits purchase intention.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shang, Qian; Pei, Guanxiong; Jin, Jia

    2017-03-16

    Social risk refers to the potential disapproval from significant others (especially family or friends), and it is crucial in dissuading consumers from making decisions to purchase. The current study explored the neural process underlying how social risk influenced people's purchase intention. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were employed to investigate the electrophysiological process when subjects evaluated their purchase intention for products with social risk factors. The behavioral data showed that the social risk condition inhibited people's purchase intention compared to the control condition. Neurophysiologically, larger anterior N2 amplitude was induced by the social risk condition in contrast with the control condition. We suggest that this anterior N2 may reflect the cognitive control or conflict monitoring. It may be that the participant has to regulate the conflict between an internal desire to purchase the item and the discordant information obtained from the social risk sentence, which would pressure the participant to not purchase the item in accord with social norms. These findings will be helpful in understanding the neural basis of social risk perception during purchase decisions. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  15. Different Neural Correlates of Emotion-Label Words and Emotion-Laden Words: An ERP Study

    OpenAIRE

    Zhang, Juan; Wu, Chenggang; Meng, Yaxuan; Yuan, Zhen

    2017-01-01

    It is well-documented that both emotion-label words (e.g., sadness, happiness) and emotion-laden words (e.g., death, wedding) can induce emotion activation. However, the neural correlates of emotion-label words and emotion-laden words recognition have not been examined. The present study aimed to compare the underlying neural responses when processing the two kinds of words by employing event-related potential (ERP) measurements. Fifteen Chinese native speakers were asked to perform a lexical...

  16. Reconstruction of t anti tH (H → bb) events using deep neural networks with the CMS detector

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Rieger, Marcel; Erdmann, Martin; Fischer, Benjamin; Fischer, Robert; Heidemann, Fabian; Quast, Thorben; Rath, Yannik [III. Physikalisches Institut A, RWTH Aachen University (Germany)

    2016-07-01

    The measurement of Higgs boson production in association with top-quark pairs (t anti tH) is an important goal of Run 2 of the LHC as it allows for a direct measurement of the underlying Yukawa coupling. Due to the complex final state, however, the analysis of semi-leptonic t anti tH events with the Higgs boson decaying into a pair of bottom-quarks is challenging. A promising method for tackling jet parton associations are Deep Neural Networks (DNN). While being a widely spread machine learning algorithm in modern industry, DNNs are on the way to becoming established in high energy physics. We present a study on the reconstruction of the final state using DNNs, comparing to Boosted Decision Trees (BDT) as benchmark scenario. This is accomplished by generating permutations of simulated events and comparing them with truth information to extract reconstruction efficiencies.

  17. Identifying the neural substrates of intrinsic motivation during task performance.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee, Woogul; Reeve, Johnmarshall

    2017-10-01

    Intrinsic motivation is the inherent tendency to seek out novelty and challenge, to explore and investigate, and to stretch and extend one's capacities. When people imagine performing intrinsically motivating tasks, they show heightened anterior insular cortex (AIC) activity. To fully explain the neural system of intrinsic motivation, however, requires assessing neural activity while people actually perform intrinsically motivating tasks (i.e., while answering curiosity-inducing questions or solving competence-enabling anagrams). Using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging, we found that the neural system of intrinsic motivation involves not only AIC activity, but also striatum activity and, further, AIC-striatum functional interactions. These findings suggest that subjective feelings of intrinsic satisfaction (associated with AIC activations), reward processing (associated with striatum activations), and their interactions underlie the actual experience of intrinsic motivation. These neural findings are consistent with the conceptualization of intrinsic motivation as the pursuit and satisfaction of subjective feelings (interest and enjoyment) as intrinsic rewards.

  18. DECISION WITH ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORKS IN DISCRETE EVENT SIMULATION MODELS ON A TRAFFIC SYSTEM

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Marília Gonçalves Dutra da Silva

    2016-04-01

    Full Text Available ABSTRACT This work aims to demonstrate the use of a mechanism to be applied in the development of the discrete-event simulation models that perform decision operations through the implementation of an artificial neural network. Actions that involve complex operations performed by a human agent in a process, for example, are often modeled in simplified form with the usual mechanisms of simulation software. Therefore, it was chosen a traffic system controlled by a traffic officer with a flow of vehicles and pedestrians to demonstrate the proposed solution. From a module built in simulation software itself, it was possible to connect the algorithm for intelligent decision to the simulation model. The results showed that the model elaborated responded as expected when it was submitted to actions, which required different decisions to maintain the operation of the system with changes in the flow of people and vehicles.

  19. A statistical framework for evaluating neural networks to predict recurrent events in breast cancer

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gorunescu, Florin; Gorunescu, Marina; El-Darzi, Elia; Gorunescu, Smaranda

    2010-07-01

    Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in women today. Sometimes, breast cancer can return after primary treatment. A medical diagnosis of recurrent cancer is often a more challenging task than the initial one. In this paper, we investigate the potential contribution of neural networks (NNs) to support health professionals in diagnosing such events. The NN algorithms are tested and applied to two different datasets. An extensive statistical analysis has been performed to verify our experiments. The results show that a simple network structure for both the multi-layer perceptron and radial basis function can produce equally good results, not all attributes are needed to train these algorithms and, finally, the classification performances of all algorithms are statistically robust. Moreover, we have shown that the best performing algorithm will strongly depend on the features of the datasets, and hence, there is not necessarily a single best classifier.

  20. Neural plasticity and its initiating conditions in tinnitus.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Roberts, L E

    2018-03-01

    Deafferentation caused by cochlear pathology (which can be hidden from the audiogram) activates forms of neural plasticity in auditory pathways, generating tinnitus and its associated conditions including hyperacusis. This article discusses tinnitus mechanisms and suggests how these mechanisms may relate to those involved in normal auditory information processing. Research findings from animal models of tinnitus and from electromagnetic imaging of tinnitus patients are reviewed which pertain to the role of deafferentation and neural plasticity in tinnitus and hyperacusis. Auditory neurons compensate for deafferentation by increasing their input/output functions (gain) at multiple levels of the auditory system. Forms of homeostatic plasticity are believed to be responsible for this neural change, which increases the spontaneous and driven activity of neurons in central auditory structures in animals expressing behavioral evidence of tinnitus. Another tinnitus correlate, increased neural synchrony among the affected neurons, is forged by spike-timing-dependent neural plasticity in auditory pathways. Slow oscillations generated by bursting thalamic neurons verified in tinnitus animals appear to modulate neural plasticity in the cortex, integrating tinnitus neural activity with information in brain regions supporting memory, emotion, and consciousness which exhibit increased metabolic activity in tinnitus patients. The latter process may be induced by transient auditory events in normal processing but it persists in tinnitus, driven by phantom signals from the auditory pathway. Several tinnitus therapies attempt to suppress tinnitus through plasticity, but repeated sessions will likely be needed to prevent tinnitus activity from returning owing to deafferentation as its initiating condition.

  1. Event-related potential correlates of suspicious thoughts in individuals with schizotypal personality features.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Xue-bing; Huang, Jia; Cheung, Eric F C; Gong, Qi-yong; Chan, Raymond C K

    2011-01-01

    Suspiciousness is a common feature of schizophrenia. However, suspicious thoughts are also commonly experienced by the general population. This study aimed to examine the underlying neural mechanism of suspicious thoughts in individuals with and without schizotypal personality disorder (SPD)-proneness, using an event-related potential (ERP) paradigm. Electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded when the "feeling of being seen through" was evoked in the participants. The findings showed a prominent positive deflection of the difference wave within the time window 250-400 ms after stimuli presentation in both SPD-prone and non-SPD-prone groups. Furthermore, the P3 amplitude was significantly reduced in the SPD-prone group compared to the non-SPD-prone group. The current density analysis also indicated hypoactivity in both frontal and temporal regions in the SPD-prone group, suggesting that the frontotemporal cortical network may play a role in the onset of suspicious thoughts. The P3 of difference wave was inversely correlated with the cognitive-perception factor and the suspiciousness/paranoid ideation trait, which provided preliminary electrophysiological evidence for the association of suspiciousness with SPD features.

  2. Neurophysiological traces of interpersonal pain: How emotional autobiographical memories affect event-related potentials.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rohde, Kristina B; Caspar, Franz; Koenig, Thomas; Pascual-Leone, Antonio; Stein, Maria

    2018-03-01

    The automatic, involuntary reactivation of disturbing emotional memories, for example, of interpersonal pain, causes psychological discomfort and is central to many psychopathologies. This study aimed at elucidating the automatic brain processes underlying emotional autobiographical memories by investigating the neurophysiological dynamics within the first second after memory reactivation. Pictures of different individualized familiar faces served as cues for different specific emotional autobiographical memories, for example, for memories of interpersonal pain and grievances or for memories of appreciation in interpersonal relationships. Nineteen subjects participated in a passive face-viewing task while multichannel electroencephalogram was recorded. Analyses of event-related potentials demonstrated that emotional memories elicited an early posterior negativity and a stronger late positive potential, which tended to be particularly enhanced for painful memories. Source estimations attributed this stronger activation to networks including the posterior cingulate and ventrolateral prefrontal cortices. The findings suggest that the reactivation of emotional autobiographical memories involves privileged automatic attention at perceptual processing stages, and an enhanced recruitment of neural network activity at a postperceptual stage sensitive to emotional-motivational processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

  3. Simple probabilistic method for relative risk evaluation of nuclear terrorism events

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Zhang Songbai; Wu Jun

    2006-01-01

    On the basis of the event-tree and probability analysis methods, a probabilistic method of nuclear terrorism risk was built, and the risk of terrorism events was analyzed. With the statistical data for and hypothetical data for relative events, the relative probabilities of the four kinds of nuclear terrorism events were obtained, as well as the relative risks of these four kinds of nuclear terrorism events were calculated by using this probabilistic method. The illustrated case show that the descending sequence of damages from the four kinds of nuclear terrorism events for single event is as following: nuclear explosive and improvised nuclear explosive, nuclear facility attacked, and 'dirty bomb'. Under the hypothetical condition, the descending sequence of possibilities for the four kinds of nuclear terrorism events is as following: 'dirty bomb', nuclear facility attacked, improvised nuclear explosive and nuclear explosive, but the descending sequence of risks is as following: 'dirty bomb', improvised nuclear explosive, nuclear facility attacked, and nuclear explosive . (authors)

  4. The Amount of Time Dilation for Visual Flickers Corresponds to the Amount of Neural Entrainments Measured by EEG.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hashimoto, Yuki; Yotsumoto, Yuko

    2018-01-01

    The neural basis of time perception has long attracted the interests of researchers. Recently, a conceptual model consisting of neural oscillators was proposed and validated by behavioral experiments that measured the dilated duration in perception of a flickering stimulus (Hashimoto and Yotsumoto, 2015). The model proposed that flickering stimuli cause neural entrainment of oscillators, resulting in dilated time perception. In this study, we examined the oscillator-based model of time perception, by collecting electroencephalography (EEG) data during an interval-timing task. Initially, subjects observed a stimulus, either flickering at 10-Hz or constantly illuminated. The subjects then reproduced the duration of the stimulus by pressing a button. As reported in previous studies, the subjects reproduced 1.22 times longer durations for flickering stimuli than for continuously illuminated stimuli. The event-related potential (ERP) during the observation of a flicker oscillated at 10 Hz, reflecting the 10-Hz neural activity phase-locked to the flicker. Importantly, the longer reproduced duration was associated with a larger amplitude of the 10-Hz ERP component during the inter-stimulus interval, as well as during the presentation of the flicker. The correlation between the reproduced duration and the 10-Hz oscillation during the inter-stimulus interval suggested that the flicker-induced neural entrainment affected time dilation. While the 10-Hz flickering stimuli induced phase-locked entrainments at 10 Hz, we also observed event-related desynchronizations of spontaneous neural oscillations in the alpha-frequency range. These could be attributed to the activation of excitatory neurons while observing the flicker stimuli. In addition, neural activity at approximately the alpha frequency increased during the reproduction phase, indicating that flicker-induced neural entrainment persisted even after the offset of the flicker. In summary, our results suggest that the

  5. Play It Again: Neural Responses to Reunion with Excluders Predicted by Attachment Patterns

    Science.gov (United States)

    White, Lars O.; Wu, Jia; Borelli, Jessica L.; Mayes, Linda C.; Crowley, Michael J.

    2013-01-01

    Reunion behavior following stressful separations from caregivers is often considered the single most sensitive clue to infant attachment patterns. Extending these ideas to middle childhood/early adolescence, we examined participants' neural responses to reunion with peers who had previously excluded them. We recorded event-related potentials…

  6. The light-makeup advantage in facial processing: Evidence from event-related potentials.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tagai, Keiko; Shimakura, Hitomi; Isobe, Hiroko; Nittono, Hiroshi

    2017-01-01

    The effects of makeup on attractiveness have been evaluated using mainly subjective measures. In this study, event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from a total of 45 Japanese women (n = 23 and n = 22 for Experiment 1 and 2, respectively) to examine the neural processing of faces with no makeup, light makeup, and heavy makeup. To have the participants look at each face carefully, an identity judgement task was used: they were asked to judge whether the two faces presented in succession were of the same person or not. The ERP waveforms in response to the first faces were analyzed. In two experiments with different stimulus probabilities, the amplitudes of N170 and vertex positive potential (VPP) were smaller for faces with light makeup than for faces with heavy makeup or no makeup. The P1 amplitude did not differ between facial types. In a subsequent rating phase, faces with light makeup were rated as more attractive than faces with heavy makeup and no makeup. The results suggest that the processing fluency of faces with light makeup is one of the reasons why light makeup is preferred to heavy makeup and no makeup in daily life.

  7. Effect of task complexity on intelligence and neural efficiency in children: an event-related potential study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Qiong; Shi, Jiannong; Luo, Yuejia; Liu, Sainan; Yang, Jie; Shen, Mowei

    2007-10-08

    The present study investigates the effects of task complexity, intelligence and neural efficiency on children's performance on an Elementary Cognitive Task. Twenty-three children were divided into two groups on the basis of their Raven Progressive Matrix scores and were then asked to complete a choice reaction task with two test conditions. We recorded the electroencephalogram and calculated the peak latencies and amplitudes for anteriorly distributed P225, N380 and late positive component. Our results suggested shorter late positive component latencies in brighter children, possibly reflecting a higher processing speed in these individuals. Increased P225 amplitude and increased N380 amplitudes for brighter children may indicate a more efficient allocation of attention for brighter children. No moderating effect of task complexity on brain-intelligence relationship was found.

  8. Memory's aging echo: age-related decline in neural reactivation of perceptual details during recollection.

    Science.gov (United States)

    McDonough, Ian M; Cervantes, Sasha N; Gray, Stephen J; Gallo, David A

    2014-09-01

    Episodic memory decline is a hallmark of normal cognitive aging. Here, we report the first event-related fMRI study to directly investigate age differences in the neural reactivation of qualitatively rich perceptual details during recollection. Younger and older adults studied pictures of complex scenes at different presentation durations along with descriptive verbal labels, and these labels subsequently were used during fMRI scanning to cue picture recollections of varying perceptual detail. As expected from prior behavioral work, the two age groups subjectively rated their recollections as containing similar amounts of perceptual detail, despite objectively measured recollection impairment in older adults. In both age groups, comparisons of retrieval trials that varied in recollected detail revealed robust activity in brain regions previously linked to recollection, including hippocampus and both medial and lateral regions of the prefrontal and posterior parietal cortex. Critically, this analysis also revealed recollection-related activity in visual processing regions that were active in an independent picture-perception task, and these regions showed age-related reductions in activity during recollection that cannot be attributed to age differences in response criteria. These fMRI findings provide new evidence that aging reduces the absolute quantity of perceptual details that are reactivated from memory, and they help to explain why aging reduces the reliability of subjective memory judgments. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  9. Emotional Incongruence of Facial Expression and Voice Tone Investigated with Event-Related Brain Potentials of Infants

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kota Arai

    2011-10-01

    Full Text Available Human emotions are perceived from multi-modal information including facial expression and voice tone. We aimed to investigate development of neural mechanism for cross-modal perception of emotions. We presented congruent and incongruent combinations of facial expression (happy and voice tone (happy or angry, and measured EEG to analyze event-related brain potentials for 8-10 month-old infants and adults. Ten repetitions of 10 trials were presented in random order for each participant. Half of them performed 20% congruent (happy face with happy voice and 80% incongruent (happy face with angry voice trials, and the others performed 80% congruent and 20% incongruent trials. We employed the oddball paradigm, but did not instruct participants to count a target. The odd-ball (infrequent stimulus increased the amplitude of P2 and delayed its latency for infants in comparison with the frequent stimulus. When the odd-ball stimulus was also emotionally incongruent, P2 amplitude was more increased and its latency was more delayed than for the odd-ball and emotionally congruent stimulus. However, we did not find difference of P2 amplitude or latency for adults between conditions. These results suggested that the 8–10 month-old infants already have a neural basis for detecting emotional incongruence of facial expression and voice tone.

  10. Neural Correlates of Processing Negative and Sexually Arousing Pictures

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bailey, Kira; West, Robert; Mullaney, Kellie M.

    2012-01-01

    Recent work has questioned whether the negativity bias is a distinct component of affective picture processing. The current study was designed to determine whether there are different neural correlates of processing positive and negative pictures using event-related brain potentials. The early posterior negativity and late positive potential were greatest in amplitude for erotic pictures. Partial Least Squares analysis revealed one latent variable that distinguished erotic pictures from neutral and positive pictures and another that differentiated negative pictures from neutral and positive pictures. The effects of orienting task on the neural correlates of processing negative and erotic pictures indicate that affective picture processing is sensitive to both stimulus-driven, and attentional or decision processes. The current data, together with other recent findings from our laboratory, lead to the suggestion that there are distinct neural correlates of processing negative and positive stimuli during affective picture processing. PMID:23029071

  11. Neural correlates and neural computations in posterior parietal cortex during perceptual decision-making

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Alexander eHuk

    2012-10-01

    Full Text Available A recent line of work has found remarkable success in relating perceptual decision-making and the spiking activity in the macaque lateral intraparietal area (LIP. In this review, we focus on questions about the neural computations in LIP that are not answered by demonstrations of neural correlates of psychological processes. We highlight three areas of limitations in our current understanding of the precise neural computations that might underlie neural correlates of decisions: (1 empirical questions not yet answered by existing data; (2 implementation issues related to how neural circuits could actually implement the mechanisms suggested by both physiology and psychology; and (3 ecological constraints related to the use of well-controlled laboratory tasks and whether they provide an accurate window on sensorimotor computation. These issues motivate the adoption of a more general encoding-decoding framework that will be fruitful for more detailed contemplation of how neural computations in LIP relate to the formation of perceptual decisions.

  12. Early Parenting Moderates the Association between Parental Depression and Neural Reactivity to Rewards and Losses in Offspring

    OpenAIRE

    Kujawa, Autumn; Proudfit, Greg H.; Laptook, Rebecca; Klein, Daniel N.

    2014-01-01

    Children of parents with depression exhibit neural abnormalities in reward processing. Examining contributions of parenting could provide insight into the development of these abnormalities and to the etiology of depression. We evaluated whether early parenting moderates the effects of parental depression on a neural measure of reward and loss processing in mid-late childhood. Parenting was assessed when children were preschoolers. At age nine, children completed an event-related potential as...

  13. Social context and perceived agency affects empathy for pain: an event-related fMRI investigation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Akitsuki, Yuko; Decety, Jean

    2009-08-15

    Studying of the impact of social context on the perception of pain in others is important for understanding the role of intentionality in interpersonal sensitivity, empathy, and implicit moral reasoning. Here we used an event-related fMRI with pain and social context (i.e., the number of individuals in the stimuli) as the two factors to investigate how different social contexts and resulting perceived agency modulate the neural response to the perception of pain in others. Twenty-six healthy participants were scanned while presented with short dynamic visual stimuli depicting painful situations accidentally caused by or intentionally caused by another individual. The main effect of perception of pain was associated with signal increase in the aMCC, insula, somatosensory cortex, SMA and PAG. Importantly, perceiving the presence of another individual led to specific hemodynamic increase in regions involved in representing social interaction and emotion regulation including the temporoparietal junction, medial prefrontal cortex, inferior frontal gyrus, and orbitofrontal cortex. Furthermore, the functional connectivity pattern between the left amygdala and other brain areas was modulated by the perceived agency. Our study demonstrates that the social context in which pain occurs modulate the brain response to other's pain. This modulation may reflect successful adaptation to potential danger present in a social interaction. Our results contribute to a better understanding of the neural mechanisms underpinning implicit moral reasoning that concern actions that can harm other people.

  14. Endogenous and Exogenous Attention Shifts are Mediated by the Same Large-Scale Neural Network.

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Peelen, M.V.; Heslenfeld, D.J.; Theeuwes, J.

    2004-01-01

    Event-related fMRI was used to examine the neural basis of endogenous (top-down) and exogenous (bottom-up) spatial orienting. Shifts of attention were induced by central (endogenous) or peripheral (exogenous) cues. Reaction times on subsequently presented targets showed the expected pattern of

  15. Differences in the Neural Mechanisms of Selective Attention in Children from Different Socioeconomic Backgrounds: An Event-Related Brain Potential Study

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stevens, Courtney; Lauinger, Brittni; Neville, Helen

    2009-01-01

    Previous research indicates that children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds show deficits in aspects of attention, including a reduced ability to filter irrelevant information and to suppress prepotent responses. However, less is known about the neural mechanisms of group differences in attention, which could reveal the stages of processing at…

  16. Bilateral theta-burst magnetic stimulation influence on event-related brain potentials.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pinto, Nuno; Duarte, Marta; Gonçalves, Helena; Silva, Ricardo; Gama, Jorge; Pato, Maria Vaz

    2018-01-01

    Theta-burst stimulation (TBS) can be a non-invasive technique to modulate cognitive functions, with promising therapeutic potential, but with some contradictory results. Event related potentials are used as a marker of brain deterioration and can be used to evaluate TBS-related cognitive performance, but its use remains scant. This study aimed to study bilateral inhibitory and excitatory TBS effects upon neurocognitive performance of young healthy volunteers, using the auditory P300' results. Using a double-blind sham-controlled study, 51 healthy volunteers were randomly assigned to five different groups, two submitted to either excitatory (iTBS) or inhibitory (cTBS) stimulation over the left dorsolateral pre-frontal cortex (DLPFC), two other actively stimulated the right DLPFC and finally a sham stimulation group. An oddball based auditory P300 was performed just before a single session of iTBS, cTBS or sham stimulation and repeated immediately after. P300 mean latency comparison between the pre- and post-TBS stimulation stages revealed significantly faster post stimulation latencies only when iTBS was performed on the left hemisphere (p = 0.003). Right and left hemisphere cTBS significantly delayed P300 latency (right p = 0.026; left p = 0.000). Multiple comparisons for N200 showed slower latencies after iTBS over the right hemisphere. No significant difference was found in amplitude variation. TBS appears to effectively influence neural networking involved in P300 formation, but effects seem distinct for iTBS vs cTBS and for the right or the left hemisphere. P300 evoked potentials can be an effective and practical tool to evaluate transcranial magnetic stimulation related outcomes.

  17. Changing relations between intelligence and brain activity in late childhood: A longitudinal event-related potential study.

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Stauder, J.E.A.; van der Molen, M.W.; Molenaar, P.C.M.

    1998-01-01

    In studying the relationship between Raven intelligence and event-related brain potentials to a visual oddball task in the same children, at respectively 9, 10 and 11 years of age, dramatic changes were observed with age. The event-related amplitude data suggest a shift in relation between

  18. Causal relations among events and states in dynamic geographical phenomena

    Science.gov (United States)

    Huang, Zhaoqiang; Feng, Xuezhi; Xuan, Wenling; Chen, Xiuwan

    2007-06-01

    There is only a static state of the real world to be recorded in conventional geographical information systems. However, there is not only static information but also dynamic information in geographical phenomena. So that how to record the dynamic information and reveal the relations among dynamic information is an important issue in a spatio-temporal information system. From an ontological perspective, we can initially divide the spatio-temporal entities in the world into continuants and occurrents. Continuant entities endure through some extended (although possibly very short) interval of time (e.g., houses, roads, cities, and real-estate). Occurrent entities happen and are then gone (e.g., a house repair job, road construction project, urban expansion, real-estate transition). From an information system perspective, continuants and occurrents that have a unique identity in the system are referred to as objects and events, respectively. And the change is represented implicitly by static snapshots in current spatial temporal information systems. In the previous models, the objects can be considered as the fundamental components of the system, and the change is modeled by considering time-varying attributes of these objects. In the spatio-temporal database, the temporal information that is either interval or instant is involved and the underlying data structures and indexes for temporal are considerable investigated. However, there is the absence of explicit ways of considering events, which affect the attributes of objects or the state. So the research issue of this paper focuses on how to model events in conceptual models of dynamic geographical phenomena and how to represent the causal relations among events and the objects or states. Firstly, the paper reviews the conceptual modeling in a temporal GIS by researchers. Secondly, this paper discusses the spatio-temporal entities: objects and events. Thirdly, this paper investigates the causal relations amongst

  19. Nonlinear neural network for hemodynamic model state and input estimation using fMRI data

    KAUST Repository

    Karam, Ayman M.

    2014-11-01

    Originally inspired by biological neural networks, artificial neural networks (ANNs) are powerful mathematical tools that can solve complex nonlinear problems such as filtering, classification, prediction and more. This paper demonstrates the first successful implementation of ANN, specifically nonlinear autoregressive with exogenous input (NARX) networks, to estimate the hemodynamic states and neural activity from simulated and measured real blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) signals. Blocked and event-related BOLD data are used to test the algorithm on real experiments. The proposed method is accurate and robust even in the presence of signal noise and it does not depend on sampling interval. Moreover, the structure of the NARX networks is optimized to yield the best estimate with minimal network architecture. The results of the estimated neural activity are also discussed in terms of their potential use.

  20. TopoToolbox: using sensor topography to calculate psychologically meaningful measures from event-related EEG/MEG.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tian, Xing; Poeppel, David; Huber, David E

    2011-01-01

    The open-source toolbox "TopoToolbox" is a suite of functions that use sensor topography to calculate psychologically meaningful measures (similarity, magnitude, and timing) from multisensor event-related EEG and MEG data. Using a GUI and data visualization, TopoToolbox can be used to calculate and test the topographic similarity between different conditions (Tian and Huber, 2008). This topographic similarity indicates whether different conditions involve a different distribution of underlying neural sources. Furthermore, this similarity calculation can be applied at different time points to discover when a response pattern emerges (Tian and Poeppel, 2010). Because the topographic patterns are obtained separately for each individual, these patterns are used to produce reliable measures of response magnitude that can be compared across individuals using conventional statistics (Davelaar et al. Submitted and Huber et al., 2008). TopoToolbox can be freely downloaded. It runs under MATLAB (The MathWorks, Inc.) and supports user-defined data structure as well as standard EEG/MEG data import using EEGLAB (Delorme and Makeig, 2004).

  1. Admissions and Readmissions Related to Adverse Events, 2007-2014

    Science.gov (United States)

    2015-12-01

    DRG is a classification system primarily used for billing purposes. It uses the principle and secondary diagnoses to assign clinical conditions to...This study assessed adverse events as they relate to readmissions in the Military Health System (MHS). Among 142,579 admissions with an adverse event...The following study retrospectively assessed admissions and readmissions for adverse events in the Military Health System (MHS) by quantifying

  2. Brain substrates of implicit and explicit memory: the importance of concurrently acquired neural signals of both memory types.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Voss, Joel L; Paller, Ken A

    2008-11-01

    A comprehensive understanding of human memory requires cognitive and neural descriptions of memory processes along with a conception of how memory processing drives behavioral responses and subjective experiences. One serious challenge to this endeavor is that an individual memory process is typically operative within a mix of other contemporaneous memory processes. This challenge is particularly disquieting in the context of implicit memory, which, unlike explicit memory, transpires without the subject necessarily being aware of memory retrieval. Neural correlates of implicit memory and neural correlates of explicit memory are often investigated in different experiments using very different memory tests and procedures. This strategy poses difficulties for elucidating the interactions between the two types of memory process that may result in explicit remembering, and for determining the extent to which certain neural processing events uniquely contribute to only one type of memory. We review recent studies that have succeeded in separately assessing neural correlates of both implicit memory and explicit memory within the same paradigm using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), with an emphasis on studies from our laboratory. The strategies we describe provide a methodological framework for achieving valid assessments of memory processing, and the findings support an emerging conceptualization of the distinct neurocognitive events responsible for implicit and explicit memory.

  3. Identifying Adverse Drug Events by Relational Learning.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Page, David; Costa, Vítor Santos; Natarajan, Sriraam; Barnard, Aubrey; Peissig, Peggy; Caldwell, Michael

    2012-07-01

    The pharmaceutical industry, consumer protection groups, users of medications and government oversight agencies are all strongly interested in identifying adverse reactions to drugs. While a clinical trial of a drug may use only a thousand patients, once a drug is released on the market it may be taken by millions of patients. As a result, in many cases adverse drug events (ADEs) are observed in the broader population that were not identified during clinical trials. Therefore, there is a need for continued, post-marketing surveillance of drugs to identify previously-unanticipated ADEs. This paper casts this problem as a reverse machine learning task , related to relational subgroup discovery and provides an initial evaluation of this approach based on experiments with an actual EMR/EHR and known adverse drug events.

  4. Measurement of event-related potentials and placebo

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sovilj Platon

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available ERP is common abbreviation for event-related brain potentials, which are measured and used in clinical practice as well as in research practice. Contemporary studies of placebo effect are often based on functional neuromagnetic resonance (fMRI, positron emission tomography (PET, and event related potentials (ERP. This paper considers an ERP instrumentation system used in experimental researches of placebo effect. This instrumentation system can be divided into four modules: electrodes and cables, conditioning module, digital measurement module, and PC module for stimulations, presentations, acquisition and data processing. The experimental oddball paradigm is supported by the software of the instrumentation. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. TR32019 and Provincial Secretariat for Science and Technological Development of Autonomous Province of Vojvodina (Republic of Serbia under research grant No. 114-451-2723

  5. Selection of Photon Gluon Fusion Events in DIS

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kowalik, K.; Rondio, E.; Sulej, R.; Zaremba, K.

    2001-01-01

    A selection of the Photon Gluon Fusion (PGF) process with light quarks for deep inelastic scattering events is presented. This process is directly sensitive to gluon polarization and our goal is to find out the most effective selection on a sample of events simulated for the SMC experiment. We compare two general multi-class classification methods - Bayes method and neural network with a conventional selection procedure. The neural network algorithm presented here is a modification of method belonging to the family of directional minimization algorithms. This method is convenient and effective for photon gluon fusion selection and determination of gluon polarization. Finally we present the estimation for precision of gluon polarization for neural network method. (author)

  6. Improving short-term forecasting during ramp events by means of Regime-Switching Artificial Neural Networks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gallego, C.; Costa, A.; Cuerva, A.

    2010-09-01

    Since nowadays wind energy can't be neither scheduled nor large-scale storaged, wind power forecasting has been useful to minimize the impact of wind fluctuations. In particular, short-term forecasting (characterised by prediction horizons from minutes to a few days) is currently required by energy producers (in a daily electricity market context) and the TSO's (in order to keep the stability/balance of an electrical system). Within the short-term background, time-series based models (i.e., statistical models) have shown a better performance than NWP models for horizons up to few hours. These models try to learn and replicate the dynamic shown by the time series of a certain variable. When considering the power output of wind farms, ramp events are usually observed, being characterized by a large positive gradient in the time series (ramp-up) or negative (ramp-down) during relatively short time periods (few hours). Ramp events may be motivated by many different causes, involving generally several spatial scales, since the large scale (fronts, low pressure systems) up to the local scale (wind turbine shut-down due to high wind speed, yaw misalignment due to fast changes of wind direction). Hence, the output power may show unexpected dynamics during ramp events depending on the underlying processes; consequently, traditional statistical models considering only one dynamic for the hole power time series may be inappropriate. This work proposes a Regime Switching (RS) model based on Artificial Neural Nets (ANN). The RS-ANN model gathers as many ANN's as different dynamics considered (called regimes); a certain ANN is selected so as to predict the output power, depending on the current regime. The current regime is on-line updated based on a gradient criteria, regarding the past two values of the output power. 3 Regimes are established, concerning ramp events: ramp-up, ramp-down and no-ramp regime. In order to assess the skillness of the proposed RS-ANN model, a single

  7. Event-related potentials dissociate perceptual from response-related age effects in visual search

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Wiegand, Iris; Müller, Hermann J.; Finke, Kathrin

    2013-01-01

    measures with lateralized event-related potentials of younger and older adults performing a compound-search task, in which the target-defining dimension of a pop-out target (color/shape) and the response-critical target feature (vertical/horizontal stripes) varied independently across trials. Slower...... responses in older participants were associated with age differences in all analyzed event-related potentials from perception to response, indicating that behavioral slowing originates from multiple stages within the information-processing stream. Furthermore, analyses of carry-over effects from one trial...

  8. Neural correlates related to action observation in expert archers.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kim, Yang-Tae; Seo, Jee-Hye; Song, Hui-Jin; Yoo, Done-Sik; Lee, Hui Joong; Lee, Jongmin; Lee, Gunyoung; Kwon, Eunjin; Kim, Jin Goo; Chang, Yongmin

    2011-10-01

    A growing body of evidence suggests that activity of the mirror neuron system is dependent on the observer's motor experience of a given action. It remains unclear, however, whether activity of the mirror neuron system is also associated with the observer's motor experience in sports game. Therefore, the aim of the present study is to investigate differences in activation of the mirror neuron system during action observation between experts and non-archer control subjects. We used video of Western-style archery in which participants were asked to watch the archery movements. Hyperactivation of the premotor and inferior parietal cortex in expert archers relative to non-archer control subjects suggests that the human mirror neuron system could contain and expand representations of the motor repertoire. The fact that dorsomedial prefrontal cortex was more active in expert archers than in non-archer control subjects indicates a spontaneous engagement of theory of mind in experts when watching video of Western-style archery. Compared with the non-archer control subjects, expert archers showed greater activation in the neural system in regions associated with episodic recall from familiar and meaningful information, including the cingulate cortex, retrosplenial cortex, and parahippocampal gyrus. The results demonstrate that expertise effects stimulate brain activity not only in the mirror neuron system but also in the neural networks related to theory of mind and episodic memory. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  9. Striatal Activity and Reward Relativity: Neural Signals Encoding Dynamic Outcome Valuation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Webber, Emily S; Mankin, David E; Cromwell, Howard C

    2016-01-01

    The striatum is a key brain region involved in reward processing. Striatal activity has been linked to encoding reward magnitude and integrating diverse reward outcome information. Recent work has supported the involvement of striatum in the valuation of outcomes. The present work extends this idea by examining striatal activity during dynamic shifts in value that include different levels and directions of magnitude disparity. A novel task was used to produce diverse relative reward effects on a chain of instrumental action. Rats ( Rattus norvegicus ) were trained to respond to cues associated with specific outcomes varying by food pellet magnitude. Animals were exposed to single-outcome sessions followed by mixed-outcome sessions, and neural activity was compared among identical outcome trials from the different behavioral contexts. Results recording striatal activity show that neural responses to different task elements reflect incentive contrast as well as other relative effects that involve generalization between outcomes or possible influences of outcome variety. The activity that was most prevalent was linked to food consumption and post-food consumption periods. Relative encoding was sensitive to magnitude disparity. A within-session analysis showed strong contrast effects that were dependent upon the outcome received in the immediately preceding trial. Significantly higher numbers of responses were found in ventral striatum linked to relative outcome effects. Our results support the idea that relative value can incorporate diverse relationships, including comparisons from specific individual outcomes to general behavioral contexts. The striatum contains these diverse relative processes, possibly enabling both a higher information yield concerning value shifts and a greater behavioral flexibility.

  10. Association of single nucleotide polymorphisms in a glutamate receptor gene (GRM8) with theta power of event-related oscillations and alcohol dependence.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chen, Andrew C H; Tang, Yongqiang; Rangaswamy, Madhavi; Wang, Jen C; Almasy, Laura; Foroud, Tatiana; Edenberg, Howard J; Hesselbrock, Victor; Nurnberger, John; Kuperman, Samuel; O'Connor, Sean J; Schuckit, Marc A; Bauer, Lance O; Tischfield, Jay; Rice, John P; Bierut, Laura; Goate, Alison; Porjesz, Bernice

    2009-04-05

    Evidence suggests the P3 amplitude of the event-related potential and its underlying superimposed event-related oscillations (EROs), primarily in the theta (4-5 Hz) and delta (1-3 Hz) frequencies, as endophenotypes for the risk of alcoholism and other disinhibitory disorders. Major neurochemical substrates contributing to theta and delta rhythms and P3 involve strong GABAergic, cholinergic and glutamatergic system interactions. The aim of this study was to test the potential associations between single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in glutamate receptor genes and ERO quantitative traits. GRM8 was selected because it maps at chromosome 7q31.3-q32.1 under the peak region where we previously identified significant linkage (peak LOD = 3.5) using a genome-wide linkage scan of the same phenotype (event-related theta band for the target visual stimuli). Neural activities recorded from scalp electrodes during a visual oddball task in which rare target elicited P3s were analyzed in a subset of the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA) sample comprising 1,049 Caucasian subjects from 209 families (with 472 DSM-IV alcohol dependent individuals). The family-based association test (FBAT) detected significant association (P power to target visual stimuli, and also with alcohol dependence, even after correction for multiple comparisons by false discovery rate (FDR). Our results suggest that variation in GRM8 may be involved in modulating event-related theta oscillations during information processing and also in vulnerability to alcoholism. These findings underscore the utility of electrophysiology and the endophenotype approach in the genetic study of psychiatric disorders. (c) 2008 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

  11. Feedback processing in adolescence: an event-related potential study of age and gender differences.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Grose-Fifer, Jillian; Migliaccio, Renee; Zottoli, Tina M

    2014-01-01

    Adolescence has frequently been characterized as a period of increased risk taking, which may be largely driven by maturational changes in neural areas that process incentives. To investigate age- and gender-related differences in reward processing, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) from 80 participants in a gambling game, in which monetary wins and losses were either large or small. We measured two ERP components: the feedback-related negativity (FRN) and the feedback P3 (fP3). The FRN was sensitive to the size of a win in both adult (aged 23-35 years) and adolescent (aged 13-17 years) males, but not in females. Small wins appeared to be less rewarding for males than for females, which may in part explain more approach-driven behavior in males in general. Furthermore, adolescent boys showed both delayed FRNs to high losses and less differentiation in FRN amplitude between wins and losses in comparison to girls. The fP3, which is thought to index the salience of the feedback at a more conscious level than the FRN, was also larger in boys than in girls. Taken together, these results imply that higher levels of risk taking that are commonly reported in adolescent males may be driven both by hypersensitivity to high rewards and insensitivity to punishment or losses. © 2014 S. Karger AG, Basel.

  12. Impact parameter determination in experimental analysis using neural network

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Haddad, F.; David, C.; Freslier, M.; Aichelin, J.; Haddad, F.; Hagel, K.; Li, J.; Mdeiwayeh, N.; Natowitz, J.B.; Wada, R.; Xiao, B.

    1997-01-01

    A neural network is used to determine the impact parameter in 40 Ca + 40 Ca reactions. The effect of the detection efficiency as well as the model dependence of the training procedure have been studied carefully. An overall improvement of the impact parameter determination of 25 % is obtained using this technique. The analysis of Amphora 40 Ca+ 40 Ca data at 35 MeV per nucleon using a neural network shows two well separated classes of events among the selected 'complete' events. (authors)

  13. Event-related potential studies of outcome processing and feedback-guided learning

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    René eSan Martín

    2012-11-01

    Full Text Available In order to control behavior in an adaptive manner the brain has to learn how some situations and actions predict positive or negative outcomes. During the last decade cognitive neuroscientists have shown that the brain is able to evaluate and learn from outcomes within a few hundred milliseconds of their occurrence. This research has been primarily focused on the feedback-related negativity (FRN and the P3, two event-related potential (ERP components that are elicited by outcomes. The FRN is a frontally distributed negative-polarity ERP component that typically reaches its maximal amplitude 250 ms after outcome presentation and tends to be larger for negative than for positive outcomes. The FRN has been associated with activity in the anterior cingulate cortex. The P3 (~300-600 ms is a parietally distributed positive-polarity ERP component that tends to be larger for large magnitude than for small magnitude outcomes. The neural sources of the P3 are probably distributed over different regions of the cortex. This paper examines the theories that have been proposed to explain the functional role of these two ERP components during outcome processing. Special attention is paid to extant literature addressing how these ERP components are modulated by outcome valence (negative vs. positive, outcome magnitude (large vs. small, outcome probability (unlikely vs. likely and behavioral adjustment. The literature offers few generalizable conclusions, but is beset with a number of inconsistencies across studies. This paper discusses the potential reasons for these inconsistencies and points out some challenges that will shape the field over the next decade.

  14. Effect of Explicit Evaluation on Neural Connectivity Related to Listening to Unfamiliar Music

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Chao; Brattico, Elvira; Abu-jamous, Basel; Pereira, Carlos S.; Jacobsen, Thomas; Nandi, Asoke K.

    2017-01-01

    People can experience different emotions when listening to music. A growing number of studies have investigated the brain structures and neural connectivities associated with perceived emotions. However, very little is known about the effect of an explicit act of judgment on the neural processing of emotionally-valenced music. In this study, we adopted the novel consensus clustering paradigm, called binarisation of consensus partition matrices (Bi-CoPaM), to study whether and how the conscious aesthetic evaluation of the music would modulate brain connectivity networks related to emotion and reward processing. Participants listened to music under three conditions – one involving a non-evaluative judgment, one involving an explicit evaluative aesthetic judgment, and one involving no judgment at all (passive listening only). During non-evaluative attentive listening we obtained auditory-limbic connectivity whereas when participants were asked to decide explicitly whether they liked or disliked the music excerpt, only two clusters of intercommunicating brain regions were found: one including areas related to auditory processing and action observation, and the other comprising higher-order structures involved with visual processing. Results indicate that explicit evaluative judgment has an impact on the neural auditory-limbic connectivity during affective processing of music. PMID:29311874

  15. Neural correlates of rhythmic expectancy

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Theodore P. Zanto

    2006-01-01

    Full Text Available Temporal expectancy is thought to play a fundamental role in the perception of rhythm. This review summarizes recent studies that investigated rhythmic expectancy by recording neuroelectric activity with high temporal resolution during the presentation of rhythmic patterns. Prior event-related brain potential (ERP studies have uncovered auditory evoked responses that reflect detection of onsets, offsets, sustains,and abrupt changes in acoustic properties such as frequency, intensity, and spectrum, in addition to indexing higher-order processes such as auditory sensory memory and the violation of expectancy. In our studies of rhythmic expectancy, we measured emitted responses - a type of ERP that occurs when an expected event is omitted from a regular series of stimulus events - in simple rhythms with temporal structures typical of music. Our observations suggest that middle-latency gamma band (20-60 Hz activity (GBA plays an essential role in auditory rhythm processing. Evoked (phase-locked GBA occurs in the presence of physically presented auditory events and reflects the degree of accent. Induced (non-phase-locked GBA reflects temporally precise expectancies for strongly and weakly accented events in sound patterns. Thus far, these findings support theories of rhythm perception that posit temporal expectancies generated by active neural processes.

  16. Neural processing of emotional-intensity predicts emotion regulation choice.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shafir, Roni; Thiruchselvam, Ravi; Suri, Gaurav; Gross, James J; Sheppes, Gal

    2016-12-01

    Emotional-intensity is a core characteristic of affective events that strongly determines how individuals choose to regulate their emotions. Our conceptual framework suggests that in high emotional-intensity situations, individuals prefer to disengage attention using distraction, which can more effectively block highly potent emotional information, as compared with engagement reappraisal, which is preferred in low emotional-intensity. However, existing supporting evidence remains indirect because prior intensity categorization of emotional stimuli was based on subjective measures that are potentially biased and only represent the endpoint of emotional-intensity processing. Accordingly, this study provides the first direct evidence for the role of online emotional-intensity processing in predicting behavioral regulatory-choices. Utilizing the high temporal resolution of event-related potentials, we evaluated online neural processing of stimuli's emotional-intensity (late positive potential, LPP) prior to regulatory-choices between distraction and reappraisal. Results showed that enhanced neural processing of intensity (enhanced LPP amplitudes) uniquely predicted (above subjective measures of intensity) increased tendency to subsequently choose distraction over reappraisal. Additionally, regulatory-choices led to adaptive consequences, demonstrated in finding that actual implementation of distraction relative to reappraisal-choice resulted in stronger attenuation of LPPs and self-reported arousal. © The Author (2016). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

  17. Feature-Specific Event-Related Potential Effects to Action- and Sound-Related Verbs during Visual Word Recognition.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Popp, Margot; Trumpp, Natalie M; Kiefer, Markus

    2016-01-01

    Grounded cognition theories suggest that conceptual representations essentially depend on modality-specific sensory and motor systems. Feature-specific brain activation across different feature types such as action or audition has been intensively investigated in nouns, while feature-specific conceptual category differences in verbs mainly focused on body part specific effects. The present work aimed at assessing whether feature-specific event-related potential (ERP) differences between action and sound concepts, as previously observed in nouns, can also be found within the word class of verbs. In Experiment 1, participants were visually presented with carefully matched sound and action verbs within a lexical decision task, which provides implicit access to word meaning and minimizes strategic access to semantic word features. Experiment 2 tested whether pre-activating the verb concept in a context phase, in which the verb is presented with a related context noun, modulates subsequent feature-specific action vs. sound verb processing within the lexical decision task. In Experiment 1, ERP analyses revealed a differential ERP polarity pattern for action and sound verbs at parietal and central electrodes similar to previous results in nouns. Pre-activation of the meaning of verbs in the preceding context phase in Experiment 2 resulted in a polarity-reversal of feature-specific ERP effects in the lexical decision task compared with Experiment 1. This parallels analogous earlier findings for primed action and sound related nouns. In line with grounded cognitions theories, our ERP study provides evidence for a differential processing of action and sound verbs similar to earlier observation for concrete nouns. Although the localizational value of ERPs must be viewed with caution, our results indicate that the meaning of verbs is linked to different neural circuits depending on conceptual feature relevance.

  18. Age-related difference in the effective neural connectivity associated with probabilistic category learning

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Yoon, Eun Jin; Cho, Sang Soo; Kim, Hee Jung; Bang, Seong Ae; Park, Hyun Soo; Kim, Yu Kyeong; Kim, Sang Eun [Seoul National Univ. College of Medicine, Seoul (Korea, Republic of)

    2007-07-01

    Although it is well known that explicit memory is affected by the deleterious changes in brain with aging, but effect of aging in implicit memory such as probabilistic category learning (PCL) is not clear. To identify the effect of aging on the neural interaction for successful PCL, we investigated the neural substrates of PCL and the age-related changes of the neural network between these brain regions. 23 young (age, 252 y; 11 males) and 14 elderly (673 y; 7 males) healthy subjects underwent FDG PET during a resting state and 150-trial weather prediction (WP) task. Correlations between the WP hit rates and regional glucose metabolism were assessed using SPM2 (P<0.05 uncorrected). For path analysis, seven brain regions (bilateral middle frontal gyri and putamen, left fusiform gyrus, anterior cingulate and right parahippocampal gyri) were selected based on the results of the correlation analysis. Model construction and path analysis processing were done by AMOS 5.0. The elderly had significantly lower total hit rates than the young (P<0.005). In the correlation analysis, both groups showed similar metabolic correlation in frontal and striatal area. But correlation in the medial temporal lobe (MTL) was found differently by group. In path analysis, the functional networks for the constructed model was accepted (X(2) =0.80, P=0.67) and it proved to be significantly different between groups (X{sub diff}(37) = 142.47, P<0.005), Systematic comparisons of each path revealed that frontal crosscallosal and the frontal to parahippocampal connection were most responsible for the model differences (P<0.05). For the successful PCL, the elderly recruits the basal ganglia implicit memory system but MTL recruitment differs from the young. The inadequate MTL correlation pattern in the elderly is may be caused by the changes of the neural pathway related with explicit memory. These neural changes can explain the decreased performance of PCL in elderly subjects.

  19. Neural Indices of Semantic Processing in Early Childhood Distinguish Eventual Stuttering Persistence and Recovery

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kreidler, Kathryn; Wray, Amanda Hampton; Usler, Evan; Weber, Christine

    2017-01-01

    Purpose: Maturation of neural processes for language may lag in some children who stutter (CWS), and event-related potentials (ERPs) distinguish CWS who have recovered from those who have persisted. The current study explores whether ERPs indexing semantic processing may distinguish children who will eventually persist in stuttering…

  20. Neural responses to threat and reward interact to predict stress-related problem drinking: A novel protective role of the amygdala

    Science.gov (United States)

    2012-01-01

    Background Research into neural mechanisms of drug abuse risk has focused on the role of dysfunction in neural circuits for reward. In contrast, few studies have examined the role of dysfunction in neural circuits of threat in mediating drug abuse risk. Although typically regarded as a risk factor for mood and anxiety disorders, threat-related amygdala reactivity may serve as a protective factor against substance use disorders, particularly in individuals with exaggerated responsiveness to reward. Findings We used well-established neuroimaging paradigms to probe threat-related amygdala and reward-related ventral striatum reactivity in a sample of 200 young adult students from the ongoing Duke Neurogenetics Study. Recent life stress and problem drinking were assessed using self-report. We found a significant three-way interaction between threat-related amygdala reactivity, reward-related ventral striatum reactivity, and recent stress, wherein individuals with higher reward-related ventral striatum reactivity exhibit higher levels of problem drinking in the context of stress, but only if they also have lower threat-related amygdala reactivity. This three-way interaction predicted both contemporaneous problem drinking and problem drinking reported three-months later in a subset of participants. Conclusions These findings suggest complex interactions between stress and neural responsiveness to both threat and reward mediate problem drinking. Furthermore, they highlight a novel protective role for threat-related amygdala reactivity against drug use in individuals with high neural reactivity to reward. PMID:23151390

  1. Emotional processing and psychopathic traits in male college students: An event-related potential study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Medina, Amy L; Kirilko, Elvira; Grose-Fifer, Jillian

    2016-08-01

    Emotional processing deficits are often considered a hallmark of psychopathy. However, there are relatively few studies that have investigated how the late positive potential (LPP) elicited by both positive and negative emotional stimuli is modulated by psychopathic traits, especially in undergraduates. Attentional deficits have also been posited to be associated with emotional blunting in psychopathy, consequently, results from previous studies may have been influenced by task demands. Therefore, we investigated the relationship between the neural correlates of emotional processing and psychopathic traits by measuring event-related potentials (ERPs) during a task with a relatively low cognitive load. A group of male undergraduates were classified as having either high or low levels of psychopathic traits according to their total scores on the Psychopathic Personality Inventory - Revised (PPI-R). A subgroup of these participants then passively viewed complex emotional and neutral images from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) while their EEGs were recorded. As hypothesized, in general the late LPP elicited by emotional pictures was found to be significantly reduced for participants with high Total PPI-R scores relative to those with low scores, especially for pictures that were rated as less emotionally arousing. Our data suggest that male undergraduates with high, but subclinical levels of psychopathic traits did not maintain continued higher-order processing of affective information, especially when it was perceived to be less arousing in nature. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  2. Excess lead in the neural retina in age-related macular degeneration.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Erie, Jay C; Good, Jonathan A; Butz, John A

    2009-12-01

    To measure lead and cadmium in retinal tissues of human donor eyes with and without age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Laboratory investigation. Lead and cadmium concentrations in retinal tissues (neural retina and retinal pigment epithelium [RPE]-choroid complex) in 25 subjects with AMD (50 donor eyes) and 36 normal subjects (72 donor eyes) were determined by using inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry. Severity of AMD was graded by using color fundus photographs and the Minnesota Grading System. Differences in metal concentrations were compared by using Wilcoxon rank-sum tests. The neural retinas of subjects with AMD had increased lead concentrations (median, 12.0 ng/g; 25% to 75% interquartile range, 8 to 18 ng/g; n = 25) compared with normal subjects (median, 8.0 ng/g; 25% to 75% interquartile range, 0 to 11 ng/g; P = .04; n = 36). There was no difference in lead concentration in the RPE-choroid complex between subjects with AMD (median, 198 ng/g; 25% to 75% interquartile range, 87 to 381 ng/g) and normal subjects (median, 172 ng/g; 25% to 75% interquartile range, 100 to 288 ng/g; P = .25). Cadmium concentration in the neural retina (median, 0.9 microg/g; 25% to 75% interquartile range, 0.7 to 1.8 microg/g) and RPE-choroid complex (median, 2.2 microg/g; 25% to 75% interquartile range, 1.8 to 3.7 microg/g) in subjects with AMD was not different from concentrations in the neural retina (median, 0.9 microg/g; 25% to 75% interquartile range, 0.7 to 1.4 microg/g; P = .32) and RPE-choroid complex (median, 1.5 microg/g; 25% to 75% interquartile range, 0.9 to 2.5 microg/g; P = .12) of normal subjects. AMD is associated with excess lead in the neural retina, and this relationship suggests that metal homeostasis in AMD eyes is different from normal.

  3. Neural Markers of Performance States in an Olympic Athlete: An EEG Case Study in Air-Pistol Shooting.

    Science.gov (United States)

    di Fronso, Selenia; Robazza, Claudio; Filho, Edson; Bortoli, Laura; Comani, Silvia; Bertollo, Maurizio

    2016-06-01

    This study focused on identifying the neural markers underlying optimal and suboptimal performance experiences of an elite air-pistol shooter, based on the tenets of the multi-action plan (MAP) model. According to the MAP model's assumptions, skilled athletes' cortical patterns are expected to differ among optimal/automatic (Type 1), optimal/controlled (Type 2), suboptimal/controlled (Type 3), and suboptimal/automatic (Type 4) performance experiences. We collected performance (target pistol shots), cognitive-affective (perceived control, accuracy, and hedonic tone), and cortical activity data (32-channel EEG) of an elite shooter. Idiosyncratic descriptive analyses revealed differences in perceived accuracy in regard to optimal and suboptimal performance states. Event-Related Desynchronization/Synchronization analysis supported the notion that optimal-automatic performance experiences (Type 1) were characterized by a global synchronization of cortical arousal associated with the shooting task, whereas suboptimal controlled states (Type 3) were underpinned by high cortical activity levels in the attentional brain network. Results are addressed in light of the neural efficiency hypothesis and reinvestment theory. Perceptual training recommendations aimed at restoring optimal performance levels are discussed. Key pointsWe investigated the neural markers underlying optimal and suboptimal performance experiences of an elite air-pistol shooter.Optimal/automatic performance is characterized by a global synchronization of cortical activity associated with the shooting task.Suboptimal controlled performance is characterized by high cortical arousal levels in the attentional brain networks.Focused Event Related Desynchronization activity during Type 1 performance in frontal midline theta was found, with a clear distribution of Event Related Synchronization in the frontal and central areas just prior to shot release.Event Related Desynchronization patterns in low Alpha band

  4. Event generators for address event representation transmitters

    Science.gov (United States)

    Serrano-Gotarredona, Rafael; Serrano-Gotarredona, Teresa; Linares Barranco, Bernabe

    2005-06-01

    Address Event Representation (AER) is an emergent neuromorphic interchip communication protocol that allows for real-time virtual massive connectivity between huge number neurons located on different chips. By exploiting high speed digital communication circuits (with nano-seconds timings), synaptic neural connections can be time multiplexed, while neural activity signals (with mili-seconds timings) are sampled at low frequencies. Also, neurons generate 'events' according to their activity levels. More active neurons generate more events per unit time, and access the interchip communication channel more frequently, while neurons with low activity consume less communication bandwidth. In a typical AER transmitter chip, there is an array of neurons that generate events. They send events to a peripheral circuitry (let's call it "AER Generator") that transforms those events to neurons coordinates (addresses) which are put sequentially on an interchip high speed digital bus. This bus includes a parallel multi-bit address word plus a Rqst (request) and Ack (acknowledge) handshaking signals for asynchronous data exchange. There have been two main approaches published in the literature for implementing such "AER Generator" circuits. They differ on the way of handling event collisions coming from the array of neurons. One approach is based on detecting and discarding collisions, while the other incorporates arbitration for sequencing colliding events . The first approach is supposed to be simpler and faster, while the second is able to handle much higher event traffic. In this article we will concentrate on the second arbiter-based approach. Boahen has been publishing several techniques for implementing and improving the arbiter based approach. Originally, he proposed an arbitration squeme by rows, followed by a column arbitration. In this scheme, while one neuron was selected by the arbiters to transmit his event out of the chip, the rest of neurons in the array were

  5. QCD-Aware Neural Networks for Jet Physics

    CERN Multimedia

    CERN. Geneva

    2017-01-01

    Recent progress in applying machine learning for jet physics has been built upon an analogy between calorimeters and images. In this work, we present a novel class of recursive neural networks built instead upon an analogy between QCD and natural languages. In the analogy, four-momenta are like words and the clustering history of sequential recombination jet algorithms is like the parsing of a sentence. Our approach works directly with the four-momenta of a variable-length set of particles, and the jet-based neural network topology varies on an event-by-event basis. Our experiments highlight the flexibility of our method for building task-specific jet embeddings and show that recursive architectures are significantly more accurate and data efficient than previous image-based networks. We extend the analogy from individual jets (sentences) to full events (paragraphs), and show for the first time an event-level classifier operating...

  6. Reduced reward-related neural response to mimicry in individuals with autism.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hsu, Chun-Ting; Neufeld, Janina; Chakrabarti, Bhismadev

    2018-03-01

    Mimicry is a facilitator of social bonds in humans, from infancy. This facilitation is made possible through changing the reward value of social stimuli; for example, we like and affiliate more with people who mimic us. Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are marked by difficulties in forming social bonds. In this study, we investigate whether the reward-related neural response to being mimicked is altered in individuals with ASD, using a simple conditioning paradigm. Multiple studies in humans and nonhuman primates have established a crucial role for the ventral striatal (VS) region in responding to rewards. In this study, adults with ASD and matched controls first underwent a conditioning task outside the scanner, where they were mimicked by one face and 'anti-mimicked' by another. In the second part, participants passively viewed the conditioned faces in a 3T MRI scanner using a multi-echo sequence. The differential neural response towards mimicking vs. anti-mimicking faces in the VS was tested for group differences as well as an association with self-reported autistic traits. Multiple regression analysis revealed lower left VS response to mimicry (mimicking > anti-mimicking faces) in the ASD group compared to controls. The VS response to mimicry was negatively correlated with autistic traits across the whole sample. Our results suggest that for individuals with ASD and high autistic traits, being mimicked is associated with lower reward-related neural response. This result points to a potential mechanism underlying the difficulties reported by many of individuals with ASD in building social rapport. © 2017 The Authors. European Journal of Neuroscience published by Federation of European Neuroscience Societies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  7. The effect of visual parameters on neural activation during nonsymbolic number comparison and its relation to math competency.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wilkey, Eric D; Barone, Jordan C; Mazzocco, Michèle M M; Vogel, Stephan E; Price, Gavin R

    2017-10-01

    Nonsymbolic numerical comparison task performance (whereby a participant judges which of two groups of objects is numerically larger) is thought to index the efficiency of neural systems supporting numerical magnitude perception, and performance on such tasks has been related to individual differences in math competency. However, a growing body of research suggests task performance is heavily influenced by visual parameters of the stimuli (e.g. surface area and dot size of object sets) such that the correlation with math is driven by performance on trials in which number is incongruent with visual cues. Almost nothing is currently known about whether the neural correlates of nonsymbolic magnitude comparison are also affected by visual congruency. To investigate this issue, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to analyze neural activity during a nonsymbolic comparison task as a function of visual congruency in a sample of typically developing high school students (n = 36). Further, we investigated the relation to math competency as measured by the preliminary scholastic aptitude test (PSAT) in 10th grade. Our results indicate that neural activity was modulated by the ratio of the dot sets being compared in brain regions previously shown to exhibit an effect of ratio (i.e. left anterior cingulate, left precentral gyrus, left intraparietal sulcus, and right superior parietal lobe) when calculated from the average of congruent and incongruent trials, as it is in most studies, and that the effect of ratio within those regions did not differ as a function of congruency condition. However, there were significant differences in other regions in overall task-related activation, as opposed to the neural ratio effect, when congruent and incongruent conditions were contrasted at the whole-brain level. Math competency negatively correlated with ratio-dependent neural response in the left insula across congruency conditions and showed distinct correlations when

  8. Atypical neural responses to vocal anger in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chronaki, Georgia; Benikos, Nicholas; Fairchild, Graeme; Sonuga-Barke, Edmund J S

    2015-04-01

    Deficits in facial emotion processing, reported in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), have been linked to both early perceptual and later attentional components of event-related potentials (ERPs). However, the neural underpinnings of vocal emotion processing deficits in ADHD have yet to be characterised. Here, we report the first ERP study of vocal affective prosody processing in ADHD. Event-related potentials of 6-11-year-old children with ADHD (n = 25) and typically developing controls (n = 25) were recorded as they completed a task measuring recognition of vocal prosodic stimuli (angry, happy and neutral). Audiometric assessments were conducted to screen for hearing impairments. Children with ADHD were less accurate than controls at recognising vocal anger. Relative to controls, they displayed enhanced N100 and attenuated P300 components to vocal anger. The P300 effect was reduced, but remained significant, after controlling for N100 effects by rebaselining. Only the N100 effect was significant when children with ADHD and comorbid conduct disorder (n = 10) were excluded. This study provides the first evidence linking ADHD to atypical neural activity during the early perceptual stages of vocal anger processing. These effects may reflect preattentive hyper-vigilance to vocal anger in ADHD. © 2014 Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health.

  9. Revealing the neural networks associated with processing of natural social interaction and the related effects of actor-orientation and face-visibility.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Saggar, Manish; Shelly, Elizabeth Walter; Lepage, Jean-Francois; Hoeft, Fumiko; Reiss, Allan L

    2014-01-01

    Understanding the intentions and desires of those around us is vital for adapting to a dynamic social environment. In this paper, a novel event-related functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) paradigm with dynamic and natural stimuli (2s video clips) was developed to directly examine the neural networks associated with processing of gestures with social intent as compared to nonsocial intent. When comparing social to nonsocial gestures, increased activation in both the mentalizing (or theory of mind) and amygdala networks was found. As a secondary aim, a factor of actor-orientation was included in the paradigm to examine how the neural mechanisms differ with respect to personal engagement during a social interaction versus passively observing an interaction. Activity in the lateral occipital cortex and precentral gyrus was found sensitive to actor-orientation during social interactions. Lastly, by manipulating face-visibility we tested whether facial information alone is the primary driver of neural activation differences observed between social and nonsocial gestures. We discovered that activity in the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) and fusiform gyrus (FFG) was partially driven by observing facial expressions during social gestures. Altogether, using multiple factors associated with processing of natural social interaction, we conceptually advance our understanding of how social stimuli is processed in the brain and discuss the application of this paradigm to clinical populations where atypical social cognition is manifested as a key symptom. © 2013.

  10. Revealing the neural networks associated with processing of natural social interaction and the related effects of actor-orientation and face-visibility

    Science.gov (United States)

    Saggar, Manish; Shelly, Elizabeth Walter; Lepage, Jean-Francois; Hoeft, Fumiko; Reiss, Allan L.

    2013-01-01

    Understanding the intentions and desires of those around us is vital for adapting to a dynamic social environment. In this paper, a novel event-related functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) paradigm with dynamic and natural stimuli (2s video clips) was developed to directly examine the neural networks associated with processing of gestures with social intent as compared to nonsocial intent. When comparing social to nonsocial gestures, increased activation in both the mentalizing (or theory of mind) and amygdala networks were found. As a secondary aim, a factor of actor-orientation was included in the paradigm to examine how the neural mechanisms differ with respect to personal engagement during a social interaction versus passively observing an interaction. Activity in the lateral occipital cortex and precentral gyrus were found sensitive to actor-orientation during social interactions. Lastly, by manipulating face-visibility we tested whether facial information alone is the primary driver of neural activation differences observed between social and nonsocial gestures. We discovered that activity in the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) and fusiform gyrus (FFG) were partially driven by observing facial expressions during social gestures. Altogether, using multiple factors associated with processing of natural social interaction, we conceptually advance our understanding of how social stimuli is processed in the brain and discuss the application of this paradigm to clinical populations where atypical social cognition is manifested as a key symptom. PMID:24084068

  11. Meditation reduces pain-related neural activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, insula, secondary somatosensory cortex, and thalamus

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nakata, Hiroki; Sakamoto, Kiwako; Kakigi, Ryusuke

    2014-01-01

    Recent studies have shown that meditation inhibits or relieves pain perception. To clarify the underlying mechanisms for this phenomenon, neuroimaging methods, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging, and neurophysiological methods, such as magnetoencephalography and electroencephalography, have been used. However, it has been difficult to interpret the results, because there is some paradoxical evidence. For example, some studies reported increased neural responses to pain stimulation during meditation in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and insula, whereas others showed a decrease in these regions. There have been inconsistent findings to date. Moreover, in general, since the activities of the ACC and insula are correlated with pain perception, the increase in neural activities during meditation would be related to the enhancement of pain perception rather than its reduction. These contradictions might directly contribute to the ‘mystery of meditation.’ In this review, we presented previous findings for brain regions during meditation and the anatomical changes that occurred in the brain with long-term meditation training. We then discussed the findings of previous studies that examined pain-related neural activity during meditation. We also described the brain mechanisms responsible for pain relief during meditation, and possible reasons for paradoxical evidence among previous studies. By thoroughly overviewing previous findings, we hypothesized that meditation reduces pain-related neural activity in the ACC, insula, secondary somatosensory cortex, and thalamus. We suggest that the characteristics of the modulation of this activity may depend on the kind of meditation and/or number of years of experience of meditation, which were associated with paradoxical findings among previous studies that investigated pain-related neural activities during meditation. PMID:25566158

  12. Adolescent girls' neural response to reward mediates the relation between childhood financial disadvantage and depression.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Romens, Sarah E; Casement, Melynda D; McAloon, Rose; Keenan, Kate; Hipwell, Alison E; Guyer, Amanda E; Forbes, Erika E

    2015-11-01

    Children who experience socioeconomic disadvantage are at heightened risk for developing depression; however, little is known about neurobiological mechanisms underlying this association. Low socioeconomic status (SES) during childhood may confer risk for depression through its stress-related effects on the neural circuitry associated with processing monetary rewards. In a prospective study, we examined the relationships among the number of years of household receipt of public assistance from age 5-16 years, neural activation during monetary reward anticipation and receipt at age 16, and depression symptoms at age 16 in 123 girls. Number of years of household receipt of public assistance was positively associated with heightened response in the medial prefrontal cortex during reward anticipation, and this heightened neural response mediated the relationship between socioeconomic disadvantage and current depression symptoms, controlling for past depression. Chronic exposure to socioeconomic disadvantage in childhood may alter neural circuitry involved in reward anticipation in adolescence, which in turn may confer risk for depression. © 2015 Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health.

  13. Test-retest reliability of infant event related potentials evoked by faces.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Munsters, N M; van Ravenswaaij, H; van den Boomen, C; Kemner, C

    2017-04-05

    Reliable measures are required to draw meaningful conclusions regarding developmental changes in longitudinal studies. Little is known, however, about the test-retest reliability of face-sensitive event related potentials (ERPs), a frequently used neural measure in infants. The aim of the current study is to investigate the test-retest reliability of ERPs typically evoked by faces in 9-10 month-old infants. The infants (N=31) were presented with neutral, fearful and happy faces that contained only the lower or higher spatial frequency information. They were tested twice within two weeks. The present results show that the test-retest reliability of the face-sensitive ERP components is moderate (P400 and Nc) to substantial (N290). However, there is low test-retest reliability for the effects of the specific experimental manipulations (i.e. emotion and spatial frequency) on the face-sensitive ERPs. To conclude, in infants the face-sensitive ERP components (i.e. N290, P400 and Nc) show adequate test-retest reliability, but not the effects of emotion and spatial frequency on these ERP components. We propose that further research focuses on investigating elements that might increase the test-retest reliability, as adequate test-retest reliability is necessary to draw meaningful conclusions on individual developmental trajectories of the face-sensitive ERPs in infants. Copyright © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

  14. Person perception precedes theory of mind: an event related potential analysis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Y W; Lin, C D; Yuan, B; Huang, L; Zhang, W X; Shen, D L

    2010-09-29

    Prior to developing an understanding of another person's mental state, an ability termed "theory of mind" (ToM), a perception of that person's appearance and actions is required. However the relationship between this "person perception" and ToM is unclear. To investigate the time course of ToM and person perception, event-related potentials (ERP) were recorded while 17 normal adults received three kinds of visual stimuli: cartoons involving people (person perception cartoons), cartoons involving people and also requiring ToM for comprehension (ToM cartoons), and scene cartoons. We hypothesized that the respective patterns of brain activation would be different under these three stimuli, at different stages in time. Our findings supported this proposal: the peak amplitudes of P200 for scene cartoons were significantly lower than for person perception or ToM cartoons, while there were no significant differences between the latter two for P200. During the 1000-1300 ms epoch, the mean amplitudes of the late positive components (LPC) for person perception were more positive than for scene representation, while the mean amplitudes of the LPC for ToM were more positive than for person perception. The present study provides preliminary evidence of the neural dynamic that underlies the dissociation between person perception and ToM. Copyright 2010 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  15. Adult ADHD and working memory: neural evidence of impaired encoding.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kim, Soyeon; Liu, Zhongxu; Glizer, Daniel; Tannock, Rosemary; Woltering, Steven

    2014-08-01

    To investigate neural and behavioural correlates of visual encoding during a working memory (WM) task in young adults with and without Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). A sample of 30 college students currently meeting a diagnosis of ADHD and 25 typically developing students, matched on age and gender, performed a delayed match-to-sample task with low and high memory load conditions. Dense-array electroencephalography was recorded. Specifically, the P3, an event related potential (ERP) associated with WM, was examined because of its relation with attentional allocation during WM. Task performance (accuracy, reaction time) as well as performance on other neuropsychological tasks of WM was analyzed. Neural differences were found between the groups. Specifically, the P3 amplitude was smaller in the ADHD group compared to the comparison group for both load conditions at parietal-occipital sites. Lower scores on behavioural working memory tasks were suggestive of impaired behavioural WM performance in the ADHD group. Findings from this study provide the first evidence of neural differences in the encoding stage of WM in young adults with ADHD, suggesting ineffective allocation of attentional resources involved in encoding of information in WM. These findings, reflecting alternate neural functioning of WM, may explain some of the difficulties related to WM functioning that college students with ADHD report in their every day cognitive functioning. Copyright © 2013 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

  16. Different timing features in brain processing of core and moral disgust pictures: an event-related potentials study.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Xiangyi Zhang

    Full Text Available Disgust, an emotion motivating withdrawal from offensive stimuli, protects us from the risk of biological pathogens and sociomoral violations. Homogeneity of its two types, namely, core and moral disgust has been under intensive debate. To examine the dynamic relationship between them, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs for core disgust, moral disgust and neutral pictures while participants performed a modified oddball task. ERP analysis revealed that N1 and P2 amplitudes were largest for the core disgust pictures, indicating automatic processing of the core disgust-evoking pictures. N2 amplitudes were higher for pictures evoking moral disgust relative to core disgust and neutral pictures, reflecting a violation of social norms. The core disgust pictures elicited larger P3 and late positive potential (LPP amplitudes in comparison with the moral disgust pictures which, in turn, elicited larger P3 and LPP amplitudes when compared to the neutral pictures. Taken together, these findings indicated that core and moral disgust pictures elicited different neural activities at various stages of information processing, which provided supporting evidence for the heterogeneity of disgust.

  17. Different timing features in brain processing of core and moral disgust pictures: an event-related potentials study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Xiangyi; Guo, Qi; Zhang, Youxue; Lou, Liandi; Ding, Daoqun

    2015-01-01

    Disgust, an emotion motivating withdrawal from offensive stimuli, protects us from the risk of biological pathogens and sociomoral violations. Homogeneity of its two types, namely, core and moral disgust has been under intensive debate. To examine the dynamic relationship between them, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) for core disgust, moral disgust and neutral pictures while participants performed a modified oddball task. ERP analysis revealed that N1 and P2 amplitudes were largest for the core disgust pictures, indicating automatic processing of the core disgust-evoking pictures. N2 amplitudes were higher for pictures evoking moral disgust relative to core disgust and neutral pictures, reflecting a violation of social norms. The core disgust pictures elicited larger P3 and late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes in comparison with the moral disgust pictures which, in turn, elicited larger P3 and LPP amplitudes when compared to the neutral pictures. Taken together, these findings indicated that core and moral disgust pictures elicited different neural activities at various stages of information processing, which provided supporting evidence for the heterogeneity of disgust.

  18. Age-related alterations of brain network underlying the retrieval of emotional autobiographical memories: an fMRI study using independent component analysis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ge, Ruiyang; Fu, Yan; Wang, Dahua; Yao, Li; Long, Zhiying

    2014-01-01

    Normal aging has been shown to modulate the neural underpinnings of autobiographical memory and emotion processing. Moreover, previous researches have suggested that aging produces a "positivity effect" in autobiographical memory. Although a few imaging studies have investigated the neural mechanism of the positivity effect, the neural substrates underlying the positivity effect in emotional autobiographical memory is unclear. To understand the age-related neural changes in emotional autobiographical memory that underlie the positivity effect, the present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study used the independent component analysis (ICA) method to compare brain networks in younger and older adults as they retrieved positive and negative autobiographical events. Compared to their younger counterparts, older adults reported relatively higher positive feelings when retrieving emotional autobiographical events. Imaging data indicated an age-related reversal within the ventromedial prefrontal/anterior cingulate cortex (VMPFC/ACC) and the left amygdala of the brain networks that were engaged in the retrieval of autobiographical events with different valence. The retrieval of negative events compared to positive events induced stronger activity in the VMPFC/ACC and weaker activity in the amygdala for the older adults, whereas the younger adults showed a reversed pattern. Moreover, activity in the VMPFC/ACC within the task-related networks showed a negative correlation with the emotional valence intensity. These results may suggest that the positivity effect in older adults' autobiographical memories is potentially due to age-related changes in controlled emotional processing implemented by the VMPFC/ACC-amygdala circuit.

  19. Age-related alterations of brain network underlying the retrieval of emotional autobiographical memories: An fMRI study using independent component analysis

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ruiyang eGe

    2014-08-01

    Full Text Available Normal aging has been shown to modulate the neural underpinnings of autobiographical memory and emotion processing. Moreover, previous researches have suggested that aging produces a positivity effect in autobiographical memory. Although a few imaging studies have investigated the neural mechanism of the positivity effect, the neural substrates underlying the positivity effect in emotional autobiographical memory is unclear. To understand the age-related neural changes in emotional autobiographical memory that underlie the positivity effect, the present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI study used the independent component analysis (ICA method to compare brain networks in younger and older adults as they retrieved positive and negative autobiographical events. Compared to their younger counterparts, older adults reported relatively higher positive feelings when retrieving emotional autobiographical events. Imaging data indicated an age-related reversal within the ventromedial prefrontal/anterior cingulate cortex (VMPFC/ACC and the left amygdala of the brain networks that were engaged in the retrieval of autobiographical events with different valence. The retrieval of negative events compared to positive events induced stronger activity in the VMPFC/ACC and weaker activity in the amygdala for the older adults, whereas the younger adults showed a reversed pattern. Moreover, activity in the VMPFC/ACC within the task-related networks showed a negative correlation with the emotional valence intensity. These results may suggest that the positivity effect in older adults’ autobiographical memories is potentially due to age-related changes in controlled emotional processing implemented by the VMPFC/ACC-amygdala circuit.

  20. Automated Detection of Obstructive Sleep Apnea Events from a Single-Lead Electrocardiogram Using a Convolutional Neural Network.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Urtnasan, Erdenebayar; Park, Jong-Uk; Joo, Eun-Yeon; Lee, Kyoung-Joung

    2018-04-23

    In this study, we propose a method for the automated detection of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) from a single-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) using a convolutional neural network (CNN). A CNN model was designed with six optimized convolution layers including activation, pooling, and dropout layers. One-dimensional (1D) convolution, rectified linear units (ReLU), and max pooling were applied to the convolution, activation, and pooling layers, respectively. For training and evaluation of the CNN model, a single-lead ECG dataset was collected from 82 subjects with OSA and was divided into training (including data from 63 patients with 34,281 events) and testing (including data from 19 patients with 8571 events) datasets. Using this CNN model, a precision of 0.99%, a recall of 0.99%, and an F 1 -score of 0.99% were attained with the training dataset; these values were all 0.96% when the CNN was applied to the testing dataset. These results show that the proposed CNN model can be used to detect OSA accurately on the basis of a single-lead ECG. Ultimately, this CNN model may be used as a screening tool for those suspected to suffer from OSA.

  1. Event Boundaries in Memory and Cognition.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Radvansky, Gabriel A; Zacks, Jeffrey M

    2017-10-01

    Research on event cognition is rapidly developing and is revealing fundamental aspects of human cognition. In this paper, we review recent and current work that is driving this field forward. We first outline the Event Horizon Model, which broadly describes the impact of event boundaries on cognition and memory. Then, we address recent work on event segmentation, the role of event cognition in working memory and long-term memory, including event model updating, and long term retention. Throughout we also consider how event cognition varies across individuals and groups of people and consider the neural mechanisms involved.

  2. Anomaly detection in an automated safeguards system using neural networks

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Whiteson, R.; Howell, J.A.

    1992-01-01

    An automated safeguards system must be able to detect an anomalous event, identify the nature of the event, and recommend a corrective action. Neural networks represent a new way of thinking about basic computational mechanisms for intelligent information processing. In this paper, we discuss the issues involved in applying a neural network model to the first step of this process: anomaly detection in materials accounting systems. We extend our previous model to a 3-tank problem and compare different neural network architectures and algorithms. We evaluate the computational difficulties in training neural networks and explore how certain design principles affect the problems. The issues involved in building a neural network architecture include how the information flows, how the network is trained, how the neurons in a network are connected, how the neurons process information, and how the connections between neurons are modified. Our approach is based on the demonstrated ability of neural networks to model complex, nonlinear, real-time processes. By modeling the normal behavior of the processes, we can predict how a system should be behaving and, therefore, detect when an abnormality occurs

  3. Individual Differences in Neural Mechanisms of Selective Auditory Attention in Preschoolers from Lower Socioeconomic Status Backgrounds: An Event-Related Potentials Study

    Science.gov (United States)

    Isbell, Elif; Wray, Amanda Hampton; Neville, Helen J.

    2016-01-01

    Selective attention, the ability to enhance the processing of particular input while suppressing the information from other concurrent sources, has been postulated to be a foundational skill for learning and academic achievement. The neural mechanisms of this foundational ability are both vulnerable and enhanceable in children from lower…

  4. The Temptation of Zero Price: Event-Related Potentials Evidence of How Price Framing Influences the Purchase of Bundles

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Haiying Ma

    2018-04-01

    Full Text Available Studies have revealed that consumers are susceptible to price framing effect, a common cognitive bias, due to their limited capacity in processing information. The effect of price framing in a bundling context and its neural correlates, however, remain not clearly characterized. The present study applied the event-related potentials (ERPs approach to investigate the role of price framing in information processing and purchase decision making in a bundling context. Three price frames were created with practically identical total prices (with a maximum difference of ¥0.1, which was about equal to 0.016 US dollars for a bundle with two components, a focal product and a tie-in product. In normal price condition (NP, both the focal and tie-in products were offered at a normal discounted price; in zero price condition (ZP, the tie-in product was offered free while the total price of the bundle remained the same as NP; whereas in low price condition (LP, the tie-in product was offered at a low token price (¥0.1, and the focal product shared the same price as the focal product of ZP. The behavioral results showed a higher purchase rate and a shorter reaction time for ZP in contrast to NP. Neurophysiologically, enlarged LPP amplitude was elicited by ZP relative to NP, suggesting that ZP triggered a stronger positive affect that could motivate decision to buy. Thus, this study provides both behavioral and neural evidence for how different price framing information is processed and ultimately gives rise to price framing effect in purchase decision making.

  5. The Temptation of Zero Price: Event-Related Potentials Evidence of How Price Framing Influences the Purchase of Bundles.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ma, Haiying; Mo, Zan; Zhang, Huijun; Wang, Cuicui; Fu, Huijian

    2018-01-01

    Studies have revealed that consumers are susceptible to price framing effect, a common cognitive bias, due to their limited capacity in processing information. The effect of price framing in a bundling context and its neural correlates, however, remain not clearly characterized. The present study applied the event-related potentials (ERPs) approach to investigate the role of price framing in information processing and purchase decision making in a bundling context. Three price frames were created with practically identical total prices (with a maximum difference of ¥0.1, which was about equal to 0.016 US dollars) for a bundle with two components, a focal product and a tie-in product. In normal price condition (NP), both the focal and tie-in products were offered at a normal discounted price; in zero price condition (ZP), the tie-in product was offered free while the total price of the bundle remained the same as NP; whereas in low price condition (LP), the tie-in product was offered at a low token price (¥0.1), and the focal product shared the same price as the focal product of ZP. The behavioral results showed a higher purchase rate and a shorter reaction time for ZP in contrast to NP. Neurophysiologically, enlarged LPP amplitude was elicited by ZP relative to NP, suggesting that ZP triggered a stronger positive affect that could motivate decision to buy. Thus, this study provides both behavioral and neural evidence for how different price framing information is processed and ultimately gives rise to price framing effect in purchase decision making.

  6. The Temptation of Zero Price: Event-Related Potentials Evidence of How Price Framing Influences the Purchase of Bundles

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ma, Haiying; Mo, Zan; Zhang, Huijun; Wang, Cuicui; Fu, Huijian

    2018-01-01

    Studies have revealed that consumers are susceptible to price framing effect, a common cognitive bias, due to their limited capacity in processing information. The effect of price framing in a bundling context and its neural correlates, however, remain not clearly characterized. The present study applied the event-related potentials (ERPs) approach to investigate the role of price framing in information processing and purchase decision making in a bundling context. Three price frames were created with practically identical total prices (with a maximum difference of ¥0.1, which was about equal to 0.016 US dollars) for a bundle with two components, a focal product and a tie-in product. In normal price condition (NP), both the focal and tie-in products were offered at a normal discounted price; in zero price condition (ZP), the tie-in product was offered free while the total price of the bundle remained the same as NP; whereas in low price condition (LP), the tie-in product was offered at a low token price (¥0.1), and the focal product shared the same price as the focal product of ZP. The behavioral results showed a higher purchase rate and a shorter reaction time for ZP in contrast to NP. Neurophysiologically, enlarged LPP amplitude was elicited by ZP relative to NP, suggesting that ZP triggered a stronger positive affect that could motivate decision to buy. Thus, this study provides both behavioral and neural evidence for how different price framing information is processed and ultimately gives rise to price framing effect in purchase decision making. PMID:29731705

  7. Chaotic diagonal recurrent neural network

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Wang Xing-Yuan; Zhang Yi

    2012-01-01

    We propose a novel neural network based on a diagonal recurrent neural network and chaos, and its structure and learning algorithm are designed. The multilayer feedforward neural network, diagonal recurrent neural network, and chaotic diagonal recurrent neural network are used to approach the cubic symmetry map. The simulation results show that the approximation capability of the chaotic diagonal recurrent neural network is better than the other two neural networks. (interdisciplinary physics and related areas of science and technology)

  8. Selection of variables for neural network analysis. Comparisons of several methods with high energy physics data

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Proriol, J.

    1994-01-01

    Five different methods are compared for selecting the most important variables with a view to classifying high energy physics events with neural networks. The different methods are: the F-test, Principal Component Analysis (PCA), a decision tree method: CART, weight evaluation, and Optimal Cell Damage (OCD). The neural networks use the variables selected with the different methods. We compare the percentages of events properly classified by each neural network. The learning set and the test set are the same for all the neural networks. (author)

  9. Why all the confusion? Experimental task explains discrepant semantic priming effects in schizophrenia under "automatic" conditions: evidence from Event-Related Potentials.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kreher, Donna A; Goff, Donald; Kuperberg, Gina R

    2009-06-01

    The schizophrenia research literature contains many differing accounts of semantic memory function in schizophrenia as assessed through the semantic priming paradigm. Most recently, Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) have been used to demonstrate both increased and decreased semantic priming at a neural level in schizophrenia patients, relative to healthy controls. The present study used ERPs to investigate the role of behavioral task in determining neural semantic priming effects in schizophrenia. The same schizophrenia patients and healthy controls completed two experiments in which word stimuli were identical, and the time between the onset of prime and target remained constant at 350 ms: in the first, participants monitored for words within a particular semantic category that appeared only in filler items (implicit task); in the second, participants explicitly rated the relatedness of word-pairs (explicit task). In the explicit task, schizophrenia patients showed reduced direct and indirect semantic priming in comparison with healthy controls. In contrast, in the implicit task, schizophrenia patients showed normal or, in positively thought-disordered patients, increased direct and indirect N400 priming effects compared with healthy controls. These data confirm that, although schizophrenia patients with positive thought disorder may show an abnormally increased automatic spreading activation, the introduction of semantic decision-making can result in abnormally reduced semantic priming in schizophrenia, even when other experimental conditions bias toward automatic processing.

  10. Impact parameter determination for 40Ca + 40Ca reactions using a neural network

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Haddad, F.; Hagel, K.; Li, J.; Mdeiwayeh, N.; Natowitz, J.B.; Wada, R.; Xiao, B.; David, C.; Freslier, M.; Aichelin, J.

    1995-01-01

    A neural network is used for the impact parameter determination in 40 Ca + 40 Ca reactions at energies between 35 and 70 AMeV. A special attention is devoted to the effect of experimental constraints such as the detection efficiency. An overall improvement of the impact parameter determination of 25% is obtained with the neural network. The neural network technique is then used in the analysis of the Ca+Ca data at 35 AMeV and allows separation of three different class of events among the selected 'complete' events. (authors). 8 refs., 5 figs

  11. The neural cell adhesion molecule

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Berezin, V; Bock, E; Poulsen, F M

    2000-01-01

    During the past year, the understanding of the structure and function of neural cell adhesion has advanced considerably. The three-dimensional structures of several of the individual modules of the neural cell adhesion molecule (NCAM) have been determined, as well as the structure of the complex...... between two identical fragments of the NCAM. Also during the past year, a link between homophilic cell adhesion and several signal transduction pathways has been proposed, connecting the event of cell surface adhesion to cellular responses such as neurite outgrowth. Finally, the stimulation of neurite...

  12. Handedness is related to neural mechanisms underlying hemispheric lateralization of face processing

    Science.gov (United States)

    Frässle, Stefan; Krach, Sören; Paulus, Frieder Michel; Jansen, Andreas

    2016-06-01

    While the right-hemispheric lateralization of the face perception network is well established, recent evidence suggests that handedness affects the cerebral lateralization of face processing at the hierarchical level of the fusiform face area (FFA). However, the neural mechanisms underlying differential hemispheric lateralization of face perception in right- and left-handers are largely unknown. Using dynamic causal modeling (DCM) for fMRI, we aimed to unravel the putative processes that mediate handedness-related differences by investigating the effective connectivity in the bilateral core face perception network. Our results reveal an enhanced recruitment of the left FFA in left-handers compared to right-handers, as evidenced by more pronounced face-specific modulatory influences on both intra- and interhemispheric connections. As structural and physiological correlates of handedness-related differences in face processing, right- and left-handers varied with regard to their gray matter volume in the left fusiform gyrus and their pupil responses to face stimuli. Overall, these results describe how handedness is related to the lateralization of the core face perception network, and point to different neural mechanisms underlying face processing in right- and left-handers. In a wider context, this demonstrates the entanglement of structurally and functionally remote brain networks, suggesting a broader underlying process regulating brain lateralization.

  13. Neural mechanisms underlying cognitive control of men with lifelong antisocial behavior.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schiffer, Boris; Pawliczek, Christina; Mu Ller, Bernhard; Forsting, Michael; Gizewski, Elke; Leygraf, Norbert; Hodgins, Sheilagh

    2014-04-30

    Results of meta-analyses suggested subtle deficits in cognitive control among antisocial individuals. Because almost all studies focused on children with conduct problems or adult psychopaths, however, little is known about cognitive control mechanisms among the majority of persistent violent offenders who present an antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). The present study aimed to determine whether offenders with ASPD, relative to non-offenders, display dysfunction in the neural mechanisms underlying cognitive control and to assess the extent to which these dysfunctions are associated with psychopathic traits and trait impulsivity. Participants comprised 21 violent offenders and 23 non-offenders who underwent event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging while performing a non-verbal Stroop task. The offenders, relative to the non-offenders, exhibited reduced response time interference and a different pattern of conflict- and error-related activity in brain areas involved in cognitive control, attention, language, and emotion processing, that is, the anterior cingulate, dorsolateral prefrontal, superior temporal and postcentral cortices, putamen, thalamus, and amygdala. Moreover, between-group differences in behavioural and neural responses revealed associations with core features of psychopathy and attentional impulsivity. Thus, the results of the present study confirmed the hypothesis that offenders with ASPD display alterations in the neural mechanisms underlying cognitive control and that those alterations relate, at least in part, to personality characteristics. Copyright © 2014. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd.

  14. Visualization of Spatio-Temporal Relations in Movement Event Using Multi-View

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zheng, K.; Gu, D.; Fang, F.; Wang, Y.; Liu, H.; Zhao, W.; Zhang, M.; Li, Q.

    2017-09-01

    Spatio-temporal relations among movement events extracted from temporally varying trajectory data can provide useful information about the evolution of individual or collective movers, as well as their interactions with their spatial and temporal contexts. However, the pure statistical tools commonly used by analysts pose many difficulties, due to the large number of attributes embedded in multi-scale and multi-semantic trajectory data. The need for models that operate at multiple scales to search for relations at different locations within time and space, as well as intuitively interpret what these relations mean, also presents challenges. Since analysts do not know where or when these relevant spatio-temporal relations might emerge, these models must compute statistical summaries of multiple attributes at different granularities. In this paper, we propose a multi-view approach to visualize the spatio-temporal relations among movement events. We describe a method for visualizing movement events and spatio-temporal relations that uses multiple displays. A visual interface is presented, and the user can interactively select or filter spatial and temporal extents to guide the knowledge discovery process. We also demonstrate how this approach can help analysts to derive and explain the spatio-temporal relations of movement events from taxi trajectory data.

  15. VISUALIZATION OF SPATIO-TEMPORAL RELATIONS IN MOVEMENT EVENT USING MULTI-VIEW

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    K. Zheng

    2017-09-01

    Full Text Available Spatio-temporal relations among movement events extracted from temporally varying trajectory data can provide useful information about the evolution of individual or collective movers, as well as their interactions with their spatial and temporal contexts. However, the pure statistical tools commonly used by analysts pose many difficulties, due to the large number of attributes embedded in multi-scale and multi-semantic trajectory data. The need for models that operate at multiple scales to search for relations at different locations within time and space, as well as intuitively interpret what these relations mean, also presents challenges. Since analysts do not know where or when these relevant spatio-temporal relations might emerge, these models must compute statistical summaries of multiple attributes at different granularities. In this paper, we propose a multi-view approach to visualize the spatio-temporal relations among movement events. We describe a method for visualizing movement events and spatio-temporal relations that uses multiple displays. A visual interface is presented, and the user can interactively select or filter spatial and temporal extents to guide the knowledge discovery process. We also demonstrate how this approach can help analysts to derive and explain the spatio-temporal relations of movement events from taxi trajectory data.

  16. Computational modeling of neural activities for statistical inference

    CERN Document Server

    Kolossa, Antonio

    2016-01-01

    This authored monograph supplies empirical evidence for the Bayesian brain hypothesis by modeling event-related potentials (ERP) of the human electroencephalogram (EEG) during successive trials in cognitive tasks. The employed observer models are useful to compute probability distributions over observable events and hidden states, depending on which are present in the respective tasks. Bayesian model selection is then used to choose the model which best explains the ERP amplitude fluctuations. Thus, this book constitutes a decisive step towards a better understanding of the neural coding and computing of probabilities following Bayesian rules. The target audience primarily comprises research experts in the field of computational neurosciences, but the book may also be beneficial for graduate students who want to specialize in this field. .

  17. Application of artificial neural nets to Shashlik calorimetry

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Bonesini, M.; Paganoni, M.; Terranova, F.

    1997-01-01

    Artificial neural networks (ANN) are powerful tools widely used in high-energy physics to solve track finding and particle identification problems. An entirely new class of application is related to the problem of recovering the information lost during data taking or signal transmission. Good performances can be reached by ANN when the events are described by quite regular patterns. Such a method was used for the DELPHI luminosity monitor (STIC) to recover calorimeter dead channels. A comparison with more traditional techniques is also given. (orig.)

  18. The use of neural networks in the D0 data acquisition system

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Cutts, D.; Hoftun, J.S.; Sornborger, A.; Astur, R.V.; Johnson, C.R.; Zeller, R.T.

    1989-01-01

    We discuss the possible application of algorithms derived from neural networks to the D0 experiment. The D0 data acquisition system is based on a large farm of MicroVAXes, each independently performing real-time event filtering. A new generation of multiport memories in each MicroVAX node will enable special function processors to have direct access to event data. We describe an exploratory study of back propagation neural networks, such as might be configured in the nodes, for more efficient event filtering. 9 refs., 3 figs., 1 tab

  19. Neural networks, D0, and the SSC

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Barter, C.; Cutts, D.; Hoftun, J.S.; Partridge, R.A.; Sornborger, A.T.; Johnson, C.T.; Zeller, R.T.

    1989-01-01

    We outline several exploratory studies involving neural network simulations applied to pattern recognition in high energy physics. We describe the D0 data acquisition system and a natual means by which algorithms derived from neural networks techniques may be incorporated into recently developed hardware associated with the D0 MicroVAX farm nodes. Such applications to the event filtering needed by SSC detectors look interesting. 10 refs., 11 figs

  20. Ventilator-Related Adverse Events: A Taxonomy and Findings From 3 Incident Reporting Systems.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pham, Julius Cuong; Williams, Tamara L; Sparnon, Erin M; Cillie, Tam K; Scharen, Hilda F; Marella, William M

    2016-05-01

    In 2009, researchers from Johns Hopkins University's Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality; public agencies, including the FDA; and private partners, including the Emergency Care Research Institute and the University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC) Safety Intelligence Patient Safety Organization, sought to form a public-private partnership for the promotion of patient safety (P5S) to advance patient safety through voluntary partnerships. The study objective was to test the concept of the P5S to advance our understanding of safety issues related to ventilator events, to develop a common classification system for categorizing adverse events related to mechanical ventilators, and to perform a comparison of adverse events across different adverse event reporting systems. We performed a cross-sectional analysis of ventilator-related adverse events reported in 2012 from the following incident reporting systems: the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority's Patient Safety Reporting System, UHC's Safety Intelligence Patient Safety Organization database, and the FDA's Manufacturer and User Facility Device Experience database. Once each organization had its dataset of ventilator-related adverse events, reviewers read the narrative descriptions of each event and classified it according to the developed common taxonomy. A Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority, FDA, and UHC search provided 252, 274, and 700 relevant reports, respectively. The 3 event types most commonly reported to the UHC and the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority's Patient Safety Reporting System databases were airway/breathing circuit issue, human factor issues, and ventilator malfunction events. The top 3 event types reported to the FDA were ventilator malfunction, power source issue, and alarm failure. Overall, we found that (1) through the development of a common taxonomy, adverse events from 3 reporting systems can be evaluated, (2) the types of events reported in each database were related

  1. Ventilator-Related Adverse Events: A Taxonomy and Findings From 3 Incident Reporting Systems

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pham, Julius Cuong; Williams, Tamara L; Sparnon, Erin M; Cillie, Tam K; Scharen, Hilda F; Marella, William M

    2016-01-01

    BACKGROUND: In 2009, researchers from Johns Hopkins University's Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality; public agencies, including the FDA; and private partners, including the Emergency Care Research Institute and the University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC) Safety Intelligence Patient Safety Organization, sought to form a public-private partnership for the promotion of patient safety (P5S) to advance patient safety through voluntary partnerships. The study objective was to test the concept of the P5S to advance our understanding of safety issues related to ventilator events, to develop a common classification system for categorizing adverse events related to mechanical ventilators, and to perform a comparison of adverse events across different adverse event reporting systems. METHODS: We performed a cross-sectional analysis of ventilator-related adverse events reported in 2012 from the following incident reporting systems: the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority's Patient Safety Reporting System, UHC's Safety Intelligence Patient Safety Organization database, and the FDA's Manufacturer and User Facility Device Experience database. Once each organization had its dataset of ventilator-related adverse events, reviewers read the narrative descriptions of each event and classified it according to the developed common taxonomy. RESULTS: A Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority, FDA, and UHC search provided 252, 274, and 700 relevant reports, respectively. The 3 event types most commonly reported to the UHC and the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority's Patient Safety Reporting System databases were airway/breathing circuit issue, human factor issues, and ventilator malfunction events. The top 3 event types reported to the FDA were ventilator malfunction, power source issue, and alarm failure. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, we found that (1) through the development of a common taxonomy, adverse events from 3 reporting systems can be evaluated, (2) the types of

  2. Event-related fields evoked by vocal response inhibition: a comparison of younger and older adults.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Castro-Meneses, Leidy J; Johnson, Blake W; Sowman, Paul F

    2016-06-01

    The current study examined event-related fields (ERFs) evoked by vocal response inhibition in a stimulus-selective stop-signal task. We compared inhibition-related ERFs across a younger and an older group of adults. Behavioural results revealed that stop-signal reaction times (RTs), go-RTs, ignore-stop RTs and failed stop RTs were longer in the older, relative to the younger group by 38, 123, 149 and 116 ms, respectively. The amplitude of the ERF M2 peak (approximately 200 ms after the stop signal) evoked on successful stop trials was larger compared to that evoked on both failed stop and ignore-stop trials. The M4 peak (approximately 450 ms after stop signal) was of larger amplitude in both successful and failed stops compared to ignore-stop trials. In the older group, the M2, M3 and M4 peaks were smaller in amplitude and peaked later in time (by 24, 50 and 76 ms, respectively). We demonstrate that vocal response inhibition-related ERFs exhibit a similar temporal evolution to those previously described for manual response inhibition: an early peak at 200 ms (i.e. M2) that differentiates successful from failed stopping, and a later peak (i.e. M4) that is consistent with a neural marker of response checking and error processing. Across groups, our data support a more general decline of stimulus processing speed with age.

  3. The impact of emotional involvement on online service buying decisions: an event-related potentials perspective.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhao, Meina; Wang, Jing; Han, Weiwei

    2015-12-02

    When examining a buying process, changes in human brain signals and their event-related potential (ERP) components can be considered a reflection of the consumers' emotions. In this experiment, participants were shown 12 products and related services that were available for purchase. After recording ERP components, we used a questionnaire to measure the individuals' emotional involvement toward the services (i.e. the same services shown in the stimuli) of the 12 products to measure the emotional valence of the services. The emotional ERP components and the late positive potential (LPP) were elicited under the service conditions and distributed over the left frontal regions. We determined that the services may evoke an LPP and that services with a high emotional value may evoke a larger LPP, which suggests that positive emotion may be measured using the LPP amplitude in the left frontal regions. This result helps elucidate whether positive emotions are stimulated during the product-service system decision-making process and helps understand the emotional valences of different services. Our analysis of the emotional motivation of the consumer suggests that the LPP may be useful as an emotional indicator for measuring consumers' evaluation of services that provides a neural view of product-service system buying decisions.

  4. Patient stratification and identification of adverse event correlations in the space of 1190 drug related adverse events

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Roitmann, Eva; Eriksson, Robert; Brunak, Søren

    2014-01-01

    New pharmacovigilance methods are needed as a consequence of the morbidity caused by drugs. We exploit fine-grained drug related adverse event information extracted by text mining from electronic medical records (EMRs) to stratify patients based on their adverse events and to determine adverse...

  5. Shared memories reveal shared structure in neural activity across individuals

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chen, J.; Leong, Y.C.; Honey, C.J.; Yong, C.H.; Norman, K.A.; Hasson, U.

    2016-01-01

    Our lives revolve around sharing experiences and memories with others. When different people recount the same events, how similar are their underlying neural representations? Participants viewed a fifty-minute movie, then verbally described the events during functional MRI, producing unguided detailed descriptions lasting up to forty minutes. As each person spoke, event-specific spatial patterns were reinstated in default-network, medial-temporal, and high-level visual areas. Individual event patterns were both highly discriminable from one another and similar between people, suggesting consistent spatial organization. In many high-order areas, patterns were more similar between people recalling the same event than between recall and perception, indicating systematic reshaping of percept into memory. These results reveal the existence of a common spatial organization for memories in high-level cortical areas, where encoded information is largely abstracted beyond sensory constraints; and that neural patterns during perception are altered systematically across people into shared memory representations for real-life events. PMID:27918531

  6. Shared beliefs enhance shared feelings: religious/irreligious identifications modulate empathic neural responses.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Huang, Siyuan; Han, Shihui

    2014-01-01

    Recent neuroimaging research has revealed stronger empathic neural responses to same-race compared to other-race individuals. Is the in-group favouritism in empathic neural responses specific to race identification or a more general effect of social identification-including those based on religious/irreligious beliefs? The present study investigated whether and how intergroup relationships based on religious/irreligious identifications modulate empathic neural responses to others' pain expressions. We recorded event-related brain potentials from Chinese Christian and atheist participants while they perceived pain or neutral expressions of Chinese faces that were marked as being Christians or atheists. We found that both Christian and atheist participants showed stronger neural activity to pain (versus neutral) expressions at 132-168 ms and 200-320 ms over the frontal region to those with the same (versus different) religious/irreligious beliefs. The in-group favouritism in empathic neural responses was also evident in a later time window (412-612 ms) over the central/parietal regions in Christian but not in atheist participants. Our results indicate that the intergroup relationship based on shared beliefs, either religious or irreligious, can lead to in-group favouritism in empathy for others' suffering.

  7. Neural Networks

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Schwindling Jerome

    2010-04-01

    Full Text Available This course presents an overview of the concepts of the neural networks and their aplication in the framework of High energy physics analyses. After a brief introduction on the concept of neural networks, the concept is explained in the frame of neuro-biology, introducing the concept of multi-layer perceptron, learning and their use as data classifer. The concept is then presented in a second part using in more details the mathematical approach focussing on typical use cases faced in particle physics. Finally, the last part presents the best way to use such statistical tools in view of event classifers, putting the emphasis on the setup of the multi-layer perceptron. The full article (15 p. corresponding to this lecture is written in french and is provided in the proceedings of the book SOS 2008.

  8. Combining neural networks and genetic algorithms for hydrological flow forecasting

    Science.gov (United States)

    Neruda, Roman; Srejber, Jan; Neruda, Martin; Pascenko, Petr

    2010-05-01

    We present a neural network approach to rainfall-runoff modeling for small size river basins based on several time series of hourly measured data. Different neural networks are considered for short time runoff predictions (from one to six hours lead time) based on runoff and rainfall data observed in previous time steps. Correlation analysis shows that runoff data, short time rainfall history, and aggregated API values are the most significant data for the prediction. Neural models of multilayer perceptron and radial basis function networks with different numbers of units are used and compared with more traditional linear time series predictors. Out of possible 48 hours of relevant history of all the input variables, the most important ones are selected by means of input filters created by a genetic algorithm. The genetic algorithm works with population of binary encoded vectors defining input selection patterns. Standard genetic operators of two-point crossover, random bit-flipping mutation, and tournament selection were used. The evaluation of objective function of each individual consists of several rounds of building and testing a particular neural network model. The whole procedure is rather computational exacting (taking hours to days on a desktop PC), thus a high-performance mainframe computer has been used for our experiments. Results based on two years worth data from the Ploucnice river in Northern Bohemia suggest that main problems connected with this approach to modeling are ovetraining that can lead to poor generalization, and relatively small number of extreme events which makes it difficult for a model to predict the amplitude of the event. Thus, experiments with both absolute and relative runoff predictions were carried out. In general it can be concluded that the neural models show about 5 per cent improvement in terms of efficiency coefficient over liner models. Multilayer perceptrons with one hidden layer trained by back propagation algorithm and

  9. Neural bases of ingroup altruistic motivation in soccer fans.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bortolini, Tiago; Bado, Patrícia; Hoefle, Sebastian; Engel, Annerose; Zahn, Roland; de Oliveira Souza, Ricardo; Dreher, Jean-Claude; Moll, Jorge

    2017-11-23

    Humans have a strong need to belong to social groups and a natural inclination to benefit ingroup members. Although the psychological mechanisms behind human prosociality have extensively been studied, the specific neural systems bridging group belongingness and altruistic motivation remain to be identified. Here, we used soccer fandom as an ecological framing of group membership to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying ingroup altruistic behaviour in male fans using event-related functional magnetic resonance. We designed an effort measure based on handgrip strength to assess the motivation to earn money (i) for oneself, (ii) for anonymous ingroup fans, or (iii) for a neutral group of anonymous non-fans. While overlapping valuation signals in the medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC) were observed for the three conditions, the subgenual cingulate cortex (SCC) exhibited increased functional connectivity with the mOFC as well as stronger hemodynamic responses for ingroup versus outgroup decisions. These findings indicate a key role for the SCC, a region previously implicated in altruistic decisions and group affiliation, in dovetailing altruistic motivations with neural valuation systems in real-life ingroup behaviour.

  10. Identifying Tmem59 related gene regulatory network of mouse neural stem cell from a compendium of expression profiles

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Guo Xiuyun

    2011-09-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Neural stem cells offer potential treatment for neurodegenerative disorders, such like Alzheimer's disease (AD. While much progress has been made in understanding neural stem cell function, a precise description of the molecular mechanisms regulating neural stem cells is not yet established. This lack of knowledge is a major barrier holding back the discovery of therapeutic uses of neural stem cells. In this paper, the regulatory mechanism of mouse neural stem cell (NSC differentiation by tmem59 is explored on the genome-level. Results We identified regulators of tmem59 during the differentiation of mouse NSCs from a compendium of expression profiles. Based on the microarray experiment, we developed the parallelized SWNI algorithm to reconstruct gene regulatory networks of mouse neural stem cells. From the inferred tmem59 related gene network including 36 genes, pou6f1 was identified to regulate tmem59 significantly and might play an important role in the differentiation of NSCs in mouse brain. There are four pathways shown in the gene network, indicating that tmem59 locates in the downstream of the signalling pathway. The real-time RT-PCR results shown that the over-expression of pou6f1 could significantly up-regulate tmem59 expression in C17.2 NSC line. 16 out of 36 predicted genes in our constructed network have been reported to be AD-related, including Ace, aqp1, arrdc3, cd14, cd59a, cds1, cldn1, cox8b, defb11, folr1, gdi2, mmp3, mgp, myrip, Ripk4, rnd3, and sncg. The localization of tmem59 related genes and functional-related gene groups based on the Gene Ontology (GO annotation was also identified. Conclusions Our findings suggest that the expression of tmem59 is an important factor contributing to AD. The parallelized SWNI algorithm increased the efficiency of network reconstruction significantly. This study enables us to highlight novel genes that may be involved in NSC differentiation and provides a shortcut to

  11. From mind to mouth: event related potentials of sentence production in classic galactosemia.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Inge Timmers

    Full Text Available Patients with classic galactosemia, an inborn error of metabolism, have speech and language production impairments. Past research primarily focused on speech (motor problems, but these cannot solely explain the language impairments. Which specific deficits contribute to the impairments in language production is not yet known. Deficits in semantic and syntactic planning are plausible and require further investigation. In the present study, we examined syntactic encoding while patients and matched controls overtly described scenes of moving objects using either separate words (minimal syntactic planning or sentences (sentence-level syntactic planning. The design of the paradigm also allowed tapping into local noun phrase- and more global sentence-level syntactic planning. Simultaneously, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs. The patients needed more time to prepare and finish the utterances and made more errors. The patient ERPs had a very similar morphology to that of healthy controls, indicating overall comparable neural processing. Most importantly, the ERPs diverged from those of controls in several functionally informative time windows, ranging from very early (90-150 ms post scene onset to relatively late (1820-2020 ms post scene onset. These time windows can be associated with different linguistic encoding stages. The ERP results form the first neuroscientific evidence for language production impairments in patients with galactosemia in lexical and syntactic planning stages, i.e., prior to the linguistic output phase. These findings hence shed new light on the language impairments in this disease.

  12. Developmental Pathway Genes and Neural Plasticity Underlying Emotional Learning and Stress-Related Disorders

    Science.gov (United States)

    Maheau, Marissa E.; Ressler, Kerry J.

    2017-01-01

    The manipulation of neural plasticity as a means of intervening in the onset and progression of stress-related disorders retains its appeal for many researchers, despite our limited success in translating such interventions from the laboratory to the clinic. Given the challenges of identifying individual genetic variants that confer increased risk…

  13. Neural substrates of sexual desire in individuals with problematic hypersexual behavior

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ji-Woo eSeok

    2015-11-01

    Full Text Available Studies on the characteristics of individuals with hypersexual disorder have been accumulating due to increasing concerns about problematic hypersexual behavior (PHB. Currently, relatively little is known about the underlying behavioral and neural mechanisms of sexual desire. Our study aimed to investigate the neural correlates of sexual desire with event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI. Twenty-three individuals with PHB and 22 age-matched healthy controls were scanned while they passively viewed sexual and nonsexual stimuli. The subjects’ levels of sexual desire were assessed in response to each sexual stimulus. Relative to controls, individuals with PHB experienced more frequent and enhanced sexual desire during exposure to sexual stimuli. Greater activation was observed in the caudate nucleus, inferior parietal lobe, dorsal anterior cingulate gyrus, thalamus, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in the PHB group than in the control group. In addition, the hemodynamic patterns in the activated areas differed between the groups. Consistent with the findings of brain imaging studies of substance and behavior addiction, individuals with the behavioral characteristics of PHB and enhanced desire exhibited altered activation in the prefrontal cortex and subcortical regions. In conclusion, our results will help to characterize the behaviors and associated neural mechanisms of individuals with PHB.

  14. Using event related potentials to identify a user's behavioural intention aroused by product form design.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ding, Yi; Guo, Fu; Zhang, Xuefeng; Qu, Qingxing; Liu, Weilin

    2016-07-01

    The capacity of product form to arouse user's behavioural intention plays a decisive role in further user experience, even in purchase decision, while traditional methods rarely give a fully understanding of user experience evoked by product form, especially the feeling of anticipated use of product. Behavioural intention aroused by product form designs has not yet been investigated electrophysiologically. Hence event related potentials (ERPs) were applied to explore the process of behavioural intention when users browsed different smart phone form designs with brand and price not taken into account for mainly studying the brain activity evoked by variety of product forms. Smart phone pictures with different anticipated user experience were displayed with equiprobability randomly. Participants were asked to click the left mouse button when certain picture gave them a feeling of behavioural intention to interact with. The brain signal of each participant was recorded by Curry 7.0. The results show that pictures with an ability to arouse participants' behavioural intention for further experience can evoke enhanced N300 and LPPs (late positive potentials) in central-parietal, parietal and occipital regions. The scalp topography shows that central-parietal, parietal and occipital regions are more activated. The results indicate that the discrepancy of ERPs can reflect the neural activities of behavioural intention formed or not. Moreover, amplitude of ERPs occurred in corresponding brain areas can be used to measure user experience. The exploring of neural correlated with behavioural intention provide an accurate measurement method of user's perception and help marketers to know which product can arouse users' behavioural intention, maybe taken as an evaluating indicator of product design. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd and The Ergonomics Society. All rights reserved.

  15. Seismic signal auto-detecing from different features by using Convolutional Neural Network

    Science.gov (United States)

    Huang, Y.; Zhou, Y.; Yue, H.; Zhou, S.

    2017-12-01

    We try Convolutional Neural Network to detect some features of seismic data and compare their efficience. The features include whether a signal is seismic signal or noise and the arrival time of P and S phase and each feature correspond to a Convolutional Neural Network. We first use traditional STA/LTA to recongnize some events and then use templete matching to find more events as training set for the Neural Network. To make the training set more various, we add some noise to the seismic data and make some synthetic seismic data and noise. The 3-component raw signal and time-frequancy ananlyze are used as the input data for our neural network. Our Training is performed on GPUs to achieve efficient convergence. Our method improved the precision in comparison with STA/LTA and template matching. We will move to recurrent neural network to see if this kind network is better in detect P and S phase.

  16. Relation of obesity to neural activation in response to food commercials.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gearhardt, Ashley N; Yokum, Sonja; Stice, Eric; Harris, Jennifer L; Brownell, Kelly D

    2014-07-01

    Adolescents view thousands of food commercials annually, but the neural response to food advertising and its association with obesity is largely unknown. This study is the first to examine how neural response to food commercials differs from other stimuli (e.g. non-food commercials and television show) and to explore how this response may differ by weight status. The blood oxygen level-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging activation was measured in 30 adolescents ranging from lean to obese in response to food and non-food commercials imbedded in a television show. Adolescents exhibited greater activation in regions implicated in visual processing (e.g. occipital gyrus), attention (e.g. parietal lobes), cognition (e.g. temporal gyrus and posterior cerebellar lobe), movement (e.g. anterior cerebellar cortex), somatosensory response (e.g. postcentral gyrus) and reward [e.g. orbitofrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)] during food commercials. Obese participants exhibited less activation during food relative to non-food commercials in neural regions implicated in visual processing (e.g. cuneus), attention (e.g. posterior cerebellar lobe), reward (e.g. ventromedial prefrontal cortex and ACC) and salience detection (e.g. precuneus). Obese participants did exhibit greater activation in a region implicated in semantic control (e.g. medial temporal gyrus). These findings may inform current policy debates regarding the impact of food advertising to minors. © The Author (2013). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

  17. Frequency-dependent oscillatory neural profiles during imitation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sugata, Hisato; Hirata, Masayuki; Tamura, Yuichi; Onishi, Hisao; Goto, Tetsu; Araki, Toshihiko; Yorifuji, Shiro

    2017-04-10

    Imitation is a complex process that includes higher-order cognitive and motor function. This process requires an observation-execution matching system that transforms an observed action into an identical movement. Although the low-gamma band is thought to reflect higher cognitive processes, no studies have focused on it. Here, we used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to examine the neural oscillatory changes including the low-gamma band during imitation. Twelve healthy, right-handed participants performed a finger task consisting of four conditions (imitation, execution, observation, and rest). During the imitation and execution conditions, significant event-related desynchronizations (ERDs) were observed at the left frontal, central, and parietal MEG sensors in the alpha, beta, and low-gamma bands. Functional connectivity analysis at the sensor level revealed an imitation-related connectivity between a group of frontal sensors and a group of parietal sensors in the low-gamma band. Furthermore, source reconstruction with synthetic aperture magnetometry showed significant ERDs in the low-gamma band in the left sensorimotor area and the middle frontal gyrus (MFG) during the imitation condition when compared with the other three conditions. Our results suggest that the oscillatory neural activities of the low-gamma band at the sensorimotor area and MFG play an important role in the observation-execution matching system related to imitation.

  18. Frequency-dependent oscillatory neural profiles during imitation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sugata, Hisato; Hirata, Masayuki; Tamura, Yuichi; Onishi, Hisao; Goto, Tetsu; Araki, Toshihiko; Yorifuji, Shiro

    2017-01-01

    Imitation is a complex process that includes higher-order cognitive and motor function. This process requires an observation-execution matching system that transforms an observed action into an identical movement. Although the low-gamma band is thought to reflect higher cognitive processes, no studies have focused on it. Here, we used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to examine the neural oscillatory changes including the low-gamma band during imitation. Twelve healthy, right-handed participants performed a finger task consisting of four conditions (imitation, execution, observation, and rest). During the imitation and execution conditions, significant event-related desynchronizations (ERDs) were observed at the left frontal, central, and parietal MEG sensors in the alpha, beta, and low-gamma bands. Functional connectivity analysis at the sensor level revealed an imitation-related connectivity between a group of frontal sensors and a group of parietal sensors in the low-gamma band. Furthermore, source reconstruction with synthetic aperture magnetometry showed significant ERDs in the low-gamma band in the left sensorimotor area and the middle frontal gyrus (MFG) during the imitation condition when compared with the other three conditions. Our results suggest that the oscillatory neural activities of the low-gamma band at the sensorimotor area and MFG play an important role in the observation-execution matching system related to imitation. PMID:28393878

  19. Mouse neuroblastoma cell based model and the effect of epileptic events on calcium oscillations and neural spikes

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kim, Suhwan; Baek, Juyeong; Jung, Unsang; Lee, Sangwon; Jung, Woonggyu; Kim, Jeehyun; Kang, Shinwon

    2013-05-01

    Recently, Mouse neuroblastoma cells are considered as an attractive model for the study of human neurological and prion diseases, and intensively used as a model system in different areas. Among those areas, differentiation of neuro2a (N2A) cells, receptor mediated ion current, and glutamate induced physiological response are actively investigated. The reason for the interest to mouse neuroblastoma N2A cells is that they have a fast growing rate than other cells in neural origin with a few another advantages. This study evaluated the calcium oscillations and neural spikes recording of mouse neuroblastoma N2A cells in an epileptic condition. Based on our observation of neural spikes in mouse N2A cell with our proposed imaging modality, we report that mouse neuroblastoma N2A cells can be an important model related to epileptic activity studies. It is concluded that the mouse neuroblastoma N2A cells produce the epileptic spikes in vitro in the same way as produced by the neurons or the astrocytes. This evidence advocates the increased and strong level of neurotransmitters release by enhancement in free calcium using the 4-aminopyridine which causes the mouse neuroblastoma N2A cells to produce the epileptic spikes and calcium oscillation.

  20. The arithmetic problem size effect in children: an event-related potential study

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Leen eVan Beek

    2014-09-01

    Full Text Available This study used for the first time event-related potentials (ERPs to examine the well-known arithmetic problem size effect in children. The electrophysiological correlates of this problem size effect have been well documented in adults, but such information in children is lacking. In the present study, 22 typically developing 12-year-olds were asked to solve single-digit addition problems of small (sum ≤ 10 and large problem size (sum > 10 and to speak the solution into a voice key while ERPs were recorded. Children displayed similar early and late components compared to previous adult studies on the problem size effect. There was no effect of problem size on the early components P1, N1 and P2. The peak amplitude of the N2 component showed more negative potentials on left and right anterior electrodes for large additions compared to small additions, which might reflect differences in attentional and working memory resources between large and small problems. The mean amplitude of the late positivity component (LPC, which follows the N2, was significantly larger for large than for small additions at right parieto-occipital electrodes, in line with previous adult data. The ERPs of the problem size effect during arithmetic might be a useful neural marker for future studies on fact retrieval impairments in children with mathematical difficulties.

  1. An event-related potential study on memory search for color

    OpenAIRE

    Miyatani, Makoto; Nakao, Takasi; Ohkawa, Kaori; Sanderson, Nicholas S. R.; Takumi, Ken

    2002-01-01

    The present study focused on memory search processes in nonverbal working memory. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while subjects engaged in two memory search tasks. Effects of memory set size on event-related potentials were compared between when memory sets consisted of one or four alphabets and when one to three unvocable color patches composed memory sets. In a letter search task, increase of memory set size caused the enlargement of negativities of ERPs between 250 and 450 m...

  2. Neural circuitry of abdominal pain-related fear learning and reinstatement in irritable bowel syndrome.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Icenhour, A; Langhorst, J; Benson, S; Schlamann, M; Hampel, S; Engler, H; Forsting, M; Elsenbruch, S

    2015-01-01

    Altered pain anticipation likely contributes to disturbed central pain processing in chronic pain conditions like irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), but the learning processes shaping the expectation of pain remain poorly understood. We assessed the neural circuitry mediating the formation, extinction, and reactivation of abdominal pain-related memories in IBS patients compared to healthy controls (HC) in a differential fear conditioning paradigm. During fear acquisition, predictive visual cues (CS(+)) were paired with rectal distensions (US), while control cues (CS(-)) were presented unpaired. During extinction, only CSs were presented. Subsequently, memory reactivation was assessed with a reinstatement procedure involving unexpected USs. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, group differences in neural activation to CS(+) vs CS(-) were analyzed, along with skin conductance responses (SCR), CS valence, CS-US contingency, state anxiety, salivary cortisol, and alpha-amylase activity. The contribution of anxiety symptoms was addressed in covariance analyses. Fear acquisition was altered in IBS, as indicated by more accurate contingency awareness, greater CS-related valence change, and enhanced CS(+)-induced differential activation of prefrontal cortex and amygdala. IBS patients further revealed enhanced differential cingulate activation during extinction and greater differential hippocampal activation during reinstatement. Anxiety affected neural responses during memory formation and reinstatement. Abdominal pain-related fear learning and memory processes are altered in IBS, mediated by amygdala, cingulate cortex, prefrontal areas, and hippocampus. Enhanced reinstatement may contribute to hypervigilance and central pain amplification, especially in anxious patients. Preventing a 'relapse' of learned fear utilizing extinction-based interventions may be a promising treatment goal in IBS. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  3. Introduction to neural networks

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Pavlopoulos, P.

    1996-01-01

    This lecture is a presentation of today's research in neural computation. Neural computation is inspired by knowledge from neuro-science. It draws its methods in large degree from statistical physics and its potential applications lie mainly in computer science and engineering. Neural networks models are algorithms for cognitive tasks, such as learning and optimization, which are based on concepts derived from research into the nature of the brain. The lecture first gives an historical presentation of neural networks development and interest in performing complex tasks. Then, an exhaustive overview of data management and networks computation methods is given: the supervised learning and the associative memory problem, the capacity of networks, the Perceptron networks, the functional link networks, the Madaline (Multiple Adalines) networks, the back-propagation networks, the reduced coulomb energy (RCE) networks, the unsupervised learning and the competitive learning and vector quantization. An example of application in high energy physics is given with the trigger systems and track recognition system (track parametrization, event selection and particle identification) developed for the CPLEAR experiment detectors from the LEAR at CERN. (J.S.). 56 refs., 20 figs., 1 tab., 1 appendix

  4. Identifying cognitive preferences for attractive female faces: an event-related potential experiment using a study-test paradigm.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Yan; Kong, Fanchang; Chen, Hong; Jackson, Todd; Han, Li; Meng, Jing; Yang, Zhou; Gao, Jianguo; Najam ul Hasan, Abbasi

    2011-11-01

    In this experiment, sensitivity to female facial attractiveness was examined by comparing event-related potentials (ERPs) in response to attractive and unattractive female faces within a study-test paradigm. Fourteen heterosexual participants (age range 18-24 years, mean age 21.67 years) were required to judge 84 attractive and 84 unattractive face images as either "attractive" or "unattractive." They were then asked whether they had previously viewed each face in a recognition task in which 50% of the images were novel. Analyses indicated that attractive faces elicited more enhanced ERP amplitudes than did unattractive faces in judgment (N300 and P350-550 msec) and recognition (P160 and N250-400 msec and P400-700 msec) tasks on anterior locations. Moreover, longer reaction times and higher accuracy rate were observed in identifying attractive faces than unattractive faces. In sum, this research identified neural and behavioral bases related to cognitive preferences for judging and recognizing attractive female faces. Explanations for the results are that attractive female faces arouse more intense positive emotions in participants than do unattractive faces, and they also represent reproductive fitness and mating value from the evolutionary perspective. Copyright © 2011 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

  5. Maternal life event stress and congenital anomalies.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Carmichael, S L; Shaw, G M

    2000-01-01

    We used data from a population-based case-control study to explore the relation between certain life events during the periconceptional period and several types of congenital anomalies. We ascertained cases from pregnancies ending in 1987-1989 and randomly selected controls from eligible liveborn infants. In telephone interviews, women reported deaths of anyone close to them. They also reported job losses or separations/divorces, for themselves or anyone close to them. Experiencing at least one stressful event during the periconceptional period was associated with a prevalence odds ratio of 1.4-1.5 for the delivery of infants with conotruncal heart defects, neural tube defects, and isolated cleft lip with or without palate. These associations tended to be restricted to women who were not obese and women with less than or equal to a high school education. This study suggests that women who experience stressful life events around the time of conception or early gestation may be at increased risk of delivering infants with certain congenital anomalies.

  6. Neural Activity during Encoding Predicts False Memories Created by Misinformation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Okado, Yoko; Stark, Craig E. L.

    2005-01-01

    False memories are often demonstrated using the misinformation paradigm, in which a person's recollection of a witnessed event is altered after exposure to misinformation about the event. The neural basis of this phenomenon, however, remains unknown. The authors used fMRI to investigate encoding processes during the viewing of an event and…

  7. Feeling full and being full : how gastric content relates to appetite, food properties and neural activation

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Camps, Guido

    2017-01-01

    Aim: This thesis aimed to further determine how gastric content relates to subjective experiences regarding appetite, how this relation is affected by food properties and whether this is visible in neural activation changes.

    Method: This was studied using

  8. Neurodevelopment of Conflict Adaptation: Evidence From Event-Related Potentials

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Liu, Xiuying; Liu, Tongran; Shangguan, Fangfang

    2018-01-01

    Conflict adaptation is key in how children self-regulate and assert cognitive control in a given situation compared with a previous experience. In the current study, we analyzed event-related potentials (ERPs) to identify age-related differences in conflict adaptation. Participants of different a...... to better assimilate and accommodate potential environmental conflicts. The results may also indicate that the development of conflict adaption is affected by the specific characteristic of the different types of conflict.......Conflict adaptation is key in how children self-regulate and assert cognitive control in a given situation compared with a previous experience. In the current study, we analyzed event-related potentials (ERPs) to identify age-related differences in conflict adaptation. Participants of different...... ages (5-year-old children, 10-year-old children, and adults) were subjected to a stimulus-stimulus (S-S) conflict control task (the flanker task) and a stimulus-response (S-R) conflict control task (the Simon task). The behavioral results revealed that all age groups had reliable conflict adaptation...

  9. Neural correlates of face processing in etiologically-distinct 12-month-old infants at high-risk of autism spectrum disorder

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Maggie W. Guy

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available Neural correlates of face processing were examined in 12-month-olds at high-risk for autism spectrum disorder (ASD, including 21 siblings of children with ASD (ASIBs and 15 infants with fragile X syndrome (FXS, as well as 21 low-risk (LR controls. Event-related potentials were recorded to familiar and novel face and toy stimuli. All infants demonstrated greater N290 amplitude to faces than toys. At the Nc component, LR infants showed greater amplitude to novel stimuli than to their mother’s face and own toy, whereas infants with FXS showed the opposite pattern of responses and ASIBs did not differentiate based on familiarity. These results reflect developing face specialization across high- and low-risk infants and reveal neural patterns that distinguish between groups at high-risk for ASD. Keywords: Event-related potentials, Infancy, Face processing, Autism spectrum disorders

  10. A dynamic neural field model of temporal order judgments.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hecht, Lauren N; Spencer, John P; Vecera, Shaun P

    2015-12-01

    Temporal ordering of events is biased, or influenced, by perceptual organization-figure-ground organization-and by spatial attention. For example, within a region assigned figural status or at an attended location, onset events are processed earlier (Lester, Hecht, & Vecera, 2009; Shore, Spence, & Klein, 2001), and offset events are processed for longer durations (Hecht & Vecera, 2011; Rolke, Ulrich, & Bausenhart, 2006). Here, we present an extension of a dynamic field model of change detection (Johnson, Spencer, Luck, & Schöner, 2009; Johnson, Spencer, & Schöner, 2009) that accounts for both the onset and offset performance for figural and attended regions. The model posits that neural populations processing the figure are more active, resulting in a peak of activation that quickly builds toward a detection threshold when the onset of a target is presented. This same enhanced activation for some neural populations is maintained when a present target is removed, creating delays in the perception of the target's offset. We discuss the broader implications of this model, including insights regarding how neural activation can be generated in response to the disappearance of information. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

  11. Lateralized delay period activity marks the focus of spatial attention in working memory: evidence from somatosensory event-related brain potentials.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Katus, Tobias; Eimer, Martin

    2015-04-29

    The short-term retention of sensory information in working memory (WM) is known to be associated with a sustained enhancement of neural activity. What remains controversial is whether this neural trace indicates the sustained storage of information or the allocation of attention. To evaluate the storage and attention accounts, we examined sustained tactile contralateral delay activity (tCDA component) of the event-related potential. The tCDA manifests over somatosensory cortex contralateral to task-relevant tactile information during stimulus retention. Two tactile sample sets (S1, S2) were presented sequentially, separated by 1.5 s. Each set comprised two stimuli, one per hand. Human participants memorized the location of one task-relevant stimulus per sample set and judged whether one of these locations was stimulated again at memory test. The two relevant pulses were unpredictably located on the same hand (stay trials) or on different hands (shift trials). Initially, tCDA components emerged contralateral to the relevant S1 pulse. Sequential loading of WM enhanced the tCDA after S2 was presented on stay trials. On shift trials, the tCDA's polarity reversed after S2 presentation, resulting in delay activity that was now contralateral to the task-relevant S2 pulse. The disappearance of a lateralized neural trace for the relevant S1 pulse did not impair memory accuracy for this stimulus on shift trials. These results contradict the storage account and suggest that delay period activity indicates the sustained engagement of an attention-based rehearsal mechanism. In conclusion, somatosensory delay period activity marks the current focus of attention in tactile WM. Copyright © 2015 the authors 0270-6474/15/356689-07$15.00/0.

  12. Solving differential equations with unknown constitutive relations as recurrent neural networks

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Hagge, Tobias J.; Stinis, Panagiotis; Yeung, Enoch H.; Tartakovsky, Alexandre M.

    2017-12-08

    We solve a system of ordinary differential equations with an unknown functional form of a sink (reaction rate) term. We assume that the measurements (time series) of state variables are partially available, and use a recurrent neural network to “learn” the reaction rate from this data. This is achieved by including discretized ordinary differential equations as part of a recurrent neural network training problem. We extend TensorFlow’s recurrent neural network architecture to create a simple but scalable and effective solver for the unknown functions, and apply it to a fedbatch bioreactor simulation problem. Use of techniques from recent deep learning literature enables training of functions with behavior manifesting over thousands of time steps. Our networks are structurally similar to recurrent neural networks, but differ in purpose, and require modified training strategies.

  13. Neural representation of face familiarity in an awake chimpanzee

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hirokata Fukushima

    2013-12-01

    Full Text Available Evaluating the familiarity of faces is critical for social animals as it is the basis of individual recognition. In the present study, we examined how face familiarity is reflected in neural activities in our closest living relative, the chimpanzee. Skin-surface event-related brain potentials (ERPs were measured while a fully awake chimpanzee observed photographs of familiar and unfamiliar chimpanzee faces (Experiment 1 and human faces (Experiment 2. The ERPs evoked by chimpanzee faces differentiated unfamiliar individuals from familiar ones around midline areas centered on vertex sites at approximately 200 ms after the stimulus onset. In addition, the ERP response to the image of the subject’s own face did not significantly diverge from those evoked by familiar chimpanzees, suggesting that the subject’s brain at a minimum remembered the image of her own face. The ERPs evoked by human faces were not influenced by the familiarity of target individuals. These results indicate that chimpanzee neural representations are more sensitive to the familiarity of conspecific than allospecific faces.

  14. Purchase decision involvement: Event management segments and related event behavior

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rodney B. Warnick; David C. Bojanic

    2012-01-01

    The goal of this research was to examine the relationships between different levels of event purchase decision involvement (PDI) segments and their respective event behaviors (e.g., expenditures, travel behavior, event consumption and satisfaction). The specific purpose was to answer two major research questions: 1) Can PDI identify different levels or segments of...

  15. Neural differences between intrinsic reasons for doing versus extrinsic reasons for doing: an fMRI study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee, Woogul; Reeve, Johnmarshall; Xue, Yiqun; Xiong, Jinhu

    2012-05-01

    The contemporary neural understanding of motivation is based almost exclusively on the neural mechanisms of incentive motivation. Recognizing this as a limitation, we used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to pursue the viability of expanding the neural understanding of motivation by initiating a pioneering study of intrinsic motivation by scanning participants' neural activity when they decided to act for intrinsic reasons versus when they decided to act for extrinsic reasons. As expected, intrinsic reasons for acting more recruited insular cortex activity while extrinsic reasons for acting more recruited posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) activity. The results demonstrate that engagement decisions based on intrinsic motivation are more determined by weighing the presence of spontaneous self-satisfactions such as interest and enjoyment while engagement decisions based on extrinsic motivation are more determined by weighing socially-acquired stored values as to whether the environmental incentive is attractive enough to warrant action.

  16. Age, intelligence, and event-related brain potentials during late childhood: A longitudinal study.

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Molenaar, P.C.M.; Molen, M.W.; Stauder, J.E.A.

    2003-01-01

    he relation between event-related brain activity, age, and intelligence was studied using a visual oddball task presented longitudinally to girls at 9, 10, and 11 years of age. The event-related brain potential (ERP) components showed typical gradual decrements in latency and amplitude with

  17. THE USE OF NEURAL NETWORK TECHNOLOGY TO MODEL SWIMMING PERFORMANCE

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    António José Silva

    2007-03-01

    Full Text Available The aims of the present study were: to identify the factors which are able to explain the performance in the 200 meters individual medley and 400 meters front crawl events in young swimmers, to model the performance in those events using non-linear mathematic methods through artificial neural networks (multi-layer perceptrons and to assess the neural network models precision to predict the performance. A sample of 138 young swimmers (65 males and 73 females of national level was submitted to a test battery comprising four different domains: kinanthropometric evaluation, dry land functional evaluation (strength and flexibility, swimming functional evaluation (hydrodynamics, hydrostatic and bioenergetics characteristics and swimming technique evaluation. To establish a profile of the young swimmer non-linear combinations between preponderant variables for each gender and swim performance in the 200 meters medley and 400 meters font crawl events were developed. For this purpose a feed forward neural network was used (Multilayer Perceptron with three neurons in a single hidden layer. The prognosis precision of the model (error lower than 0.8% between true and estimated performances is supported by recent evidence. Therefore, we consider that the neural network tool can be a good approach in the resolution of complex problems such as performance modeling and the talent identification in swimming and, possibly, in a wide variety of sports

  18. Hidden Markov event sequence models: toward unsupervised functional MRI brain mapping.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Faisan, Sylvain; Thoraval, Laurent; Armspach, Jean-Paul; Foucher, Jack R; Metz-Lutz, Marie-Noëlle; Heitz, Fabrice

    2005-01-01

    Most methods used in functional MRI (fMRI) brain mapping require restrictive assumptions about the shape and timing of the fMRI signal in activated voxels. Consequently, fMRI data may be partially and misleadingly characterized, leading to suboptimal or invalid inference. To limit these assumptions and to capture the broad range of possible activation patterns, a novel statistical fMRI brain mapping method is proposed. It relies on hidden semi-Markov event sequence models (HSMESMs), a special class of hidden Markov models (HMMs) dedicated to the modeling and analysis of event-based random processes. Activation detection is formulated in terms of time coupling between (1) the observed sequence of hemodynamic response onset (HRO) events detected in the voxel's fMRI signal and (2) the "hidden" sequence of task-induced neural activation onset (NAO) events underlying the HROs. Both event sequences are modeled within a single HSMESM. The resulting brain activation model is trained to automatically detect neural activity embedded in the input fMRI data set under analysis. The data sets considered in this article are threefold: synthetic epoch-related, real epoch-related (auditory lexical processing task), and real event-related (oddball detection task) fMRI data sets. Synthetic data: Activation detection results demonstrate the superiority of the HSMESM mapping method with respect to a standard implementation of the statistical parametric mapping (SPM) approach. They are also very close, sometimes equivalent, to those obtained with an "ideal" implementation of SPM in which the activation patterns synthesized are reused for analysis. The HSMESM method appears clearly insensitive to timing variations of the hemodynamic response and exhibits low sensitivity to fluctuations of its shape (unsustained activation during task). Real epoch-related data: HSMESM activation detection results compete with those obtained with SPM, without requiring any prior definition of the expected

  19. Advances in neural networks computational intelligence for ICT

    CERN Document Server

    Esposito, Anna; Morabito, Francesco; Pasero, Eros

    2016-01-01

    This carefully edited book is putting emphasis on computational and artificial intelligent methods for learning and their relative applications in robotics, embedded systems, and ICT interfaces for psychological and neurological diseases. The book is a follow-up of the scientific workshop on Neural Networks (WIRN 2015) held in Vietri sul Mare, Italy, from the 20th to the 22nd of May 2015. The workshop, at its 27th edition became a traditional scientific event that brought together scientists from many countries, and several scientific disciplines. Each chapter is an extended version of the original contribution presented at the workshop, and together with the reviewers’ peer revisions it also benefits from the live discussion during the presentation. The content of book is organized in the following sections. 1. Introduction, 2. Machine Learning, 3. Artificial Neural Networks: Algorithms and models, 4. Intelligent Cyberphysical and Embedded System, 5. Computational Intelligence Methods for Biomedical ICT in...

  20. Neural pathway in the right hemisphere underlies verbal insight problem solving.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhao, Q; Zhou, Z; Xu, H; Fan, W; Han, L

    2014-01-03

    Verbal insight problem solving means to break mental sets, to select the novel semantic information and to form novel, task-related associations. Although previous studies have identified the brain regions associated with these key processes, the interaction among these regions during insight is still unclear. In the present study, we explored the functional connectivity between the key regions during solving Chinese 'chengyu' riddles by using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging. Results showed that both insight and noninsight solutions activated the bilateral inferior frontal gyri, middle temporal gyri and hippocampi, and these regions constituted a frontal to temporal to hippocampal neural pathway. Compared with noninsight solution, insight solution had a stronger functional connectivity between the inferior frontal gyrus and middle temporal gyrus in the right hemisphere. Our study reveals the neural pathway of information processing during verbal insight problem solving, and supports the right-hemisphere advantage theory of insight. Copyright © 2013 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  1. Semantic reasoning in zero example video event retrieval

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Boer, M.H.T. de; Lu, Y.J.; Zhang, H.; Schutte, K.; Ngo, C.W.; Kraaij, W.

    2017-01-01

    Searching in digital video data for high-level events, such as a parade or a car accident, is challenging when the query is textual and lacks visual example images or videos. Current research in deep neural networks is highly beneficial for the retrieval of high-level events using visual examples,

  2. The effect of encoding manipulation on word-stem cued recall: an event-related potential study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fay, Séverine; Isingrini, Michel; Ragot, Richard; Pouthas, Viviane

    2005-08-01

    The purpose of the present study was to find out whether the neural correlates of explicit retrieval from episodic memory would vary according to conditions at encoding when the words were presented in separate study/test blocks. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants performed a word-stem cued-recall task. Deeply (semantically) studied words were associated with higher levels of recall and faster response times than shallowly (lexically) studied words. Robust ERP old/new effects were observed for each encoding condition. They varied in magnitude, being largest in the semantic condition. As expected, scalp distributions also differed: for deeply studied words, the old/new effect resembled that found in previous ERP studies of word-stem cued-recall tasks (parietal and right frontal effects, between 400-800 and 800-1100 ms post-stimulus), whereas for shallowly studied words, the parietal old/new effect was absent in the latter latency window. These results can be interpreted as reflecting access to different kinds of memory representation depending on the nature of the processing engaged during encoding. Furthermore, differences in the ERPs elicited by new items indicate that subjects adopted different processing strategies in the test blocks following each encoding condition.

  3. Using a neural network in the search for the Higgs boson

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Hultqvist, K.; Jacobsson, R.; Johansson, K.E.

    1995-01-01

    The search for the Standard Model Higgs boson in high energy e + e - collisions requires analysis techniques which efficiently discriminate against the very large background. A classifier based on a feed-forward neural network has been extensively used in a search in the channel where the Higgs boson is produced in association with neutrinos. The method has significantly improved the sensitivity of the search. With a simple preselection based on event topology followed by a neural network we have obtained a combined background rejection factor of more than 29 000 and a selection efficiency for Higgs particle events of 54%, assuming a mass of 55 GeV/c 2 for the Higgs boson. We describe here the details of the analysis with emphasis on the neural network. (orig.)

  4. Proprioceptive event related potentials: gating and task effects

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Arnfred, Sidse M

    2005-01-01

    The integration of proprioception with vision, touch or audition is considered basic to the developmental formation of perceptions, conceptual objects and the creation of cognitive schemes. Thus, mapping of proprioceptive information processing is important in cognitive research. A stimulus...... of a brisk change of weight on a hand held load elicit a proprioceptive evoked potential (PEP). Here this is used to examine early and late information processing related to weight discrimination by event related potentials (ERP)....

  5. Neural Reactivity to Emotional Stimuli Prospectively Predicts the Impact of a Natural Disaster on Psychiatric Symptoms in Children.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kujawa, Autumn; Hajcak, Greg; Danzig, Allison P; Black, Sarah R; Bromet, Evelyn J; Carlson, Gabrielle A; Kotov, Roman; Klein, Daniel N

    2016-09-01

    Natural disasters expose entire communities to stress and trauma, leading to increased risk for psychiatric symptoms. Yet, the majority of exposed individuals are resilient, highlighting the importance of identifying underlying factors that contribute to outcomes. The current study was part of a larger prospective study of children in Long Island, New York (n = 260). At age 9, children viewed unpleasant and pleasant images while the late positive potential (LPP), an event-related potential component that reflects sustained attention toward salient information, was measured. Following the event-related potential assessment, Hurricane Sandy, the second costliest hurricane in United States history, hit the region. Eight weeks after the hurricane, mothers reported on exposure to hurricane-related stress and children's internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Symptoms were reassessed 8 months after the hurricane. The LPP predicted both internalizing and externalizing symptoms after accounting for prehurricane symptomatology and interacted with stress to predict externalizing symptoms. Among children exposed to higher levels of hurricane-related stress, enhanced neural reactivity to unpleasant images predicted greater externalizing symptoms 8 weeks after the disaster, while greater neural reactivity to pleasant images predicted lower externalizing symptoms. Moreover, interactions between the LPP and stress continued to predict externalizing symptoms 8 months after the hurricane. Results indicate that heightened neural reactivity and attention toward unpleasant information, as measured by the LPP, predispose children to psychiatric symptoms when exposed to higher levels of stress related to natural disasters, while greater reactivity to and processing of pleasant information may be a protective factor. Copyright © 2015 Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  6. Estimation of Solar Radiation using Artificial Neural Network

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Slamet Suprayogi

    2004-01-01

    Full Text Available The solar radiation is the most important fator affeccting evapotranspiration, the mechanism of transporting the vapor from the water surface has also a great effect. The main objectives of this study were to investigate the potential of using Artificial Neural Network (ANN to predict solar radiation related to temperature. The three-layer backpropagation were developed, trained, and tested to forecast solar radiation for Ciriung sub Cachment. Result revealed that the ANN were able to well learn the events they were trained to recognize. Moreover, they were capable of effecctively generalize their training by predicting solar radiation for sets unseen cases.

  7. Tagging b quark events in ALEPH with neural networks

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Proriol, J.; Jousset, J.; Guicheney, C.; Falvard, A.; Henrard, P.; Pallin, D.; Perret, P.; Brandl, B.

    1991-01-01

    Comparison of different methods to tag b quark events are presented: multilayered perceptron (MLP), Learning Vector Quantization (LVQ), discriminant analysis, combination of any two of the above methods. The sample events come from the ALEPH Monte Carlo and data, from the 1990 ALEPH runs. (authors) 12 refs., 16 figs., 5 tabs

  8. Hostile attribution biases for relationally provocative situations and event-related potentials.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Godleski, Stephanie A; Ostrov, Jamie M; Houston, Rebecca J; Schlienz, Nicolas J

    2010-04-01

    This exploratory study investigates how hostile attribution biases for relationally provocative situations may be related to neurocognitive processing using the P300 event-related potential. Participants were 112 (45 women) emerging adults enrolled in a large, public university in upstate New York. Participants completed self-report measures on relational aggression and hostile attribution biases and performed an auditory perseveration task to elicit the P300. It was found that hostile attribution biases for relational provocation situations was associated with a larger P300 amplitude above and beyond the role of hostile attribution biases for instrumental situations, relational aggression, and gender. Larger P300 amplitude is interpreted to reflect greater allocation of cognitive resources or enhanced "attending" to salient stimuli. Implications for methodological approaches to studying aggression and hostile attribution biases and for theory are discussed, as well as implications for the fields of developmental psychology and psychopathology. Copyright 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  9. Joint effect of alcohol consumption and educational level on alcohol-related medical events

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Nordahl Christensen, Helene; Diderichsen, Finn; Hvidtfeldt, Ulla Arthur

    2017-01-01

    alcohol consumption at baseline using self-administrated questionnaires. Information on highest attained education 1 year before study entry and hospital and mortality data on alcohol-related medical events were obtained through linkage to nationwide registries. We performed analyses using the Aalen...... may also play a role. We investigated the joint effect of alcohol consumption and educational level on the rate of alcohol-related medical events.Methods: We pooled seven prospective cohorts from Denmark that enrolled 74,278 men and women age 30–70 years (study period, 1981 to 2009). We measured...... additive hazards model.Results: During follow-up (1,085,049 person-years), a total of 1718 alcohol-related events occurred. The joint effect of very high alcohol consumption (>21 [>28] drinks per week in women [men]) and low education on alcohol-related events exceeded the sum of their separate effects...

  10. Event Memory: A Theory of Memory for Laboratory, Autobiographical, and Fictional Events

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rubin, David C.; Umanath, Sharda

    2015-01-01

    An event memory is a mental construction of a scene recalled as a single occurrence. It therefore requires the hippocampus and ventral visual stream needed for all scene construction. The construction need not come with a sense of reliving or be made by a participant in the event, and it can be a summary of occurrences from more than one encoding. The mental construction, or physical rendering, of any scene must be done from a specific location and time; this introduces a ‘self’ located in space and time, which is a necessary, but need not be a sufficient, condition for a sense of reliving. We base our theory on scene construction rather than reliving because this allows the integration of many literatures and because there is more accumulated knowledge about scene construction’s phenomenology, behavior, and neural basis. Event memory differs from episodic memory in that it does not conflate the independent dimensions of whether or not a memory is relived, is about the self, is recalled voluntarily, or is based on a single encoding with whether it is recalled as a single occurrence of a scene. Thus, we argue that event memory provides a clearer contrast to semantic memory, which also can be about the self, be recalled voluntarily, and be from a unique encoding; allows for a more comprehensive dimensional account of the structure of explicit memory; and better accounts for laboratory and real world behavioral and neural results, including those from neuropsychology and neuroimaging, than does episodic memory. PMID:25330330

  11. Event-related brain potential correlates of human auditory sensory memory-trace formation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Haenschel, Corinna; Vernon, David J; Dwivedi, Prabuddh; Gruzelier, John H; Baldeweg, Torsten

    2005-11-09

    The event-related potential (ERP) component mismatch negativity (MMN) is a neural marker of human echoic memory. MMN is elicited by deviant sounds embedded in a stream of frequent standards, reflecting the deviation from an inferred memory trace of the standard stimulus. The strength of this memory trace is thought to be proportional to the number of repetitions of the standard tone, visible as the progressive enhancement of MMN with number of repetitions (MMN memory-trace effect). However, no direct ERP correlates of the formation of echoic memory traces are currently known. This study set out to investigate changes in ERPs to different numbers of repetitions of standards, delivered in a roving-stimulus paradigm in which the frequency of the standard stimulus changed randomly between stimulus trains. Normal healthy volunteers (n = 40) were engaged in two experimental conditions: during passive listening and while actively discriminating changes in tone frequency. As predicted, MMN increased with increasing number of standards. However, this MMN memory-trace effect was caused mainly by enhancement with stimulus repetition of a slow positive wave from 50 to 250 ms poststimulus in the standard ERP, which is termed here "repetition positivity" (RP). This RP was recorded from frontocentral electrodes when participants were passively listening to or actively discriminating changes in tone frequency. RP may represent a human ERP correlate of rapid and stimulus-specific adaptation, a candidate neuronal mechanism underlying sensory memory formation in the auditory cortex.

  12. Target-directed motor imagery of the lower limb enhances event-related desynchronization.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kosuke Kitahara

    Full Text Available Event-related desynchronization/synchronization (ERD/S is an electroencephalogram (EEG feature widely used as control signals for Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs. Nevertheless, the underlying neural mechanisms and functions of ERD/S are largely unknown, thus investigating them is crucial to improve the reliability of ERD/S-based BCIs. This study aimed to identify Motor Imagery (MI conditions that enhance ERD/S. We investigated following three questions: 1 whether target-directed MI affects ERD/S, 2 whether MI with sound imagery affects ERD/S, and 3 whether ERD/S has a body part dependency of MI. Nine participants took part in the experiments of four MI conditions; they were asked to imagine right foot dorsiflexion (F, right foot dorsiflexion and the sound of a bass drum when the sole touched the floor (FS, right leg extension (L, and right leg extension directed toward a soccer ball (LT. Statistical comparison revealed that there were significant differences between conditions L and LT in beta-band ERD and conditions F and L in beta-band ERS. These results suggest that mental rehearsal of target-directed lower limb movement without real sensory stimuli can enhance beta-band ERD; furthermore, MI of foot dorsiflexion induces significantly larger beta-band ERS than that of leg extension. These findings could be exploited for the training of BCIs such as powered prosthetics for disabled person and neurorehabilitation system for stroke patients.

  13. Economic burden related to chemotherapy-related adverse events in patients with metastatic breast cancer in an integrated health care system

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Rashid N

    2016-10-01

    Full Text Available Nazia Rashid,1 Han A Koh,2 Hilda C Baca,3 Kathy J Lin,1 Susan E Malecha,4 Anthony Masaquel5 1Drug Information Services, Kaiser Permanente, Downey, 2Southern California Permanente Medical Group, Kaiser Permanente, Bellflower, 3Pharmacy Analytical Services, Kaiser Permanente, Downey, 4US Medical Affairs, Genetech Inc., San Francisco, 5Health Economics and Outcomes, Genentech Inc., San Francisco, CA, USA Background: Breast cancer is treated with many different modalities, including chemotherapy that can be given as a single agent or in combination. Patients often experience adverse events from chemotherapy during the cycles of treatment which can lead to economic burden.Objective: The objective of this study was to evaluate costs related to chemotherapy-related adverse events in patients with metastatic breast cancer (mBC in an integrated health care delivery system.Methods: Patients with mBC newly initiated on chemotherapy were identified and the first infusion was defined as the index date. Patients were ≥18 years old at time of index date, had at least 6 months of health plan membership and drug eligibility prior to their index date. The chemotherapy adverse events were identified after the index date and during first line of chemotherapy. Episodes of care (EOC were created using healthcare visits. Chart review was conducted to establish whether the adverse events were related to chemotherapy. Costs were calculated for each visit, including medications related to the adverse events, and aggregated to calculate the total EOC cost.Results: A total of 1,682 patients with mBC were identified after applying study criteria; 54% of these patients had one or more adverse events related to chemotherapy. After applying the EOC method, there were a total of 5,475 episodes (4,185 single episodes [76.4%] and 1,290 multiple episodes [23.6%] related to chemotherapy-related adverse events. Within single episodes, hematological (1,387 EOC, 33

  14. Multivariate analysis methods to tag b quark events at LEP/SLC

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Brandl, B.; Falvard, A.; Guicheney, C.; Henrard, P.; Jousset, J.; Proriol, J.

    1992-01-01

    Multivariate analyses are applied to tag Z → bb-bar events at LEP/SLC. They are based on the specific b-event shape caused by the large b-quark mass. Discriminant analyses, classification trees and neural networks are presented and their performances are compared. It is shown that the neural network approach, due to its non-linearity, copes best with the complexity of the problem. As an example for an application of the developed methods the measurement of Γ(Z → bb-bar) is discussed. The usefulness of methods based on the global event shape is limited by the uncertainties introduced by the necessity of event simulation. As solution a double tag method is presented which can be applied to many tasks of LEP/SLC heavy flavour physics. (author) 29 refs.; 6 figs.; 1 tab

  15. Using Active Learning to Identify Health Information Technology Related Patient Safety Events.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fong, Allan; Howe, Jessica L; Adams, Katharine T; Ratwani, Raj M

    2017-01-18

    The widespread adoption of health information technology (HIT) has led to new patient safety hazards that are often difficult to identify. Patient safety event reports, which are self-reported descriptions of safety hazards, provide one view of potential HIT-related safety events. However, identifying HIT-related reports can be challenging as they are often categorized under other more predominate clinical categories. This challenge of identifying HIT-related reports is exacerbated by the increasing number and complexity of reports which pose challenges to human annotators that must manually review reports. In this paper, we apply active learning techniques to support classification of patient safety event reports as HIT-related. We evaluated different strategies and demonstrated a 30% increase in average precision of a confirmatory sampling strategy over a baseline no active learning approach after 10 learning iterations.

  16. Intracerebral Event-related Potentials to Subthreshold Target Stimuli

    Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

    Brázdil, M.; Rektor, I.; Daniel, P.; Dufek, M.; Jurák, Pavel

    2001-01-01

    Roč. 112, č. 4 (2001), s. 650-661 ISSN 1388-2457 R&D Projects: GA ČR GA309/98/0490 Institutional research plan: CEZ:AV0Z2065902 Keywords : event-related potentials * intracerebral recordings * oddball paradigm Subject RIV: FA - Cardiovascular Diseases incl. Cardiotharic Surgery Impact factor: 1.922, year: 2001

  17. The Neural Correlates Underlying Belief Reasoning for Self and for Others: Evidence from ERPs.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jiang, Qin; Wang, Qi; Li, Peng; Li, Hong

    2016-01-01

    Belief reasoning is typical mental state reasoning in theory of mind (ToM). Although previous studies have explored the neural bases of belief reasoning, the neural correlates of belief reasoning for self and for others are rarely addressed. The decoupling mechanism of distinguishing the mental state of others from one's own is essential for ToM processing. To address the electrophysiological bases underlying the decoupling mechanism, the present event-related potential study compared the time course of neural activities associated with belief reasoning for self and for others when the belief belonging to self was consistent or inconsistent with others. Results showed that during a 450-600 ms period, belief reasoning for self elicited a larger late positive component (LPC) than for others when beliefs were inconsistent with each other. The LPC divergence is assumed to reflect the categorization of agencies in ToM processes.

  18. Childhood trauma affects processing of social interactions in borderline personality disorder: An event-related potential study investigating empathy for pain.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Flasbeck, Vera; Enzi, Björn; Brüne, Martin

    2017-06-15

    Patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) have difficulties in empathising with others and show disturbances in social interactions. Using a 'Social Interaction Empathy Task', we found that BPD patients judged neutral and psychologically painful conditions as more painful than healthy subjects. Here, we present the neural correlates underlying these differences in empathy for pain. Female BPD patients and healthy controls completed the 'Social Interaction Empathy Task' during EEG recording. Event-related potentials (ERP) were analysed for an early anterior component and a late latency positivity. Empathic abilities were assessed using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index and early aversive experiences were measured by the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ). ERPs in the patient group matched the behaviour results and correlated with the level of personal distress and CTQ. In addition, ERPs of patients were predicted by childhood maltreatment and stress. Taken together, our findings indicate that the observed behavioural differences between patients with BPD and controls might be due to modulatory effects of empathic abilities on the evaluation of pain-related social stimuli, which are supposed to be based on childhood maltreatment.

  19. Neural events that underlie remembering something that never happened.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gonsalves, B; Paller, K A

    2000-12-01

    We induced people to experience a false-memory illusion by first asking them to visualize common objects when cued with the corresponding word; on some trials, a photograph of the object was presented 1800 ms after the cue word. We then tested their memory for the photographs. Posterior brain potentials in response to words at encoding were more positive if the corresponding object was later falsely remembered as a photograph. Similar brain potentials during the memory test were more positive for true than for false memories. These results implicate visual imagery in the generation of false memories and provide neural correlates of processing differences between true and false memories.

  20. The role of hunger state and dieting history in neural response to food cues: An event-related potential study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Feig, Emily H; Winter, Samantha R; Kounios, John; Erickson, Brian; Berkowitz, Staci A; Lowe, Michael R

    2017-10-01

    A history of dieting to lose weight has been shown to be a robust predictor of future weight gain. A potential factor in propensity towards weight gain is the nature of people's reactions to the abundance of highly palatable food cues in the environment. Event Related Potentials (ERPs) have revealed differences in how the brain processes food cues between obese and normal weight individuals, as well as between restrained and unrestrained eaters. However, comparisons by weight status are not informative regarding whether differences predate or follow weight gain in obese individuals and restrained eating has not consistently been found to predict future weight gain. The present study compared ERP responses to food cues in non-obese historic dieters (HDs) to non-obese never dieters (NDs). HDs showed a blunted N1 component relative to NDs overall, and delayed N1 and P2 components compared to NDs in the hungry state, suggesting that early, perceptual processing of food cues differs between these groups, especially when food-deprived. HDs also showed a more hunger-dependent sustained ERP (LPP) compared to NDs. Future research should test ERP-based food cue responsivity as a mediator between dieting history and future weight gain to better identify those most at risk for weight gain as well as the nature of their vulnerability. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  1. Synthesis on accumulation of putative neurotransmitters by cultured neural crest cells

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Maxwell, G.D.; Sietz, P.D.; Rafford, C.E.

    1982-01-01

    The events mediating the differentiation of embryonic neural crest cells into several types of neurons are incompletely understood. In order to probe one aspect of this differentiation, we have examined the capacity of cultured quail trunk neural crest cells to synthesize, from radioactive precursors, and store several putative neurotransmitter compounds. These neural crest cultures develop the capacity to synthesize and accumulate acetylcholine and the catecholamines norepinephrine and dopamine. In contrast, detectable but relatively little synthesis and accumulation of 5-hydroxytryptamine gamma-aminobutyric acid, or octopamine from the appropriate radiolabeled precursors were observed. The capacity for synthesis and accumulation of radiolabeled acetylcholine and catecholamines is very low or absent at 2 days in vitro. Between 3 and 7 days in vitro, there is a marked rise in both catecholamine and acetylcholine accumulation in the cultures. These findings suggest that, under the particular conditions used in these experiments, the development of neurotransmitter biosynthesis in trunk neural crest cells ijs restricted and resembles, at least partially, the pattern observed in vivo. The development of this capacity to synthesize and store radiolabeled acetylcholine and catecholamines from the appropriate radioactive precursors coincides closely with the development of the activities of the synthetic enzymes choline acetyltransferase and dopamine beta-hydroxylase reported by others

  2. Introducing the event related fixed interval area (ERFIA) multilevel technique: a method to analyze the complete epoch of event-related potentials at single trial level

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Vossen, C.J.; Vossen, H.G.M.; Marcus, M.A.E.; van Os, J.; Lousberg, R.

    2013-01-01

    In analyzing time-locked event-related potentials (ERPs), many studies have focused on specific peaks and their differences between experimental conditions. In theory, each latency point after a stimulus contains potentially meaningful information, regardless of whether it is peak-related. Based on

  3. Grey relational and neural network approach for multi-objective optimization in small scale resistance spot welding of titanium alloy

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Wan, Xiaodong; Wang, Yuanxun; Zhao, Dawei [Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan (China)

    2016-06-15

    The prediction and optimization of weld quality characteristics in small scale resistance spot welding of TC2 titanium alloy were investigated. Grey relational analysis, neural network and genetic algorithm were applied separately. Quality characteristics were selected as nugget diameter, failure load, failure displacement and failure energy. Welding parameters to be optimized were set as electrode force, welding current and welding time. Grey relational analysis was conducted for a rough estimation of the optimum welding parameters. Results showed that welding current played a key role in weld quality improvement. Different back propagation neural network architectures were then arranged to predict multiple quality characteristics. Interaction effects of welding parameters were analyzed with the proposed neural network. Failure load was found more sensitive to the change of welding parameters than nugget diameter. Optimum welding parameters were determined by genetic algorithm. The predicted responses showed good agreement with confirmation experiments.

  4. Recognition Memory in Amnestic-Mild Cognitive Impairment: Insights from Event-Related Potentials

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    David A Wolk

    2013-12-01

    Full Text Available Episodic memory loss is the hallmark cognitive dysfunction associated with Alzheimer’s Disease (AD. Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment (a-MCI frequently represents a transitional stage between normal aging and early AD. A better understanding of the qualitative features of memory loss in a-MCI may have important implications for predicting those most likely to harbor AD-related pathology and for disease monitoring. Dual process models of memory argue that recognition memory is subserved by the dissociable processes of recollection and familiarity. Work studying recognition memory in a-MCI from this perspective has been controversial, particularly with regard to the integrity of familiarity. Event-related potentials (ERPs offer an alternative means for assessing these functions without the associated assumptions of behavioral estimation methods. ERPs were recorded while a-MCI patients and cognitively normal (CN age-matched adults performed a recognition memory task. When retrieval success was measured (hits versus correct rejections in which performance was matched by group, a-MCI patients displayed similar neural correlates to that of the CN group, including modulation of the FN400 and the late parietal complex (LPC which are thought to index familiarity and recollection, respectively. Alternatively, when the integrity of these components were measured based on retrieval attempts (studied versus unstudied items, a-MCI patients displayed a reduced FN400 and LPC. Furthermore, modulation of the FN400 correlated with a behavioral estimate of familiarity and the LPC with a behavioral estimates of recollection obtained in a separate experiment in the same individuals, consistent with the proposed mappings of these indices. These results support a global decline of recognition memory in a-MCI, which suggests that the memory loss of prodromal AD may be qualitatively distinct from normal aging.

  5. Modulation of Hippocampal Neural Plasticity by Glucose-Related Signaling

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Marco Mainardi

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available Hormones and peptides involved in glucose homeostasis are emerging as important modulators of neural plasticity. In this regard, increasing evidence shows that molecules such as insulin, insulin-like growth factor-I, glucagon-like peptide-1, and ghrelin impact on the function of the hippocampus, which is a key area for learning and memory. Indeed, all these factors affect fundamental hippocampal properties including synaptic plasticity (i.e., synapse potentiation and depression, structural plasticity (i.e., dynamics of dendritic spines, and adult neurogenesis, thus leading to modifications in cognitive performance. Here, we review the main mechanisms underlying the effects of glucose metabolism on hippocampal physiology. In particular, we discuss the role of these signals in the modulation of cognitive functions and their potential implications in dysmetabolism-related cognitive decline.

  6. Design of robust reliable control for T-S fuzzy Markovian jumping delayed neutral type neural networks with probabilistic actuator faults and leakage delays: An event-triggered communication scheme.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Syed Ali, M; Vadivel, R; Saravanakumar, R

    2018-06-01

    This study examines the problem of robust reliable control for Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy Markovian jumping delayed neural networks with probabilistic actuator faults and leakage terms. An event-triggered communication scheme. First, the randomly occurring actuator faults and their failures rates are governed by two sets of unrelated random variables satisfying certain probabilistic failures of every actuator, new type of distribution based event triggered fault model is proposed, which utilize the effect of transmission delay. Second, Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy model is adopted for the neural networks and the randomness of actuators failures is modeled in a Markov jump model framework. Third, to guarantee the considered closed-loop system is exponential mean square stable with a prescribed reliable control performance, a Markov jump event-triggered scheme is designed in this paper, which is the main purpose of our study. Fourth, by constructing appropriate Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional, employing Newton-Leibniz formulation and integral inequalities, several delay-dependent criteria for the solvability of the addressed problem are derived. The obtained stability criteria are stated in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs), which can be checked numerically using the effective LMI toolbox in MATLAB. Finally, numerical examples are given to illustrate the effectiveness and reduced conservatism of the proposed results over the existing ones, among them one example was supported by real-life application of the benchmark problem. Copyright © 2018 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  7. Transient Global Amnesia following Neural and Cardiac Angiography May Be Related to Ischemia

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hongzhou Duan

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Introduction. Transient global amnesia (TGA following angiography is rare, and the pathogenesis has not been illustrated clearly till now. The aim of this research is to explore the pathogenesis of TGA following angiography by analyzing our data and reviewing the literature. Methods. We retrospectively studied 20836 cases with angiography in our hospital between 2007 and 2015 and found 9 cases with TGA following angiography. The data of these 9 cases were analyzed. Results. We found all 9 cases with TGA following neural angiography (5 in 4360 or cardiac angiography (4 in 8817 and no case with TGA following peripheral angiography (0 in 7659. Statistical difference was found when comparing the neural and cardiac angiography group with peripheral group (p=0.022. Two cases with TGA were confirmed with small acute infarctions in hippocampus after angiography. This might be related to the microemboli which were rushed into vertebral artery following blood flow during neural angiography or cardiac angiography. There was no statistical difference when comparing the different approaches for angiography (p=0.82 and different contrast agents (p=0.619. Conclusion. Based on the positive findings of imaging study and our analysis, we speculate that ischemia in the medial temporal lobe with the involvement of the hippocampus might be an important reason of TGA following angiography.

  8. Neural mechanisms underlying social conformity in an ultimatum game

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Zhenyu eWei

    2013-12-01

    Full Text Available When individuals’ actions are incongruent with those of the group they belong to, they may change their initial behavior in order to conform to the group norm. This phenomenon is known as social conformity. In the present study, we used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI to investigate brain activity in response to group opinion during an ultimatum game. Results showed that participants changed their choices when these choices conflicted with the normative opinion of the group they were members of, especially in conditions of unfair treatment. The fMRI data revealed that a conflict with group norms activated the brain regions involved in norm violations and behavioral adjustment. Furthermore, in the reject-unfair condition, we observed that a conflict with group norms activated the medial frontal gyrus. These findings contribute to recent research examining neural mechanisms involved in detecting violations of social norms, and provide information regarding the neural representation of conformity behavior in an economic game.

  9. Event centrality in trauma and PTSD: relations between event relevance and posttraumatic symptoms

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Thiago Loreto Garcia da Silva

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Recent investigations propose that cognitive characteristics of autobiographical memory significantly interact with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD. A traumatic event becoming more or less central in a person’s identity and life story might influence development of the disorder. Studies show high correlations between event centrality (EC and PTSD. Participated in this study 68 treatment-seeking individuals referred to a specialized service for suspected trauma-related disorder: 39 matched criteria for PTSD and 29 were exposed to trauma without PTSD. Our aims were to explore how the groups differ regarding EC, depression, anxiety, posttraumatic cognitions, PTSD symptom severity, and peritraumatic dissociative experience; and how distinctively EC interacts with the measures in each group. The PTSD group had higher scores in all variables but dissociation. EC correlated with overall PTSD symptoms only in the PTSD group and with dissociation only in the no-PTSD group. Findings support a model emphasizing the role of memory processes in PTSD. People exposed to trauma who developed PTSD had the memory of the traumatic experience more intensively governing their sense of self and thus eliciting more negative cognitive reactions. As EC facilitates recollection of the traumatic event, it could also mediate a semantization process that reinforces and increases posttraumatic symptoms.

  10. Event Recognition Based on Deep Learning in Chinese Texts.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yajun Zhang

    Full Text Available Event recognition is the most fundamental and critical task in event-based natural language processing systems. Existing event recognition methods based on rules and shallow neural networks have certain limitations. For example, extracting features using methods based on rules is difficult; methods based on shallow neural networks converge too quickly to a local minimum, resulting in low recognition precision. To address these problems, we propose the Chinese emergency event recognition model based on deep learning (CEERM. Firstly, we use a word segmentation system to segment sentences. According to event elements labeled in the CEC 2.0 corpus, we classify words into five categories: trigger words, participants, objects, time and location. Each word is vectorized according to the following six feature layers: part of speech, dependency grammar, length, location, distance between trigger word and core word and trigger word frequency. We obtain deep semantic features of words by training a feature vector set using a deep belief network (DBN, then analyze those features in order to identify trigger words by means of a back propagation neural network. Extensive testing shows that the CEERM achieves excellent recognition performance, with a maximum F-measure value of 85.17%. Moreover, we propose the dynamic-supervised DBN, which adds supervised fine-tuning to a restricted Boltzmann machine layer by monitoring its training performance. Test analysis reveals that the new DBN improves recognition performance and effectively controls the training time. Although the F-measure increases to 88.11%, the training time increases by only 25.35%.

  11. Event Recognition Based on Deep Learning in Chinese Texts.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Yajun; Liu, Zongtian; Zhou, Wen

    2016-01-01

    Event recognition is the most fundamental and critical task in event-based natural language processing systems. Existing event recognition methods based on rules and shallow neural networks have certain limitations. For example, extracting features using methods based on rules is difficult; methods based on shallow neural networks converge too quickly to a local minimum, resulting in low recognition precision. To address these problems, we propose the Chinese emergency event recognition model based on deep learning (CEERM). Firstly, we use a word segmentation system to segment sentences. According to event elements labeled in the CEC 2.0 corpus, we classify words into five categories: trigger words, participants, objects, time and location. Each word is vectorized according to the following six feature layers: part of speech, dependency grammar, length, location, distance between trigger word and core word and trigger word frequency. We obtain deep semantic features of words by training a feature vector set using a deep belief network (DBN), then analyze those features in order to identify trigger words by means of a back propagation neural network. Extensive testing shows that the CEERM achieves excellent recognition performance, with a maximum F-measure value of 85.17%. Moreover, we propose the dynamic-supervised DBN, which adds supervised fine-tuning to a restricted Boltzmann machine layer by monitoring its training performance. Test analysis reveals that the new DBN improves recognition performance and effectively controls the training time. Although the F-measure increases to 88.11%, the training time increases by only 25.35%.

  12. Neural mechanisms regulating different forms of risk-related decision-making: Insights from animal models.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Orsini, Caitlin A; Moorman, David E; Young, Jared W; Setlow, Barry; Floresco, Stan B

    2015-11-01

    Over the past 20 years there has been a growing interest in the neural underpinnings of cost/benefit decision-making. Recent studies with animal models have made considerable advances in our understanding of how different prefrontal, striatal, limbic and monoaminergic circuits interact to promote efficient risk/reward decision-making, and how dysfunction in these circuits underlies aberrant decision-making observed in numerous psychiatric disorders. This review will highlight recent findings from studies exploring these questions using a variety of behavioral assays, as well as molecular, pharmacological, neurophysiological, and translational approaches. We begin with a discussion of how neural systems related to decision subcomponents may interact to generate more complex decisions involving risk and uncertainty. This is followed by an overview of interactions between prefrontal-amygdala-dopamine and habenular circuits in regulating choice between certain and uncertain rewards and how different modes of dopamine transmission may contribute to these processes. These data will be compared with results from other studies investigating the contribution of some of these systems to guiding decision-making related to rewards vs. punishment. Lastly, we provide a brief summary of impairments in risk-related decision-making associated with psychiatric disorders, highlighting recent translational studies in laboratory animals. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  13. Search for supersymmetry in events with opposite-sign dileptons and missing transverse energy using an artificial neural network

    CERN Document Server

    Chatrchyan, Serguei; Sirunyan, Albert M; Tumasyan, Armen; Adam, Wolfgang; Aguilo, Ernest; Bergauer, Thomas; Dragicevic, Marko; Erö, Janos; Fabjan, Christian; Friedl, Markus; Fruehwirth, Rudolf; Ghete, Vasile Mihai; Hörmann, Natascha; Hrubec, Josef; Jeitler, Manfred; Kiesenhofer, Wolfgang; Knünz, Valentin; Krammer, Manfred; Krätschmer, Ilse; Liko, Dietrich; Mikulec, Ivan; Pernicka, Manfred; Rabady, Dinyar; Rahbaran, Babak; Rohringer, Christine; Rohringer, Herbert; Schöfbeck, Robert; Strauss, Josef; Taurok, Anton; Waltenberger, Wolfgang; Wulz, Claudia-Elisabeth; Mossolov, Vladimir; Shumeiko, Nikolai; Suarez Gonzalez, Juan; Bansal, Monika; Bansal, Sunil; Cornelis, Tom; De Wolf, Eddi A; Janssen, Xavier; Luyckx, Sten; Mucibello, Luca; Ochesanu, Silvia; Roland, Benoit; Rougny, Romain; Selvaggi, Michele; Van Haevermaet, Hans; Van Mechelen, Pierre; Van Remortel, Nick; Van Spilbeeck, Alex; Blekman, Freya; Blyweert, Stijn; D'Hondt, Jorgen; Gonzalez Suarez, Rebeca; Kalogeropoulos, Alexis; Maes, Michael; Olbrechts, Annik; Van Doninck, Walter; Van Mulders, Petra; Van Onsem, Gerrit Patrick; Villella, Ilaria; Clerbaux, Barbara; De Lentdecker, Gilles; Dero, Vincent; Gay, Arnaud; Hreus, Tomas; Léonard, Alexandre; Marage, Pierre Edouard; Mohammadi, Abdollah; Reis, Thomas; Thomas, Laurent; Vander Velde, Catherine; Vanlaer, Pascal; Wang, Jian; Adler, Volker; Beernaert, Kelly; Cimmino, Anna; Costantini, Silvia; Garcia, Guillaume; Grunewald, Martin; Klein, Benjamin; Lellouch, Jérémie; Marinov, Andrey; Mccartin, Joseph; Ocampo Rios, Alberto Andres; Ryckbosch, Dirk; Strobbe, Nadja; Thyssen, Filip; Tytgat, Michael; Walsh, Sinead; Yazgan, Efe; Zaganidis, Nicolas; Basegmez, Suzan; Bruno, Giacomo; Castello, Roberto; Ceard, Ludivine; Delaere, Christophe; Du Pree, Tristan; Favart, Denis; Forthomme, Laurent; Giammanco, Andrea; Hollar, Jonathan; Lemaitre, Vincent; Liao, Junhui; Militaru, Otilia; Nuttens, Claude; Pagano, Davide; Pin, Arnaud; Piotrzkowski, Krzysztof; Vizan Garcia, Jesus Manuel; Beliy, Nikita; Caebergs, Thierry; Daubie, Evelyne; Hammad, Gregory Habib; Alves, Gilvan; Correa Martins Junior, Marcos; Martins, Thiago; Pol, Maria Elena; Henrique Gomes E Souza, Moacyr; Aldá Júnior, Walter Luiz; Carvalho, Wagner; Custódio, Analu; Melo Da Costa, Eliza; De Jesus Damiao, Dilson; De Oliveira Martins, Carley; Fonseca De Souza, Sandro; Malbouisson, Helena; Malek, Magdalena; Matos Figueiredo, Diego; Mundim, Luiz; Nogima, Helio; Prado Da Silva, Wanda Lucia; Santoro, Alberto; Soares Jorge, Luana; Sznajder, Andre; Vilela Pereira, Antonio; Souza Dos Anjos, Tiago; Bernardes, Cesar Augusto; De Almeida Dias, Flavia; Tomei, Thiago; De Moraes Gregores, Eduardo; Lagana, Caio; Da Cunha Marinho, Franciole; Mercadante, Pedro G; Novaes, Sergio F; Padula, Sandra; Genchev, Vladimir; Iaydjiev, Plamen; Piperov, Stefan; Rodozov, Mircho; Stoykova, Stefka; Sultanov, Georgi; Tcholakov, Vanio; Trayanov, Rumen; Vutova, Mariana; Dimitrov, Anton; Hadjiiska, Roumyana; Kozhuharov, Venelin; Litov, Leander; Pavlov, Borislav; Petkov, Peicho; Bian, Jian-Guo; Chen, Guo-Ming; Chen, He-Sheng; Jiang, Chun-Hua; Liang, Dong; Liang, Song; Meng, Xiangwei; Tao, Junquan; Wang, Jian; Wang, Xianyou; Wang, Zheng; Xiao, Hong; Xu, Ming; Zang, Jingjing; Zhang, Zhen; Asawatangtrakuldee, Chayanit; Ban, Yong; Guo, Yifei; Li, Wenbo; Liu, Shuai; Mao, Yajun; Qian, Si-Jin; Teng, Haiyun; Wang, Dayong; Zhang, Linlin; Zou, Wei; Avila, Carlos; Gomez, Juan Pablo; Gomez Moreno, Bernardo; Osorio Oliveros, Andres Felipe; Sanabria, Juan Carlos; Godinovic, Nikola; Lelas, Damir; Plestina, Roko; Polic, Dunja; Puljak, Ivica; Antunovic, Zeljko; Kovac, Marko; Brigljevic, Vuko; Duric, Senka; Kadija, Kreso; Luetic, Jelena; Mekterovic, Darko; Morovic, Srecko; Attikis, Alexandros; Galanti, Mario; Mavromanolakis, Georgios; Mousa, Jehad; Nicolaou, Charalambos; Ptochos, Fotios; Razis, Panos A; Finger, Miroslav; Finger Jr, Michael; Assran, Yasser; Elgammal, Sherif; Ellithi Kamel, Ali; Mahmoud, Mohammed; Mahrous, Ayman; Radi, Amr; Kadastik, Mario; Müntel, Mait; Murumaa, Marion; Raidal, Martti; Rebane, Liis; Tiko, Andres; Eerola, Paula; Fedi, Giacomo; Voutilainen, Mikko; Härkönen, Jaakko; Heikkinen, Mika Aatos; Karimäki, Veikko; Kinnunen, Ritva; Kortelainen, Matti J; Lampén, Tapio; Lassila-Perini, Kati; Lehti, Sami; Lindén, Tomas; Luukka, Panja-Riina; Mäenpää, Teppo; Peltola, Timo; Tuominen, Eija; Tuominiemi, Jorma; Tuovinen, Esa; Ungaro, Donatella; Wendland, Lauri; Banzuzi, Kukka; Karjalainen, Ahti; Korpela, Arja; Tuuva, Tuure; Besancon, Marc; Choudhury, Somnath; Dejardin, Marc; Denegri, Daniel; Fabbro, Bernard; Faure, Jean-Louis; Ferri, Federico; Ganjour, Serguei; Givernaud, Alain; Gras, Philippe; Hamel de Monchenault, Gautier; Jarry, Patrick; Locci, Elizabeth; Malcles, Julie; Millischer, Laurent; Nayak, Aruna; Rander, John; Rosowsky, André; Titov, Maksym; Baffioni, Stephanie; Beaudette, Florian; Benhabib, Lamia; Bianchini, Lorenzo; Bluj, Michal; Busson, Philippe; Charlot, Claude; Daci, Nadir; Dahms, Torsten; Dalchenko, Mykhailo; Dobrzynski, Ludwik; Florent, Alice; Granier de Cassagnac, Raphael; Haguenauer, Maurice; Miné, Philippe; Mironov, Camelia; Naranjo, Ivo Nicolas; Nguyen, Matthew; Ochando, Christophe; Paganini, Pascal; Sabes, David; Salerno, Roberto; Sirois, Yves; Veelken, Christian; Zabi, Alexandre; Agram, Jean-Laurent; Andrea, Jeremy; Bloch, Daniel; Bodin, David; Brom, Jean-Marie; Cardaci, Marco; Chabert, Eric Christian; Collard, Caroline; Conte, Eric; Drouhin, Frédéric; Fontaine, Jean-Charles; Gelé, Denis; Goerlach, Ulrich; Juillot, Pierre; Le Bihan, Anne-Catherine; Van Hove, Pierre; Fassi, Farida; Mercier, Damien; Beauceron, Stephanie; Beaupere, Nicolas; Bondu, Olivier; Boudoul, Gaelle; Brochet, Sébastien; Chasserat, Julien; Chierici, Roberto; Contardo, Didier; Depasse, Pierre; El Mamouni, Houmani; Fay, Jean; Gascon, Susan; Gouzevitch, Maxime; Ille, Bernard; Kurca, Tibor; Lethuillier, Morgan; Mirabito, Laurent; Perries, Stephane; Sgandurra, Louis; Sordini, Viola; Tschudi, Yohann; Verdier, Patrice; Viret, Sébastien; Tsamalaidze, Zviad; Autermann, Christian; Beranek, Sarah; Calpas, Betty; Edelhoff, Matthias; Feld, Lutz; Heracleous, Natalie; Hindrichs, Otto; Jussen, Ruediger; Klein, Katja; Merz, Jennifer; Ostapchuk, Andrey; Perieanu, Adrian; Raupach, Frank; Sammet, Jan; Schael, Stefan; Sprenger, Daniel; Weber, Hendrik; Wittmer, Bruno; Zhukov, Valery; Ata, Metin; Caudron, Julien; Dietz-Laursonn, Erik; Duchardt, Deborah; Erdmann, Martin; Fischer, Robert; Güth, Andreas; Hebbeker, Thomas; Heidemann, Carsten; Hoepfner, Kerstin; Klingebiel, Dennis; Kreuzer, Peter; Merschmeyer, Markus; Meyer, Arnd; Olschewski, Mark; Papacz, Paul; Pieta, Holger; Reithler, Hans; Schmitz, Stefan Antonius; Sonnenschein, Lars; Steggemann, Jan; Teyssier, Daniel; Thüer, Sebastian; Weber, Martin; Bontenackels, Michael; Cherepanov, Vladimir; Erdogan, Yusuf; Flügge, Günter; Geenen, Heiko; Geisler, Matthias; Haj Ahmad, Wael; Hoehle, Felix; Kargoll, Bastian; Kress, Thomas; Kuessel, Yvonne; Lingemann, Joschka; Nowack, Andreas; Perchalla, Lars; Pooth, Oliver; Sauerland, Philip; Stahl, Achim; Aldaya Martin, Maria; Behr, Joerg; Behrenhoff, Wolf; Behrens, Ulf; Bergholz, Matthias; Bethani, Agni; Borras, Kerstin; Burgmeier, Armin; Cakir, Altan; Calligaris, Luigi; Campbell, Alan; Castro, Elena; Costanza, Francesco; Dammann, Dirk; Diez Pardos, Carmen; Eckerlin, Guenter; Eckstein, Doris; Flucke, Gero; Geiser, Achim; Glushkov, Ivan; Gunnellini, Paolo; Habib, Shiraz; Hauk, Johannes; Hellwig, Gregor; Jung, Hannes; Kasemann, Matthias; Katsas, Panagiotis; Kleinwort, Claus; Kluge, Hannelies; Knutsson, Albert; Krämer, Mira; Krücker, Dirk; Kuznetsova, Ekaterina; Lange, Wolfgang; Leonard, Jessica; Lohmann, Wolfgang; Lutz, Benjamin; Mankel, Rainer; Marfin, Ihar; Marienfeld, Markus; Melzer-Pellmann, Isabell-Alissandra; Meyer, Andreas Bernhard; Mnich, Joachim; Mussgiller, Andreas; Naumann-Emme, Sebastian; Novgorodova, Olga; Olzem, Jan; Perrey, Hanno; Petrukhin, Alexey; Pitzl, Daniel; Raspereza, Alexei; Ribeiro Cipriano, Pedro M; Riedl, Caroline; Ron, Elias; Rosin, Michele; Salfeld-Nebgen, Jakob; Schmidt, Ringo; Schoerner-Sadenius, Thomas; Sen, Niladri; Spiridonov, Alexander; Stein, Matthias; Walsh, Roberval; Wissing, Christoph; Blobel, Volker; Enderle, Holger; Erfle, Joachim; Gebbert, Ulla; Görner, Martin; Gosselink, Martijn; Haller, Johannes; Hermanns, Thomas; Höing, Rebekka Sophie; Kaschube, Kolja; Kaussen, Gordon; Kirschenmann, Henning; Klanner, Robert; Lange, Jörn; Nowak, Friederike; Peiffer, Thomas; Pietsch, Niklas; Rathjens, Denis; Sander, Christian; Schettler, Hannes; Schleper, Peter; Schlieckau, Eike; Schmidt, Alexander; Schröder, Matthias; Schum, Torben; Seidel, Markus; Sibille, Jennifer; Sola, Valentina; Stadie, Hartmut; Steinbrück, Georg; Thomsen, Jan; Vanelderen, Lukas; Barth, Christian; Berger, Joram; Böser, Christian; Chwalek, Thorsten; De Boer, Wim; Descroix, Alexis; Dierlamm, Alexander; Feindt, Michael; Guthoff, Moritz; Hackstein, Christoph; Hartmann, Frank; Hauth, Thomas; Heinrich, Michael; Held, Hauke; Hoffmann, Karl-Heinz; Husemann, Ulrich; Katkov, Igor; Komaragiri, Jyothsna Rani; Lobelle Pardo, Patricia; Martschei, Daniel; Mueller, Steffen; Müller, Thomas; Niegel, Martin; Nürnberg, Andreas; Oberst, Oliver; Oehler, Andreas; Ott, Jochen; Quast, Gunter; Rabbertz, Klaus; Ratnikov, Fedor; Ratnikova, Natalia; Röcker, Steffen; Schilling, Frank-Peter; Schott, Gregory; Simonis, Hans-Jürgen; Stober, Fred-Markus Helmut; Troendle, Daniel; Ulrich, Ralf; Wagner-Kuhr, Jeannine; Wayand, Stefan; Weiler, Thomas; Zeise, Manuel; Anagnostou, Georgios; Daskalakis, Georgios; Geralis, Theodoros; Kesisoglou, Stilianos; Kyriakis, Aristotelis; Loukas, Demetrios; Manolakos, Ioannis; Markou, Athanasios; Markou, Christos; Ntomari, Eleni; Gouskos, Loukas; Mertzimekis, Theodoros; Panagiotou, Apostolos; Saoulidou, Niki; Evangelou, Ioannis; Foudas, Costas; Kokkas, Panagiotis; Manthos, Nikolaos; Papadopoulos, Ioannis; Patras, Vaios; Bencze, Gyorgy; Hajdu, Csaba; Hidas, Pàl; Horvath, Dezso; Sikler, Ferenc; Veszpremi, Viktor; Vesztergombi, Gyorgy; Beni, Noemi; Czellar, Sandor; Molnar, Jozsef; Palinkas, Jozsef; Szillasi, Zoltan; Karancsi, János; Raics, Peter; Trocsanyi, Zoltan Laszlo; Ujvari, Balazs; Beri, Suman Bala; Bhatnagar, Vipin; Dhingra, Nitish; Gupta, Ruchi; Kaur, Manjit; Mehta, Manuk Zubin; Nishu, Nishu; Saini, Lovedeep Kaur; Sharma, Archana; Singh, Jasbir; Kumar, Ashok; Kumar, Arun; Ahuja, Sudha; Bhardwaj, Ashutosh; Choudhary, Brajesh C; Malhotra, Shivali; Naimuddin, Md; Ranjan, Kirti; Sharma, Varun; Shivpuri, Ram Krishen; Banerjee, Sunanda; Bhattacharya, Satyaki; Dutta, Suchandra; Gomber, Bhawna; Jain, Sandhya; Jain, Shilpi; Khurana, Raman; Sarkar, Subir; Sharan, Manoj; Abdulsalam, Abdulla; Dutta, Dipanwita; Kailas, Swaminathan; Kumar, Vineet; Mohanty, Ajit Kumar; Pant, Lalit Mohan; Shukla, Prashant; Aziz, Tariq; Ganguly, Sanmay; Guchait, Monoranjan; Gurtu, Atul; Maity, Manas; Majumder, Gobinda; Mazumdar, Kajari; Mohanty, Gagan Bihari; Parida, Bibhuti; Sudhakar, Katta; Wickramage, Nadeesha; Banerjee, Sudeshna; Dugad, Shashikant; Arfaei, Hessamaddin; Bakhshiansohi, Hamed; Etesami, Seyed Mohsen; Fahim, Ali; Hashemi, Majid; Hesari, Hoda; Jafari, Abideh; Khakzad, Mohsen; Mohammadi Najafabadi, Mojtaba; Paktinat Mehdiabadi, Saeid; Safarzadeh, Batool; Zeinali, Maryam; Abbrescia, Marcello; Barbone, Lucia; Calabria, Cesare; Chhibra, Simranjit Singh; Colaleo, Anna; Creanza, Donato; De Filippis, Nicola; De Palma, Mauro; Fiore, Luigi; Iaselli, Giuseppe; Maggi, Giorgio; Maggi, Marcello; Marangelli, Bartolomeo; My, Salvatore; Nuzzo, Salvatore; Pacifico, Nicola; Pompili, Alexis; Pugliese, Gabriella; Selvaggi, Giovanna; Silvestris, Lucia; Singh, Gurpreet; Venditti, Rosamaria; Verwilligen, Piet; Zito, Giuseppe; Abbiendi, Giovanni; Benvenuti, Alberto; Bonacorsi, Daniele; Braibant-Giacomelli, Sylvie; Brigliadori, Luca; Capiluppi, Paolo; Castro, Andrea; Cavallo, Francesca Romana; Cuffiani, Marco; Dallavalle, Gaetano-Marco; Fabbri, Fabrizio; Fanfani, Alessandra; Fasanella, Daniele; Giacomelli, Paolo; Grandi, Claudio; Guiducci, Luigi; Marcellini, Stefano; 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Redaelli, Nicola; Sala, Silvano; Tabarelli de Fatis, Tommaso; Buontempo, Salvatore; Carrillo Montoya, Camilo Andres; Cavallo, Nicola; De Cosa, Annapaola; Dogangun, Oktay; Fabozzi, Francesco; Iorio, Alberto Orso Maria; Lista, Luca; Meola, Sabino; Merola, Mario; Paolucci, Pierluigi; Azzi, Patrizia; Bacchetta, Nicola; Bisello, Dario; Branca, Antonio; Carlin, Roberto; Checchia, Paolo; Dorigo, Tommaso; Gasparini, Fabrizio; Gasparini, Ugo; Gozzelino, Andrea; Kanishchev, Konstantin; Lacaprara, Stefano; Lazzizzera, Ignazio; Margoni, Martino; Meneguzzo, Anna Teresa; Pazzini, Jacopo; Pozzobon, Nicola; Ronchese, Paolo; Simonetto, Franco; Torassa, Ezio; Tosi, Mia; Vanini, Sara; Zotto, Pierluigi; Zucchetta, Alberto; Zumerle, Gianni; Gabusi, Michele; Ratti, Sergio P; Riccardi, Cristina; Torre, Paola; Vitulo, Paolo; Biasini, Maurizio; Bilei, Gian Mario; Fanò, Livio; Lariccia, Paolo; Mantovani, Giancarlo; Menichelli, Mauro; Nappi, Aniello; Romeo, Francesco; Saha, Anirban; Santocchia, Attilio; Spiezia, Aniello; 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Pastrone, Nadia; Pelliccioni, Mario; Potenza, Alberto; Romero, Alessandra; Ruspa, Marta; Sacchi, Roberto; Solano, Ada; Staiano, Amedeo; Belforte, Stefano; Candelise, Vieri; Casarsa, Massimo; Cossutti, Fabio; Della Ricca, Giuseppe; Gobbo, Benigno; Marone, Matteo; Montanino, Damiana; Penzo, Aldo; Schizzi, Andrea; Kim, Tae Yeon; Nam, Soon-Kwon; Chang, Sunghyun; Kim, Dong Hee; Kim, Gui Nyun; Kong, Dae Jung; Park, Hyangkyu; Son, Dong-Chul; Son, Taejin; Kim, Jae Yool; Kim, Zero Jaeho; Song, Sanghyeon; Choi, Suyong; Gyun, Dooyeon; Hong, Byung-Sik; Jo, Mihee; Kim, Hyunchul; Kim, Tae Jeong; Lee, Kyong Sei; Moon, Dong Ho; Park, Sung Keun; Roh, Youn; Choi, Minkyoo; Kim, Ji Hyun; Park, Chawon; Park, Inkyu; Park, Sangnam; Ryu, Geonmo; Choi, Young-Il; Choi, Young Kyu; Goh, Junghwan; Kim, Min Suk; Kwon, Eunhyang; Lee, Byounghoon; Lee, Jongseok; Lee, Sungeun; Seo, Hyunkwan; Yu, Intae; Bilinskas, Mykolas Jurgis; Grigelionis, Ignas; Janulis, Mindaugas; Juodagalvis, Andrius; Castilla-Valdez, Heriberto; De La Cruz-Burelo, Eduard; Heredia-de La Cruz, Ivan; Lopez-Fernandez, Ricardo; Martínez-Ortega, Jorge; Sánchez Hernández, Alberto; Villasenor-Cendejas, Luis Manuel; Carrillo Moreno, Salvador; Vazquez Valencia, Fabiola; Salazar Ibarguen, Humberto Antonio; Casimiro Linares, Edgar; Morelos Pineda, Antonio; Reyes-Santos, Marco A; Krofcheck, David; Bell, Alan James; Butler, Philip H; Doesburg, Robert; Reucroft, Steve; Silverwood, Hamish; Ahmad, Muhammad; Asghar, Muhammad Irfan; Butt, Jamila; Hoorani, Hafeez R; Khalid, Shoaib; Khan, Wajid Ali; Khurshid, Taimoor; Qazi, Shamona; Shah, Mehar Ali; Shoaib, Muhammad; Bialkowska, Helena; Boimska, Bozena; Frueboes, Tomasz; Górski, Maciej; Kazana, Malgorzata; Nawrocki, Krzysztof; Romanowska-Rybinska, Katarzyna; Szleper, Michal; Wrochna, Grzegorz; Zalewski, Piotr; Brona, Grzegorz; Bunkowski, Karol; Cwiok, Mikolaj; Dominik, Wojciech; Doroba, Krzysztof; Kalinowski, Artur; Konecki, Marcin; Krolikowski, Jan; Misiura, Maciej; Almeida, Nuno; Bargassa, Pedrame; David Tinoco Mendes, Andre; Faccioli, Pietro; Ferreira Parracho, Pedro Guilherme; Gallinaro, Michele; Seixas, Joao; Varela, Joao; Vischia, Pietro; Belotelov, Ivan; Bunin, Pavel; Golutvin, Igor; Gorbunov, Ilya; Kamenev, Alexey; Karjavin, Vladimir; Kozlov, Guennady; Lanev, Alexander; Malakhov, Alexander; Moisenz, Petr; Palichik, Vladimir; Perelygin, Victor; Savina, Maria; Shmatov, Sergey; Smirnov, Vitaly; Volodko, Anton; Zarubin, Anatoli; Evstyukhin, Sergey; Golovtsov, Victor; Ivanov, Yury; Kim, Victor; Levchenko, Petr; Murzin, Victor; Oreshkin, Vadim; Smirnov, Igor; Sulimov, Valentin; Uvarov, Lev; Vavilov, Sergey; Vorobyev, Alexey; Vorobyev, Andrey; Andreev, Yuri; Dermenev, Alexander; Gninenko, Sergei; Golubev, Nikolai; Kirsanov, Mikhail; Krasnikov, Nikolai; Matveev, Viktor; Pashenkov, Anatoli; Tlisov, Danila; Toropin, Alexander; Epshteyn, Vladimir; Erofeeva, Maria; Gavrilov, Vladimir; Kossov, Mikhail; Lychkovskaya, Natalia; Popov, Vladimir; Safronov, Grigory; Semenov, Sergey; Shreyber, Irina; Stolin, Viatcheslav; Vlasov, Evgueni; Zhokin, Alexander; Belyaev, Andrey; Boos, Edouard; Dubinin, Mikhail; Dudko, Lev; Ershov, Alexander; Gribushin, Andrey; Klyukhin, Vyacheslav; Kodolova, Olga; Lokhtin, Igor; Markina, Anastasia; Obraztsov, Stepan; Perfilov, Maxim; Petrushanko, Sergey; Popov, Andrey; Sarycheva, Ludmila; Savrin, Viktor; Snigirev, Alexander; Andreev, Vladimir; Azarkin, Maksim; Dremin, Igor; Kirakosyan, Martin; Leonidov, Andrey; Mesyats, Gennady; Rusakov, Sergey V; Vinogradov, Alexey; Azhgirey, Igor; Bayshev, Igor; Bitioukov, Sergei; Grishin, Viatcheslav; Kachanov, Vassili; Konstantinov, Dmitri; Krychkine, Victor; Petrov, Vladimir; Ryutin, Roman; Sobol, Andrei; Tourtchanovitch, Leonid; Troshin, Sergey; Tyurin, Nikolay; Uzunian, Andrey; Volkov, Alexey; Adzic, Petar; Djordjevic, Milos; Ekmedzic, Marko; Krpic, Dragomir; Milosevic, Jovan; Aguilar-Benitez, Manuel; Alcaraz Maestre, Juan; Arce, Pedro; Battilana, Carlo; Calvo, Enrique; Cerrada, Marcos; Chamizo Llatas, Maria; Colino, Nicanor; De La Cruz, Begona; Delgado Peris, Antonio; Domínguez Vázquez, Daniel; Fernandez Bedoya, Cristina; Fernández Ramos, Juan Pablo; Ferrando, Antonio; Flix, Jose; Fouz, Maria Cruz; Garcia-Abia, Pablo; Gonzalez Lopez, Oscar; Goy Lopez, Silvia; Hernandez, Jose M; Josa, Maria Isabel; Merino, Gonzalo; Puerta Pelayo, Jesus; Quintario Olmeda, Adrián; Redondo, Ignacio; Romero, Luciano; Santaolalla, Javier; Senghi Soares, Mara; Willmott, Carlos; Albajar, Carmen; Codispoti, Giuseppe; de Trocóniz, Jorge F; Brun, Hugues; Cuevas, Javier; Fernandez Menendez, Javier; Folgueras, Santiago; Gonzalez Caballero, Isidro; Lloret Iglesias, Lara; Piedra Gomez, Jonatan; Brochero Cifuentes, Javier Andres; Cabrillo, Iban Jose; Calderon, Alicia; Chuang, Shan-Huei; Duarte Campderros, Jordi; Felcini, Marta; Fernandez, Marcos; Gomez, Gervasio; Gonzalez Sanchez, Javier; Graziano, Alberto; Jorda, Clara; Lopez Virto, Amparo; Marco, Jesus; Marco, Rafael; Martinez Rivero, Celso; Matorras, Francisco; Munoz Sanchez, Francisca Javiela; Rodrigo, Teresa; Rodríguez-Marrero, Ana Yaiza; Ruiz-Jimeno, Alberto; Scodellaro, Luca; Vila, Ivan; Vilar Cortabitarte, Rocio; Abbaneo, Duccio; Auffray, Etiennette; Auzinger, Georg; Bachtis, Michail; Baillon, Paul; Ball, Austin; Barney, David; Benitez, Jose F; Bernet, Colin; Bianchi, Giovanni; Bloch, Philippe; Bocci, Andrea; Bonato, Alessio; Botta, Cristina; Breuker, Horst; Camporesi, Tiziano; Cerminara, Gianluca; Christiansen, Tim; Coarasa Perez, Jose Antonio; D'Enterria, David; Dabrowski, Anne; De Roeck, Albert; Di Guida, Salvatore; Dobson, Marc; Dupont-Sagorin, Niels; Elliott-Peisert, Anna; Frisch, Benjamin; Funk, Wolfgang; Georgiou, Georgios; Giffels, Manuel; Gigi, Dominique; Gill, Karl; Giordano, Domenico; Girone, Maria; Giunta, Marina; Glege, Frank; Gomez-Reino Garrido, Robert; Govoni, Pietro; Gowdy, Stephen; Guida, Roberto; Gundacker, Stefan; Hammer, Josef; Hansen, Magnus; Harris, Philip; Hartl, Christian; Harvey, John; Hegner, Benedikt; Hinzmann, Andreas; Innocente, Vincenzo; Janot, Patrick; Kaadze, Ketino; Karavakis, Edward; Kousouris, Konstantinos; Lecoq, Paul; Lee, Yen-Jie; Lenzi, Piergiulio; Lourenco, Carlos; Magini, Nicolo; Maki, Tuula; Malberti, Martina; Malgeri, Luca; Mannelli, Marcello; Masetti, Lorenzo; Meijers, Frans; Mersi, Stefano; Meschi, Emilio; Moser, Roland; Mozer, Matthias Ulrich; Mulders, Martijn; Musella, Pasquale; Nesvold, Erik; Orsini, Luciano; Palencia Cortezon, Enrique; Perez, Emmanuelle; Perrozzi, Luca; Petrilli, Achille; Pfeiffer, Andreas; Pierini, Maurizio; Pimiä, Martti; Piparo, Danilo; Polese, Giovanni; Quertenmont, Loic; Racz, Attila; Reece, William; Rodrigues Antunes, Joao; Rolandi, Gigi; Rovelli, Chiara; Rovere, Marco; Sakulin, Hannes; Santanastasio, Francesco; Schäfer, Christoph; Schwick, Christoph; Segoni, Ilaria; Sekmen, Sezen; Sharma, Archana; Siegrist, Patrice; Silva, Pedro; Simon, Michal; Sphicas, Paraskevas; Spiga, Daniele; Tsirou, Andromachi; Veres, Gabor Istvan; Vlimant, Jean-Roch; Wöhri, Hermine Katharina; Worm, Steven; Zeuner, Wolfram Dietrich; Bertl, Willi; Deiters, Konrad; Erdmann, Wolfram; Gabathuler, Kurt; Horisberger, Roland; Ingram, Quentin; Kaestli, Hans-Christian; König, Stefan; Kotlinski, Danek; Langenegger, Urs; Meier, Frank; Renker, Dieter; Rohe, Tilman; Bäni, Lukas; Bortignon, Pierluigi; Buchmann, Marco-Andrea; Casal, Bruno; Chanon, Nicolas; Deisher, Amanda; Dissertori, Günther; Dittmar, Michael; Donegà, Mauro; Dünser, Marc; Eller, Philipp; Eugster, Jürg; Freudenreich, Klaus; Grab, Christoph; Hits, Dmitry; Lecomte, Pierre; Lustermann, Werner; Marini, Andrea Carlo; Martinez Ruiz del Arbol, Pablo; Mohr, Niklas; Moortgat, Filip; Nägeli, Christoph; Nef, Pascal; Nessi-Tedaldi, Francesca; Pandolfi, Francesco; Pape, Luc; Pauss, Felicitas; Peruzzi, Marco; Ronga, Frederic Jean; Rossini, Marco; Sala, Leonardo; Sanchez, Ann - Karin; Starodumov, Andrei; Stieger, Benjamin; Takahashi, Maiko; Tauscher, Ludwig; Thea, Alessandro; Theofilatos, Konstantinos; Treille, Daniel; Urscheler, Christina; Wallny, Rainer; Weber, Hannsjoerg Artur; Wehrli, Lukas; Amsler, Claude; Chiochia, Vincenzo; De Visscher, Simon; Favaro, Carlotta; Ivova Rikova, Mirena; Kilminster, Benjamin; Millan Mejias, Barbara; Otiougova, Polina; Robmann, Peter; Snoek, Hella; Tupputi, Salvatore; Verzetti, Mauro; Chang, Yuan-Hann; Chen, Kuan-Hsin; Ferro, Cristina; Kuo, Chia-Ming; Li, Syue-Wei; Lin, Willis; Lu, Yun-Ju; Singh, Anil; Volpe, Roberta; Yu, Shin-Shan; Bartalini, Paolo; Chang, Paoti; Chang, You-Hao; Chang, Yu-Wei; Chao, Yuan; Chen, Kai-Feng; Dietz, Charles; Grundler, Ulysses; Hou, George Wei-Shu; Hsiung, Yee; Kao, Kai-Yi; Lei, Yeong-Jyi; Lu, Rong-Shyang; Majumder, Devdatta; Petrakou, Eleni; Shi, Xin; Shiu, Jing-Ge; Tzeng, Yeng-Ming; Wan, Xia; Wang, Minzu; Asavapibhop, Burin; Srimanobhas, Norraphat; Adiguzel, Aytul; Bakirci, Mustafa Numan; Cerci, Salim; Dozen, Candan; Dumanoglu, Isa; Eskut, Eda; Girgis, Semiray; Gokbulut, Gul; Gurpinar, Emine; Hos, Ilknur; Kangal, Evrim Ersin; Karaman, Turker; Karapinar, Guler; Kayis Topaksu, Aysel; Onengut, Gulsen; Ozdemir, Kadri; Ozturk, Sertac; Polatoz, Ayse; Sogut, Kenan; Sunar Cerci, Deniz; Tali, Bayram; Topakli, Huseyin; Vergili, Latife Nukhet; Vergili, Mehmet; Akin, Ilina Vasileva; Aliev, Takhmasib; Bilin, Bugra; Bilmis, Selcuk; Deniz, Muhammed; Gamsizkan, Halil; Guler, Ali Murat; Ocalan, Kadir; Ozpineci, Altug; Serin, Meltem; Sever, Ramazan; Surat, Ugur Emrah; Yalvac, Metin; Yildirim, Eda; Zeyrek, Mehmet; Gülmez, Erhan; Isildak, Bora; Kaya, Mithat; Kaya, Ozlem; Ozkorucuklu, Suat; Sonmez, Nasuf; Cankocak, Kerem; Levchuk, Leonid; Brooke, James John; Clement, Emyr; Cussans, David; Flacher, Henning; Frazier, Robert; Goldstein, Joel; Grimes, Mark; Heath, Greg P; Heath, Helen F; Kreczko, Lukasz; Metson, Simon; Newbold, Dave M; Nirunpong, Kachanon; Poll, Anthony; Senkin, Sergey; Smith, Vincent J; Williams, Thomas; Basso, Lorenzo; Bell, Ken W; Belyaev, Alexander; Brew, Christopher; Brown, Robert M; Cockerill, David JA; Coughlan, John A; Harder, Kristian; Harper, Sam; Jackson, James; Kennedy, Bruce W; Olaiya, Emmanuel; Petyt, David; Radburn-Smith, Benjamin Charles; Shepherd-Themistocleous, Claire; Tomalin, Ian R; Womersley, William John; Bainbridge, Robert; Ball, Gordon; Beuselinck, Raymond; Buchmuller, Oliver; Colling, David; Cripps, Nicholas; Cutajar, Michael; Dauncey, Paul; Davies, Gavin; Della Negra, Michel; Ferguson, William; Fulcher, Jonathan; Futyan, David; Gilbert, Andrew; Guneratne Bryer, Arlo; Hall, Geoffrey; Hatherell, Zoe; Hays, Jonathan; Iles, Gregory; Jarvis, Martyn; Karapostoli, Georgia; Lyons, Louis; Magnan, Anne-Marie; Marrouche, Jad; Mathias, Bryn; Nandi, Robin; Nash, Jordan; Nikitenko, Alexander; Pela, Joao; Pesaresi, Mark; Petridis, Konstantinos; Pioppi, Michele; Raymond, David Mark; Rogerson, Samuel; Rose, Andrew; Ryan, Matthew John; Seez, Christopher; Sharp, Peter; Sparrow, Alex; Stoye, Markus; Tapper, Alexander; Vazquez Acosta, Monica; Virdee, Tejinder; Wakefield, Stuart; Wardle, Nicholas; Whyntie, Tom; Chadwick, Matthew; Cole, Joanne; Hobson, Peter R; Khan, Akram; Kyberd, Paul; Leggat, Duncan; Leslie, Dawn; Martin, William; Reid, Ivan; Symonds, Philip; Teodorescu, Liliana; Turner, Mark; Hatakeyama, Kenichi; Liu, Hongxuan; Scarborough, Tara; Charaf, Otman; Henderson, Conor; Rumerio, Paolo; Avetisyan, Aram; Bose, Tulika; Fantasia, Cory; Heister, Arno; St John, Jason; Lawson, Philip; Lazic, Dragoslav; Rohlf, James; Sperka, David; Sulak, Lawrence; Alimena, Juliette; Bhattacharya, Saptaparna; Christopher, Grant; Cutts, David; Demiragli, Zeynep; Ferapontov, Alexey; Garabedian, Alex; Heintz, Ulrich; Jabeen, Shabnam; Kukartsev, Gennadiy; Laird, Edward; Landsberg, Greg; Luk, Michael; Narain, Meenakshi; Nguyen, Duong; Segala, Michael; Sinthuprasith, Tutanon; Speer, Thomas; Breedon, Richard; Breto, Guillermo; Calderon De La Barca Sanchez, Manuel; Chauhan, Sushil; Chertok, Maxwell; Conway, John; Conway, Rylan; Cox, Peter Timothy; Dolen, James; Erbacher, Robin; Gardner, Michael; Houtz, Rachel; Ko, Winston; Kopecky, Alexandra; Lander, Richard; Mall, Orpheus; Miceli, Tia; Pellett, Dave; Ricci-Tam, Francesca; Rutherford, Britney; Searle, Matthew; Smith, John; Squires, Michael; Tripathi, Mani; Vasquez Sierra, Ricardo; Yohay, Rachel; Andreev, Valeri; Cline, David; Cousins, Robert; Duris, Joseph; Erhan, Samim; Everaerts, Pieter; Farrell, Chris; Hauser, Jay; Ignatenko, Mikhail; Jarvis, Chad; Rakness, Gregory; Schlein, Peter; Traczyk, Piotr; Valuev, Vyacheslav; Weber, Matthias; Babb, John; Clare, Robert; Dinardo, Mauro Emanuele; Ellison, John Anthony; Gary, J William; Giordano, Ferdinando; Hanson, Gail; Liu, Hongliang; Long, Owen Rosser; Luthra, Arun; Nguyen, Harold; Paramesvaran, Sudarshan; Sturdy, Jared; Sumowidagdo, Suharyo; Wilken, Rachel; Wimpenny, Stephen; Andrews, Warren; Branson, James G; Cerati, Giuseppe Benedetto; Cittolin, Sergio; Evans, David; Holzner, André; Kelley, Ryan; Lebourgeois, Matthew; Letts, James; Macneill, Ian; Mangano, Boris; Padhi, Sanjay; Palmer, Christopher; Petrucciani, Giovanni; Pieri, Marco; Sani, Matteo; Sharma, Vivek; Simon, Sean; Sudano, Elizabeth; Tadel, Matevz; Tu, Yanjun; Vartak, Adish; Wasserbaech, Steven; Würthwein, Frank; Yagil, Avraham; Yoo, Jaehyeok; Barge, Derek; Bellan, Riccardo; Campagnari, Claudio; D'Alfonso, Mariarosaria; Danielson, Thomas; Flowers, Kristen; Geffert, Paul; Golf, Frank; Incandela, Joe; Justus, Christopher; Kalavase, Puneeth; Kovalskyi, Dmytro; Krutelyov, Vyacheslav; Lowette, Steven; Magaña Villalba, Ricardo; Mccoll, Nickolas; Pavlunin, Viktor; Ribnik, Jacob; Richman, Jeffrey; Rossin, Roberto; Stuart, David; To, Wing; West, Christopher; Apresyan, Artur; Bornheim, Adolf; Chen, Yi; Di Marco, Emanuele; Duarte, Javier; Gataullin, Marat; Ma, Yousi; Mott, Alexander; Newman, Harvey B; Rogan, Christopher; Spiropulu, Maria; Timciuc, Vladlen; Veverka, Jan; Wilkinson, Richard; Xie, Si; Yang, Yong; Zhu, Ren-Yuan; Azzolini, Virginia; Calamba, Aristotle; Carroll, Ryan; Ferguson, Thomas; Iiyama, Yutaro; Jang, Dong Wook; Liu, Yueh-Feng; Paulini, Manfred; Vogel, Helmut; Vorobiev, Igor; Cumalat, John Perry; Drell, Brian Robert; Ford, William T; Gaz, Alessandro; Luiggi Lopez, Eduardo; Smith, James; Stenson, Kevin; Ulmer, Keith; Wagner, Stephen Robert; Alexander, James; Chatterjee, Avishek; Eggert, Nicholas; Gibbons, Lawrence Kent; Heltsley, Brian; Hopkins, Walter; Khukhunaishvili, Aleko; Kreis, Benjamin; Mirman, Nathan; Nicolas Kaufman, Gala; Patterson, Juliet Ritchie; Ryd, Anders; Salvati, Emmanuele; Sun, Werner; Teo, Wee Don; Thom, Julia; Thompson, Joshua; Tucker, Jordan; Vaughan, Jennifer; Weng, Yao; Winstrom, Lucas; Wittich, Peter; Winn, Dave; Abdullin, Salavat; Albrow, Michael; Anderson, Jacob; Bauerdick, Lothar AT; Beretvas, Andrew; Berryhill, Jeffrey; Bhat, Pushpalatha C; Burkett, Kevin; Butler, Joel Nathan; Chetluru, Vasundhara; Cheung, Harry; Chlebana, Frank; Elvira, Victor Daniel; Fisk, Ian; Freeman, Jim; Gao, Yanyan; Green, Dan; Gutsche, Oliver; Hanlon, Jim; Harris, Robert M; Hirschauer, James; Hooberman, Benjamin; Jindariani, Sergo; Johnson, Marvin; Joshi, Umesh; Klima, Boaz; Kunori, Shuichi; Kwan, Simon; Leonidopoulos, Christos; Linacre, Jacob; Lincoln, Don; Lipton, Ron; Lykken, Joseph; Maeshima, Kaori; Marraffino, John Michael; Maruyama, Sho; Mason, David; McBride, Patricia; Mishra, Kalanand; Mrenna, Stephen; Musienko, Yuri; Newman-Holmes, Catherine; O'Dell, Vivian; Prokofyev, Oleg; Sexton-Kennedy, Elizabeth; Sharma, Seema; Spalding, William J; Spiegel, Leonard; Taylor, Lucas; Tkaczyk, Slawek; Tran, Nhan Viet; Uplegger, Lorenzo; Vaandering, Eric Wayne; Vidal, Richard; Whitmore, Juliana; Wu, Weimin; Yang, Fan; Yun, Jae Chul; Acosta, Darin; Avery, Paul; Bourilkov, Dimitri; Chen, Mingshui; Cheng, Tongguang; Das, Souvik; De Gruttola, Michele; Di Giovanni, Gian Piero; Dobur, Didar; Drozdetskiy, Alexey; Field, Richard D; Fisher, Matthew; Fu, Yu; Furic, Ivan-Kresimir; Gartner, Joseph; Hugon, Justin; Kim, Bockjoo; Konigsberg, Jacobo; Korytov, Andrey; Kropivnitskaya, Anna; Kypreos, Theodore; Low, Jia Fu; Matchev, Konstantin; Milenovic, Predrag; Mitselmakher, Guenakh; Muniz, Lana; Park, Myeonghun; Remington, Ronald; Rinkevicius, Aurelijus; Sellers, Paul; Skhirtladze, Nikoloz; Snowball, Matthew; Yelton, John; Zakaria, Mohammed; Gaultney, Vanessa; Hewamanage, Samantha; Lebolo, Luis Miguel; Linn, Stephan; Markowitz, Pete; Martinez, German; Rodriguez, Jorge Luis; Adams, Todd; Askew, Andrew; Bochenek, Joseph; Chen, Jie; Diamond, Brendan; Gleyzer, Sergei V; Haas, Jeff; Hagopian, Sharon; Hagopian, Vasken; Jenkins, Merrill; Johnson, Kurtis F; Prosper, Harrison; Veeraraghavan, Venkatesh; Weinberg, Marc; Baarmand, Marc M; Dorney, Brian; Hohlmann, Marcus; Kalakhety, Himali; Vodopiyanov, Igor; Yumiceva, Francisco; Adams, Mark Raymond; Anghel, Ioana Maria; Apanasevich, Leonard; Bai, Yuting; Bazterra, Victor Eduardo; Betts, Russell Richard; Bucinskaite, Inga; Callner, Jeremy; Cavanaugh, Richard; Evdokimov, Olga; Gauthier, Lucie; Gerber, Cecilia Elena; Hofman, David Jonathan; Khalatyan, Samvel; Lacroix, Florent; O'Brien, Christine; Silkworth, Christopher; Strom, Derek; Turner, Paul; Varelas, Nikos; Akgun, Ugur; Albayrak, Elif Asli; Bilki, Burak; Clarida, Warren; Duru, Firdevs; Griffiths, Scott; Merlo, Jean-Pierre; Mermerkaya, Hamit; Mestvirishvili, Alexi; Moeller, Anthony; Nachtman, Jane; Newsom, Charles Ray; Norbeck, Edwin; Onel, Yasar; Ozok, Ferhat; Sen, Sercan; Tan, Ping; Tiras, Emrah; Wetzel, James; Yetkin, Taylan; Yi, Kai; Barnett, Bruce Arnold; Blumenfeld, Barry; Bolognesi, Sara; Fehling, David; Giurgiu, Gavril; Gritsan, Andrei; Guo, Zijin; Hu, Guofan; Maksimovic, Petar; Swartz, Morris; Whitbeck, Andrew; Baringer, Philip; Bean, Alice; Benelli, Gabriele; Kenny Iii, Raymond Patrick; Murray, Michael; Noonan, Daniel; Sanders, Stephen; Stringer, Robert; Tinti, Gemma; Wood, Jeffrey Scott; Barfuss, Anne-Fleur; Bolton, Tim; Chakaberia, Irakli; Ivanov, Andrew; Khalil, Sadia; Makouski, Mikhail; Maravin, Yurii; Shrestha, Shruti; Svintradze, Irakli; Gronberg, Jeffrey; Lange, David; Rebassoo, Finn; Wright, Douglas; Baden, Drew; Calvert, Brian; Eno, Sarah Catherine; Gomez, Jaime; Hadley, Nicholas John; Kellogg, Richard G; Kirn, Malina; Kolberg, Ted; Lu, Ying; Marionneau, Matthieu; Mignerey, Alice; Pedro, Kevin; Peterman, Alison; Skuja, Andris; Temple, Jeffrey; Tonjes, Marguerite; Tonwar, Suresh C; Apyan, Aram; Bauer, Gerry; Bendavid, Joshua; Busza, Wit; Butz, Erik; Cali, Ivan Amos; Chan, Matthew; Dutta, Valentina; Gomez Ceballos, Guillelmo; Goncharov, Maxim; Kim, Yongsun; Klute, Markus; Krajczar, Krisztian; Levin, Andrew; Luckey, Paul David; Ma, Teng; Nahn, Steve; Paus, Christoph; Ralph, Duncan; Roland, Christof; Roland, Gunther; Rudolph, Matthew; Stephans, George; Stöckli, Fabian; Sumorok, Konstanty; Sung, Kevin; Velicanu, Dragos; Wenger, Edward Allen; Wolf, Roger; Wyslouch, Bolek; Yang, Mingming; Yilmaz, Yetkin; Yoon, Sungho; Zanetti, Marco; Zhukova, Victoria; Cooper, Seth; Dahmes, Bryan; De Benedetti, Abraham; Franzoni, Giovanni; Gude, Alexander; Kao, Shih-Chuan; Klapoetke, Kevin; Kubota, Yuichi; Mans, Jeremy; Pastika, Nathaniel; Rusack, Roger; Sasseville, Michael; Singovsky, Alexander; Tambe, Norbert; Turkewitz, Jared; Cremaldi, Lucien Marcus; Kroeger, Rob; Perera, Lalith; Rahmat, Rahmat; Sanders, David A; Avdeeva, Ekaterina; Bloom, Kenneth; Bose, Suvadeep; Claes, Daniel R; Dominguez, Aaron; Eads, Michael; Keller, Jason; Kravchenko, Ilya; Lazo-Flores, Jose; Malik, Sudhir; Snow, Gregory R; Godshalk, Andrew; Iashvili, Ia; Jain, Supriya; Kharchilava, Avto; Kumar, Ashish; Rappoccio, Salvatore; Alverson, George; Barberis, Emanuela; Baumgartel, Darin; Chasco, Matthew; Haley, Joseph; Nash, David; Orimoto, Toyoko; Trocino, Daniele; Wood, Darien; Zhang, Jinzhong; Anastassov, Anton; Hahn, Kristan Allan; Kubik, Andrew; Lusito, Letizia; Mucia, Nicholas; Odell, Nathaniel; Ofierzynski, Radoslaw Adrian; Pollack, Brian; Pozdnyakov, Andrey; Schmitt, Michael Henry; Stoynev, Stoyan; Velasco, Mayda; Won, Steven; Antonelli, Louis; Berry, Douglas; Brinkerhoff, Andrew; Chan, Kwok Ming; Hildreth, Michael; Jessop, Colin; Karmgard, Daniel John; Kolb, Jeff; Lannon, Kevin; Luo, Wuming; Lynch, Sean; Marinelli, Nancy; Morse, David Michael; Pearson, Tessa; Planer, Michael; Ruchti, Randy; Slaunwhite, Jason; Valls, Nil; Wayne, Mitchell; Wolf, Matthias; Bylsma, Ben; Durkin, Lloyd Stanley; Hill, Christopher; Hughes, Richard; Kotov, Khristian; Ling, Ta-Yung; Puigh, Darren; Rodenburg, Marissa; Vuosalo, Carl; Williams, Grayson; Winer, Brian L; Berry, Edmund; Elmer, Peter; Halyo, Valerie; Hebda, Philip; Hegeman, Jeroen; Hunt, Adam; Jindal, Pratima; Koay, Sue Ann; Lopes Pegna, David; Lujan, Paul; Marlow, Daniel; Medvedeva, Tatiana; Mooney, Michael; Olsen, James; Piroué, Pierre; Quan, Xiaohang; Raval, Amita; Saka, Halil; Stickland, David; Tully, Christopher; Werner, Jeremy Scott; Zuranski, Andrzej; Brownson, Eric; Lopez, Angel; Mendez, Hector; Ramirez Vargas, Juan Eduardo; Alagoz, Enver; Barnes, Virgil E; Benedetti, Daniele; Bolla, Gino; Bortoletto, Daniela; De Mattia, Marco; Everett, Adam; Hu, Zhen; Jones, Matthew; Koybasi, Ozhan; Kress, Matthew; Laasanen, Alvin T; Leonardo, Nuno; Maroussov, Vassili; Merkel, Petra; Miller, David Harry; Neumeister, Norbert; Shipsey, Ian; Silvers, David; Svyatkovskiy, Alexey; Vidal Marono, Miguel; Yoo, Hwi Dong; Zablocki, Jakub; Zheng, Yu; Guragain, Samir; Parashar, Neeti; Adair, Antony; Akgun, Bora; Boulahouache, Chaouki; Ecklund, Karl Matthew; Geurts, Frank JM; Li, Wei; Padley, Brian Paul; Redjimi, Radia; Roberts, Jay; Zabel, James; Betchart, Burton; Bodek, Arie; Chung, Yeon Sei; Covarelli, Roberto; de Barbaro, Pawel; Demina, Regina; Eshaq, Yossof; Ferbel, Thomas; Garcia-Bellido, Aran; Goldenzweig, Pablo; Han, Jiyeon; Harel, Amnon; Miner, Daniel Carl; Vishnevskiy, Dmitry; Zielinski, Marek; Bhatti, Anwar; Ciesielski, Robert; Demortier, Luc; Goulianos, Konstantin; Lungu, Gheorghe; Malik, Sarah; Mesropian, Christina; Arora, Sanjay; Barker, Anthony; Chou, John Paul; Contreras-Campana, Christian; Contreras-Campana, Emmanuel; Duggan, Daniel; Ferencek, Dinko; Gershtein, Yuri; Gray, Richard; Halkiadakis, Eva; Hidas, Dean; Lath, Amitabh; Panwalkar, Shruti; Park, Michael; Patel, Rishi; Rekovic, Vladimir; Robles, Jorge; Rose, Keith; Salur, Sevil; Schnetzer, Steve; Seitz, Claudia; Somalwar, Sunil; Stone, Robert; Thomas, Scott; Walker, Matthew; Cerizza, Giordano; Hollingsworth, Matthew; Spanier, Stefan; Yang, Zong-Chang; York, Andrew; Eusebi, Ricardo; Flanagan, Will; Gilmore, Jason; Kamon, Teruki; Khotilovich, Vadim; Montalvo, Roy; Osipenkov, Ilya; Pakhotin, Yuriy; Perloff, Alexx; Roe, Jeffrey; Safonov, Alexei; Sakuma, Tai; Sengupta, Sinjini; Suarez, Indara; Tatarinov, Aysen; Toback, David; Akchurin, Nural; Damgov, Jordan; Dragoiu, Cosmin; Dudero, Phillip Russell; Jeong, Chiyoung; Kovitanggoon, Kittikul; Lee, Sung Won; Libeiro, Terence; Volobouev, Igor; Appelt, Eric; Delannoy, Andrés G; Florez, Carlos; Greene, Senta; Gurrola, Alfredo; Johns, Willard; Kurt, Pelin; Maguire, Charles; Melo, Andrew; Sharma, Monika; Sheldon, Paul; Snook, Benjamin; Tuo, Shengquan; Velkovska, Julia; Arenton, Michael Wayne; Balazs, Michael; Boutle, Sarah; Cox, Bradley; Francis, Brian; Goodell, Joseph; Hirosky, Robert; Ledovskoy, Alexander; Lin, Chuanzhe; Neu, Christopher; Wood, John; Gollapinni, Sowjanya; Harr, Robert; Karchin, Paul Edmund; Kottachchi Kankanamge Don, Chamath; Lamichhane, Pramod; Sakharov, Alexandre; Anderson, Michael; Belknap, Donald; Borrello, Laura; Carlsmith, Duncan; Cepeda, Maria; Dasu, Sridhara; Friis, Evan; Gray, Lindsey; Grogg, Kira Suzanne; Grothe, Monika; Hall-Wilton, Richard; Herndon, Matthew; Hervé, Alain; Klabbers, Pamela; Klukas, Jeffrey; Lanaro, Armando; Lazaridis, Christos; Loveless, Richard; Mohapatra, Ajit; Ojalvo, Isabel; Palmonari, Francesco; Pierro, Giuseppe Antonio; Ross, Ian; Savin, Alexander; Smith, Wesley H; Swanson, Joshua

    2013-04-02

    In this paper, a search for supersymmetry (SUSY) is presented in events with two opposite-sign isolated leptons in the final state, accompanied by hadronic jets and missing transverse energy. An artificial neural network is employed to discriminate possible SUSY signals from standard model background. The analysis uses a data sample collected with the CMS detector during the 2011 LHC run, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.98 inverse femtobarns of proton-proton collisions at the center of mass energy of 7 TeV. Compared to other CMS analyses, this one uses relaxed criteria on missing transverse energy (missing ET > 40 GeV) and total hadronic transverse energy (HT > 120 GeV), thus probing different regions of parameter space. Agreement is found between standard model expectation and observation, yielding limits in the context of the constrained mininal supersymmetric standard model and on a set of simplified models.

  14. Neural response to catecholamine depletion in remitted bulimia nervosa: Relation to depression and relapse.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mueller, Stefanie Verena; Mihov, Yoan; Federspiel, Andrea; Wiest, Roland; Hasler, Gregor

    2017-07-01

    Bulimia nervosa has been associated with a dysregulated catecholamine system. Nevertheless, the influence of this dysregulation on bulimic symptoms, on neural activity, and on the course of the illness is not clear yet. An instructive paradigm for directly investigating the relationship between catecholaminergic functioning and bulimia nervosa has involved the behavioral and neural responses to experimental catecholamine depletion. The purpose of this study was to examine the neural substrate of catecholaminergic dysfunction in bulimia nervosa and its relationship to relapse. In a randomized, double-blind and crossover study design, catecholamine depletion was achieved by using the oral administration of alpha-methyl-paratyrosine (AMPT) over 24 h in 18 remitted bulimic (rBN) and 22 healthy (HC) female participants. Cerebral blood flow (CBF) was measured using a pseudo continuous arterial spin labeling (pCASL) sequence. In a follow-up telephone interview, bulimic relapse was assessed. Following AMPT, rBN participants revealed an increased vigor reduction and CBF decreases in the pallidum and posterior midcingulate cortex (pMCC) relative to HC participants showing no CBF changes in these regions. These results indicated that the pallidum and the pMCC are the functional neural correlates of the dysregulated catecholamine system in bulimia nervosa. Bulimic relapse was associated with increased depressive symptoms and CBF reduction in the hippocampus/parahippocampal gyrus following catecholamine depletion. AMPT-induced increased CBF in this region predicted staying in remission. These findings demonstrated the importance of depressive symptoms and the stress system in the course of bulimia nervosa. Copyright © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  15. Self-esteem modulates automatic attentional responses to self-relevant stimuli: Evidence from event-related brain potentials

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jie eChen

    2015-06-01

    Full Text Available Previous studies have widely shown that self-esteem modulates the attention bias towards social rejection or emotion-related information. However, little is known about the influences of self-esteem on attention bias towards self-relevant stimuli. We aimed to investigate neural correlates that underlie the modulation effect of self-esteem on self-relevant processing. Event-related potentials were recorded for subjects’ own names and close others’ names (the names of their friends while subjects performed a three-stimulus oddball task. The results showed larger P2 amplitudes for one’s own name than for close-other’s name in the low self-esteem group, whereas this P2 effect were not observed in the high self-esteem group. In addition, one’s own name elicited equivalent N250 amplitudes and larger P3 amplitudes compared with close-other’s name in both high and low self-esteem groups. However, no interaction effects were observed between self-esteem and self-relevant processing in the N250 and P3 components. Thus, we found that the modulation effects of self-esteem on self-relevant processing occurred at the early P2 stage, but not at the later N250 and P3 stages. These findings reflect that individuals with low self-esteem demonstrate automatic attention towards their own names.

  16. The "Mozart effect": an electroencephalographic analysis employing the methods of induced event-related desynchronization/synchronization and event-related coherence.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jausovec, Norbert; Habe, Katarina

    2003-01-01

    The event-related responses of 18 individuals were recorded while they were listening to 3 music clips of 6 s duration which were repeated 30 times each. The music clips differed in the level of their complex structure, induced mood, musical tempo and prominent frequency. They were taken from Mozart's sonata (K. 448), and Brahms' Hungarian dance (no. 5). The third clip was a simplified version of the theme taken from Haydn's symphony (no. 94) played by a computer synthesizer. Significant differences in induced event-related desynchronization between the 3 music clips were only observed in the lower-1 alpha band which is related to attentional processes. A similar pattern was observed for the coherence measures. While respondents listened to the Mozart clip, coherence in the lower alpha bands increased more, whereas in the gamma band a less pronounced increase was observed as compared with the Brahms and Haydn clips. The clustering of the three clips based on EEG measures distinguished between the Mozart clip on the one hand, and the Haydn and Brahms clips on the other, even though the Haydn and Brahms clips were at the opposite extremes with regard to the mood they induced in listeners, musical tempo, and complexity of structure. This would suggest that Mozart's music--with no regard to the level of induced mood, musical tempo and complexity--influences the level of arousal. It seems that modulations in the frequency domain of Mozart's sonata have the greatest influence on the reported neurophysiological activity.

  17. [Neural activity related to emotional and empathic deficits in subjects with post-traumatic stress disorder who survived the L'Aquila (Central Italy) 2009 earthquake].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mazza, Monica; Pino, Maria Chiara; Tempesta, Daniela; Catalucci, Alessia; Masciocchi, Carlo; Ferrara, Michele

    2016-01-01

    Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a chronic anxiety disorder. The continued efforts to control the distressing memories by traumatized individuals, together with the reduction of responsiveness to the outside world, are called Emotional Numbing (EN). The EN is one of the central symptoms in PTSD and it plays an integral role not only in the development and maintenance of post-traumatic symptomatology, but also in the disability of emotional regulation. This disorder shows an abnormal response of cortical and limbic regions which are normally involved in understanding emotions since the very earliest stages of the development of processing ability. Patients with PTSD exhibit exaggerated brain responses to emotionally negative stimuli. Identifying the neural correlates of emotion regulation in these subjects is important for elucidating the neural circuitry involved in emotional and empathic dysfunction. We showed that PTSD patients, all survivors of the L'Aquila 2009 earthquake, have a higher sensitivity to negative emotion and lower empathy levels. These emotional and empathic deficits are accompanied by neural brain functional correlates. Indeed PTSD subjects exhibit functional abnormalities in brain regions that are involved in stress regulation and emotional responses. The reduced activation of the frontal areas and a stronger activation of the limbic areas when responding to emotional stimuli could lead the subjects to enact coping strategies aimed at protecting themselves from the re-experience of pain related to traumatic events. This would result in a dysfunctional hyperactivation of subcortical areas, which may cause emotional distress and, consequently, impaired social relationships often reported by PTSD patients.

  18. Neural processing of reward in adolescent rodents

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nicholas W. Simon

    2015-02-01

    Full Text Available Immaturities in adolescent reward processing are thought to contribute to poor decision making and increased susceptibility to develop addictive and psychiatric disorders. Very little is known; however, about how the adolescent brain processes reward. The current mechanistic theories of reward processing are derived from adult models. Here we review recent research focused on understanding of how the adolescent brain responds to rewards and reward-associated events. A critical aspect of this work is that age-related differences are evident in neuronal processing of reward-related events across multiple brain regions even when adolescent rats demonstrate behavior similar to adults. These include differences in reward processing between adolescent and adult rats in orbitofrontal cortex and dorsal striatum. Surprisingly, minimal age related differences are observed in ventral striatum, which has been a focal point of developmental studies. We go on to discuss the implications of these differences for behavioral traits affected in adolescence, such as impulsivity, risk-taking, and behavioral flexibility. Collectively, this work suggests that reward-evoked neural activity differs as a function of age and that regions such as the dorsal striatum that are not traditionally associated with affective processing in adults may be critical for reward processing and psychiatric vulnerability in adolescents.

  19. Abnormal self-schema in semantic memory in major depressive disorder: Evidence from event-related brain potentials.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kiang, Michael; Farzan, Faranak; Blumberger, Daniel M; Kutas, Marta; McKinnon, Margaret C; Kansal, Vinay; Rajji, Tarek K; Daskalakis, Zafiris J

    2017-05-01

    An overly negative self-schema is a proposed cognitive mechanism of major depressive disorder (MDD). Self-schema - one's core conception of self, including how strongly one believes one possesses various characteristics - is part of semantic memory (SM), our knowledge about concepts and their relationships. We used the N400 event-related potential (ERP) - elicited by meaningful stimuli, and reduced by greater association of the stimulus with preceding context - to measure association strength between self-concept and positive, negative, and neutral characteristics in SM. ERPs were recorded from MDD patients (n=16) and controls (n=16) who viewed trials comprising a self-referential phrase followed by a positive, negative, or neutral adjective. Participants' task was to indicate via button-press whether or not they felt each adjective described themselves. Controls endorsed more positive adjectives than did MDD patients, but the opposite was true for negative adjectives. Patients had smaller N400s than controls specifically for negative adjectives, suggesting that MDD is associated with stronger than normal functional neural links between self-concept and negative characteristics in SM. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  20. Blind Separation of Event-Related Brain Responses into Independent Components

    National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

    Makeig, Scott

    1996-01-01

    .... We report here a method for the blind separation of event-related brain responses into spatially stationary and temporally independent subcomponents using an Independent Component Analysis algorithm...

  1. Semantic relation vs. surprise: the differential effects of related and unrelated co-verbal gestures on neural encoding and subsequent recognition.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Straube, Benjamin; Meyer, Lea; Green, Antonia; Kircher, Tilo

    2014-06-03

    Speech-associated gesturing leads to memory advantages for spoken sentences. However, unexpected or surprising events are also likely to be remembered. With this study we test the hypothesis that different neural mechanisms (semantic elaboration and surprise) lead to memory advantages for iconic and unrelated gestures. During fMRI-data acquisition participants were presented with video clips of an actor verbalising concrete sentences accompanied by iconic gestures (IG; e.g., circular gesture; sentence: "The man is sitting at the round table"), unrelated free gestures (FG; e.g., unrelated up down movements; same sentence) and no gestures (NG; same sentence). After scanning, recognition performance for the three conditions was tested. Videos were evaluated regarding semantic relation and surprise by a different group of participants. The semantic relationship between speech and gesture was rated higher for IG (IG>FG), whereas surprise was rated higher for FG (FG>IG). Activation of the hippocampus correlated with subsequent memory performance of both gesture conditions (IG+FG>NG). For the IG condition we found activation in the left temporal pole and middle cingulate cortex (MCC; IG>FG). In contrast, for the FG condition posterior thalamic structures (FG>IG) as well as anterior and posterior cingulate cortices were activated (FG>NG). Our behavioral and fMRI-data suggest different mechanisms for processing related and unrelated co-verbal gestures, both of them leading to enhanced memory performance. Whereas activation in MCC and left temporal pole for iconic co-verbal gestures may reflect semantic memory processes, memory enhancement for unrelated gestures relies on the surprise response, mediated by anterior/posterior cingulate cortex and thalamico-hippocampal structures. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  2. Trial latencies estimation of event-related potentials in EEG by means of genetic algorithms

    Science.gov (United States)

    Da Pelo, P.; De Tommaso, M.; Monaco, A.; Stramaglia, S.; Bellotti, R.; Tangaro, S.

    2018-04-01

    Objective. Event-related potentials (ERPs) are usually obtained by averaging thus neglecting the trial-to-trial latency variability in cognitive electroencephalography (EEG) responses. As a consequence the shape and the peak amplitude of the averaged ERP are smeared and reduced, respectively, when the single-trial latencies show a relevant variability. To date, the majority of the methodologies for single-trial latencies inference are iterative schemes providing suboptimal solutions, the most commonly used being the Woody’s algorithm. Approach. In this study, a global approach is developed by introducing a fitness function whose global maximum corresponds to the set of latencies which renders the trial signals most aligned as possible. A suitable genetic algorithm has been implemented to solve the optimization problem, characterized by new genetic operators tailored to the present problem. Main results. The results, on simulated trials, showed that the proposed algorithm performs better than Woody’s algorithm in all conditions, at the cost of an increased computational complexity (justified by the improved quality of the solution). Application of the proposed approach on real data trials, resulted in an increased correlation between latencies and reaction times w.r.t. the output from RIDE method. Significance. The above mentioned results on simulated and real data indicate that the proposed method, providing a better estimate of single-trial latencies, will open the way to more accurate study of neural responses as well as to the issue of relating the variability of latencies to the proper cognitive and behavioural correlates.

  3. Extending or creating a new brand: evidence from a study on event-related potentials.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jin, Jia; Wang, Cuicui; Yu, Liping; Ma, Qingguo

    2015-07-08

    Brand strategy is a critical problem in new product promotion. In relation to this, producers typically have two main options, namely, brand extension and new brand creation. The current study investigated the neural basis of evaluating these brand strategies at the brain level by using event-related potentials. The experiment used a word-pair paradigm, in which the first word was either a famous beverage brand name or a newly created brand, and the second word was a product name from one of the two product categories (beverage or household appliance). Therefore, four conditions existed as follows: a famous beverage brand paired with a beverage product (BB) or with a household appliance (BH) and a newly created brand paired with a beverage product (NB) or with a household appliance (NH). Behavioral results showed that brand extension obtained a higher acceptance rate than new brand creation under the beverage product category; however, a lower acceptance rate was observed under the household appliance category. Moreover, at the brain level, BB elicited lower N400 mean amplitude than the new brand product NB, whereas BH led to higher N400 amplitude than the new brand product NH. These results showed that the likelihood of accepting a product depended on the association between the brand name and product name, and that the N400 could serve as an index of brand strategy evaluation. In addition, this study also confirmed that brand extension is not always the best brand strategy; an inappropriate extension sometimes performed worse than the creation of a new brand.

  4. The role of automaticity and attention in neural processes underlying empathy for happiness, sadness, and anxiety

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sylvia A. Morelli

    2013-05-01

    Full Text Available Although many studies have examined the neural basis of experiencing empathy, relatively little is known about how empathic processes are affected by different attentional conditions. Thus, we examined whether instructions to empathize might amplify responses in empathy-related regions and whether cognitive load would diminish the involvement of these regions. 32 participants completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging session assessing empathic responses to individuals experiencing happy, sad, and anxious events. Stimuli were presented under three conditions: watching naturally, while instructed to empathize, and under cognitive load. Across analyses, we found evidence for a core set of neural regions that support empathic processes (dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, DMPFC; medial prefrontal cortex, MPFC; temporoparietal junction, TPJ; amygdala; ventral anterior insula, AI; septal area, SA. Two key regions – the ventral AI and SA – were consistently active across all attentional conditions, suggesting that they are automatically engaged during empathy. In addition, watching versus empathizing with targets was not markedly different and instead led to similar subjective and neural responses to others’ emotional experiences. In contrast, cognitive load reduced the subjective experience of empathy and diminished neural responses in several regions related to empathy (DMPFC, MPFC, TPJ, amygdala and social cognition. The current results reveal how attention impacts empathic processes and provides insight into how empathy may unfold in everyday interactions.

  5. A Neural Network Approach to Muon Triggering in ATLAS

    CERN Document Server

    Livneh, Ran; CERN. Geneva

    2007-01-01

    The extremely high rate of events that will be produced in the future Large Hadron Collider requires the triggering mechanism to make precise decisions in a few nano-seconds. This poses a complicated inverse problem, arising from the inhomogeneous nature of the magnetic fields in ATLAS. This thesis presents a study of an application of Artificial Neural Networks to the muon triggering problem in the ATLAS end-cap. A comparison with realistic results from the ATLAS first level trigger simulation was in favour of the neural network, but this is mainly due to superior resolution available off-line. Other options for applying a neural network to this problem are discussed.

  6. Neural Connectivity and Immunocytochemical Studies of Anatomical Sites Related to Nauseogenic and Emetic Reflexes

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fox, Robert A. (Principal Investigator)

    1992-01-01

    The studies conducted in this research project examined several aspects of neuroanatomical structures and neurochemical processes related to motion sickness in animal models. A principle objective of these studies was to investigate neurochemical changes in the central nervous system that are related to motion sickness with the objective of defining neural mechanisms important to this malady. For purposes of exposition, the studies and research finding have been classified into five categories. These are: immunoreactivity in the brainstem, vasopressin effects, lesion studies of area postrema, role of the vagus nerve, and central nervous system structure related to adaptation to microgravity.

  7. Processing of visual semantic information to concrete words: temporal dynamics and neural mechanisms indicated by event-related brain potentials( ).

    Science.gov (United States)

    van Schie, Hein T; Wijers, Albertus A; Mars, Rogier B; Benjamins, Jeroen S; Stowe, Laurie A

    2005-05-01

    Event-related brain potentials were used to study the retrieval of visual semantic information to concrete words, and to investigate possible structural overlap between visual object working memory and concreteness effects in word processing. Subjects performed an object working memory task that involved 5 s retention of simple 4-angled polygons (load 1), complex 10-angled polygons (load 2), and a no-load baseline condition. During the polygon retention interval subjects were presented with a lexical decision task to auditory presented concrete (imageable) and abstract (nonimageable) words, and pseudowords. ERP results are consistent with the use of object working memory for the visualisation of concrete words. Our data indicate a two-step processing model of visual semantics in which visual descriptive information of concrete words is first encoded in semantic memory (indicated by an anterior N400 and posterior occipital positivity), and is subsequently visualised via the network for object working memory (reflected by a left frontal positive slow wave and a bilateral occipital slow wave negativity). Results are discussed in the light of contemporary models of semantic memory.

  8. The neural correlates of cognitive reappraisal during emotional autobiographical memory recall.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Holland, Alisha C; Kensinger, Elizabeth A

    2013-01-01

    We used fMRI to investigate the neural processes engaged as individuals down- and up-regulated the emotions associated with negative autobiographical memories (AMs) using cognitive reappraisal strategies. Our analyses examined neural activity during three separate phases, as participants (a) viewed a reappraisal instruction (i.e., Decrease, Increase, Maintain), (b) searched for an AM referenced by a self-generated cue, and (c) elaborated upon the details of the AM being held in mind. Decreasing emotional intensity primarily engaged activity in regions previously implicated in cognitive control (e.g., dorsal and ventral lateral pFC), emotion generation and processing (e.g., amygdala, insula), and visual imagery (e.g., precuneus) as participants searched for and retrieved events. In contrast, increasing emotional intensity engaged similar regions during the instruction phase (i.e., before a memory cue was presented) and again as individuals later elaborated upon the details of the events they had recalled. These findings confirm that reappraisal can modulate neural activity during the recall of personally relevant events, although the time course of this modulation appears to depend on whether individuals are attempting to down- or up-regulate their emotions.

  9. Neural activity in the reward-related brain regions predicts implicit self-esteem: A novel validity test of psychological measures using neuroimaging.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Izuma, Keise; Kennedy, Kate; Fitzjohn, Alexander; Sedikides, Constantine; Shibata, Kazuhisa

    2018-03-01

    Self-esteem, arguably the most important attitudes an individual possesses, has been a premier research topic in psychology for more than a century. Following a surge of interest in implicit attitude measures in the 90s, researchers have tried to assess self-esteem implicitly to circumvent the influence of biases inherent in explicit measures. However, the validity of implicit self-esteem measures remains elusive. Critical tests are often inconclusive, as the validity of such measures is examined in the backdrop of imperfect behavioral measures. To overcome this serious limitation, we tested the neural validity of the most widely used implicit self-esteem measure, the implicit association test (IAT). Given the conceptualization of self-esteem as attitude toward the self, and neuroscience findings that the reward-related brain regions represent an individual's attitude or preference for an object when viewing its image, individual differences in implicit self-esteem should be associated with neural signals in the reward-related regions during passive-viewing of self-face (the most obvious representation of the self). Using multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) on functional MRI (fMRI) data, we demonstrate that the neural signals in the reward-related regions were robustly associated with implicit (but not explicit) self-esteem, thus providing unique evidence for the neural validity of the self-esteem IAT. In addition, both implicit and explicit self-esteem were related, although differently, to neural signals in regions involved in self-processing. Our finding highlights the utility of neuroscience methods in addressing fundamental psychological questions and providing unique insights into important psychological constructs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

  10. Event-related frontal alpha asymmetries: electrophysiological correlates of approach motivation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schöne, Benjamin; Schomberg, Jessica; Gruber, Thomas; Quirin, Markus

    2016-02-01

    Over the last decades, frontal alpha asymmetries observed during resting state periods of several minutes have been used as a marker of affective-motivational states. To date, there is no evidence that alpha asymmetries can be observed in response to brief affective-motivational stimuli, as typically presented in event-related designs. As we argue, frontal alpha asymmetry might indeed be elicited by brief events if they are salient enough. In an event-related design, we used erotic pictures, i.e., highly salient incentives to elicit approach motivation, and contrasted them with pictures of dressed attractive women. As expected, we found significant alpha asymmetries for erotic pictures as compared to control pictures. Our findings suggest that the highly reactive reward system can lead to immediate, phasic changes in frontal alpha asymmetries. We discuss the findings with respect to the notion that high salience of erotic pictures derives from their potential of satisfying an individuals' need by mere visual inspection, which is not the case for pictures showing other types of motivational stimuli such as food.

  11. Power to punish norm violations affects the neural processes of fairness-related decision making

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Xuemei eCheng

    2015-12-01

    Full Text Available Punishing norm violations is considered an important motive during rejection of unfair offers in the Ultimatum Game (UG. The present study investigates the impact of the power to punish norm violations on people’s responses to unfairness and associated neural correlates. In the UG condition participants had the power to punish norm violations, while an alternate condition, the Impunity Game (IG, was presented where participants had no power to punish norm violations since rejection only reduced the responder’s income to zero. Results showed that unfair offers were rejected more often in UG compared to IG. At the neural level, anterior insula and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex were more active when participants received and rejected unfair offers in both UG and IG. Moreover, greater dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activity was observed when participants rejected than accepted unfair offers in UG but not in IG. Ventromedial prefrontal cortex activation was higher in UG than IG when unfair offers were accepted as well as when rejecting unfair offers in IG as opposed to UG. Taken together, our results demonstrate that the power to punish norm violations affects not only people’s behavioral responses to unfairness but also the neural correlates of the fairness-related social decision-making process.

  12. Estimation of neural energy in microelectrode signals

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gaumond, R. P.; Clement, R.; Silva, R.; Sander, D.

    2004-09-01

    We considered the problem of determining the neural contribution to the signal recorded by an intracortical electrode. We developed a linear least-squares approach to determine the energy fraction of a signal attributable to an arbitrary number of autocorrelation-defined signals buried in noise. Application of the method requires estimation of autocorrelation functions Rap(tgr) characterizing the action potential (AP) waveforms and Rn(tgr) characterizing background noise. This method was applied to the analysis of chronically implanted microelectrode signals from motor cortex of rat. We found that neural (AP) energy consisted of a large-signal component which grows linearly with the number of threshold-detected neural events and a small-signal component unrelated to the count of threshold-detected AP signals. The addition of pseudorandom noise to electrode signals demonstrated the algorithm's effectiveness for a wide range of noise-to-signal energy ratios (0.08 to 39). We suggest, therefore, that the method could be of use in providing a measure of neural response in situations where clearly identified spike waveforms cannot be isolated, or in providing an additional 'background' measure of microelectrode neural activity to supplement the traditional AP spike count.

  13. The Neural Basis of Vocal Pitch Imitation in Humans.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Belyk, Michel; Pfordresher, Peter Q; Liotti, Mario; Brown, Steven

    2016-04-01

    Vocal imitation is a phenotype that is unique to humans among all primate species, and so an understanding of its neural basis is critical in explaining the emergence of both speech and song in human evolution. Two principal neural models of vocal imitation have emerged from a consideration of nonhuman animals. One hypothesis suggests that putative mirror neurons in the inferior frontal gyrus pars opercularis of Broca's area may be important for imitation. An alternative hypothesis derived from the study of songbirds suggests that the corticostriate motor pathway performs sensorimotor processes that are specific to vocal imitation. Using fMRI with a sparse event-related sampling design, we investigated the neural basis of vocal imitation in humans by comparing imitative vocal production of pitch sequences with both nonimitative vocal production and pitch discrimination. The strongest difference between these tasks was found in the putamen bilaterally, providing a striking parallel to the role of the analogous region in songbirds. Other areas preferentially activated during imitation included the orofacial motor cortex, Rolandic operculum, and SMA, which together outline the corticostriate motor loop. No differences were seen in the inferior frontal gyrus. The corticostriate system thus appears to be the central pathway for vocal imitation in humans, as predicted from an analogy with songbirds.

  14. NFIX Regulates Neural Progenitor Cell Differentiation During Hippocampal Morphogenesis

    Science.gov (United States)

    Heng, Yee Hsieh Evelyn; McLeay, Robert C.; Harvey, Tracey J.; Smith, Aaron G.; Barry, Guy; Cato, Kathleen; Plachez, Céline; Little, Erica; Mason, Sharon; Dixon, Chantelle; Gronostajski, Richard M.; Bailey, Timothy L.; Richards, Linda J.; Piper, Michael

    2014-01-01

    Neural progenitor cells have the ability to give rise to neurons and glia in the embryonic, postnatal and adult brain. During development, the program regulating whether these cells divide and self-renew or exit the cell cycle and differentiate is tightly controlled, and imbalances to the normal trajectory of this process can lead to severe functional consequences. However, our understanding of the molecular regulation of these fundamental events remains limited. Moreover, processes underpinning development of the postnatal neurogenic niches within the cortex remain poorly defined. Here, we demonstrate that Nuclear factor one X (NFIX) is expressed by neural progenitor cells within the embryonic hippocampus, and that progenitor cell differentiation is delayed within Nfix−/− mice. Moreover, we reveal that the morphology of the dentate gyrus in postnatal Nfix−/− mice is abnormal, with fewer subgranular zone neural progenitor cells being generated in the absence of this transcription factor. Mechanistically, we demonstrate that the progenitor cell maintenance factor Sry-related HMG box 9 (SOX9) is upregulated in the hippocampus of Nfix−/− mice and demonstrate that NFIX can repress Sox9 promoter-driven transcription. Collectively, our findings demonstrate that NFIX plays a central role in hippocampal morphogenesis, regulating the formation of neuronal and glial populations within this structure. PMID:23042739

  15. The impact of oxytocin administration and maternal love withdrawal on event-related potential (ERP) responses to emotional faces with performance feedback.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Huffmeijer, Renske; Alink, Lenneke R A; Tops, Mattie; Grewen, Karen M; Light, Kathleen C; Bakermans-Kranenburg, Marian J; van Ijzendoorn, Marinus H

    2013-03-01

    This is the first experimental study on the effect of oxytocin administration on the neural processing of facial stimuli conducted with female participants that uses event-related potentials (ERPs). Using a double-blind, placebo-controlled within-subjects design, we studied the effects of 16 IU of intranasal oxytocin on ERPs to pictures combining performance feedback with emotional facial expressions in 48 female undergraduate students. Participants also reported on the amount of love withdrawal they experienced from their mothers. Vertex positive potential (VPP) and late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes were more positive after oxytocin compared to placebo administration. This suggests that oxytocin increased attention to the feedback stimuli (LPP) and enhanced the processing of emotional faces (VPP). Oxytocin heightened processing of the happy and disgusted faces primarily for those reporting less love withdrawal. Significant associations with LPP amplitude suggest that more maternal love withdrawal relates to the allocation of attention toward the motivationally relevant combination of negative feedback with a disgusted face. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  16. NEUROENDOCRINE FUNCTIONS OF PUERPERAE WITH POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION AGGRAVATED BY STRESSFUL CHILDBIRTH-RELATED EVENTS.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Song, W; Yu, S

    2015-01-01

    In the period of gestation, delivery and post-delivery, fear and tension produced in puerperae are likely to evolve into depression as they worry too much about delivery pain. In recent years, it has been noted that stressful events during this period aggravate postpartum depression. To discuss the effect of these childbirth-related stressful events on neuroendocrine functions of patients with postpartum depression, 300 full-term puerperae who had been admitted to the Beijing Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital, Capital Medical University between October, 2011 and October, 2013 and who had suffered from stressful childbirth-related events were enrolled as a study group. This group was divided into six subgroups, i.e., A, B, C, D, E and F, based on the number of stressful events they had suffered which were labeled by numbers 1 to 6. Additionally, 100 puerperae from the same hospital who had not suffered from childbirth-related stressful events were taken as controls. Relevant clinical indexes, including serum adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH), plasma 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT), noradrenaline ELISA (NE), dopamine (DA) and cortisol level were measured and compared. It was found that incidence probability of postpartum depression was significantly different between the study group (13.67%, 41/300) and the control group (7%, 7/100). Moreover, the incidence probability of postpartum depression of puerperae suffering from no less than 4 childbirth-related stressful events was higher than those suffering from no more than 3, and the difference was statistically significant (Pdepression.

  17. Suicide in Relation to the Experience of Stressful Life Events

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Fjeldsted, Rita; Teasdale, Thomas William; Jensen, Martin

    2017-01-01

    Stressful life events have been associated with high risk of suicidal behavior. The aim of this study was to examine whether persons who died by suicide in Denmark had more frequently been exposed to stressful life events, specifically divorce, death of a close relative, exposure to violence......, and imprisonment, when compared to gender and age-matched controls. Data from Danish national registers were obtained for the period of 2000-2010 and a nested case-control design was applied. The association between exposure to stressful life events and suicide was examined using logistic regression analysis...... compared to controls. People who died by suicide had 1.5-fold (CI-95%: 1.3-1.6) higher risk of having experienced a divorce. Stressful life events, such as divorce and imprisonment, were more frequent in temporal proximity to the date of death among the suicide cases than for end of exposure for controls...

  18. Who Are the True Fans? Evidence from an Event-Related Potential Study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ma, Qingguo; Jin, Jia; Yuan, Ruixian; Zhang, Wuke

    2015-01-01

    Fans of celebrities commonly exist in modern society. Researchers from social science have been concerned with this problem for years. Furthermore, such researchers have attempted to measure people's involvement with celebrities in various ways. However, no study measured the degree of addiction to a specific celebrity at the neurological level. Therefore, the current study employed visually evoked event related potentials (ERPs) to examine people's attitude toward celebrities by comparing different brain activities of fans and non-fans when they were shown a set of photos. These photos include a specific celebrity, a familiar person, a stranger and a butterfly. Furthermore, to examine the validity of the detected neural index, we also investigated the correlation between brain activity and the score of the Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS), which was a questionnaire used to explore people's attitude toward celebrities at behavioral level. Two groups of subjects were asked to complete an implicit task, i.e., to press a button when a picture of a butterfly appeared. Results revealed that fans showed significant positive N2 and P300 deflection when viewing the photos of their favorite celebrity, whereas in the non-fan group, the subjects only showed larger P300 amplitude as a response to the celebrity's photos. Furthermore, a positive correlation between P300 amplitude elicited by the stimuli of a celebrity face and CAS scores was also observed. These findings indicated fan attitude to a specific celebrity can also be observed at the neurological level and suggested the potential utility of using ERP component as an index of fandom involvement.

  19. Tracking and vertex finding with drift chambers and neural networks

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Lindsey, C.

    1991-09-01

    Finding tracks, track vertices and event vertices with neural networks from drift chamber signals is discussed. Simulated feed-forward neural networks have been trained with back-propagation to give track parameters using Monte Carlo simulated tracks in one case and actual experimental data in another. Effects on network performance of limited weight resolution, noise and drift chamber resolution are given. Possible implementations in hardware are discussed. 7 refs., 10 figs

  20. Event and Apparent Horizon Finders for 3 + 1 Numerical Relativity.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Thornburg, Jonathan

    2007-01-01

    Event and apparent horizons are key diagnostics for the presence and properties of black holes. In this article I review numerical algorithms and codes for finding event and apparent horizons in numerically-computed spacetimes, focusing on calculations done using the 3 + 1 ADM formalism. The event horizon of an asymptotically-flat spacetime is the boundary between those events from which a future-pointing null geodesic can reach future null infinity and those events from which no such geodesic exists. The event horizon is a (continuous) null surface in spacetime. The event horizon is defined nonlocally in time : it is a global property of the entire spacetime and must be found in a separate post-processing phase after all (or at least the nonstationary part) of spacetime has been numerically computed. There are three basic algorithms for finding event horizons, based on integrating null geodesics forwards in time, integrating null geodesics backwards in time, and integrating null surfaces backwards in time. The last of these is generally the most efficient and accurate. In contrast to an event horizon, an apparent horizon is defined locally in time in a spacelike slice and depends only on data in that slice, so it can be (and usually is) found during the numerical computation of a spacetime. A marginally outer trapped surface (MOTS) in a slice is a smooth closed 2-surface whose future-pointing outgoing null geodesics have zero expansion Θ. An apparent horizon is then defined as a MOTS not contained in any other MOTS. The MOTS condition is a nonlinear elliptic partial differential equation (PDE) for the surface shape, containing the ADM 3-metric, its spatial derivatives, and the extrinsic curvature as coefficients. Most "apparent horizon" finders actually find MOTSs. There are a large number of apparent horizon finding algorithms, with differing trade-offs between speed, robustness, accuracy, and ease of programming. In axisymmetry, shooting algorithms work well

  1. Stochastic Oscillation in Self-Organized Critical States of Small Systems: Sensitive Resting State in Neural Systems.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Sheng-Jun; Ouyang, Guang; Guang, Jing; Zhang, Mingsha; Wong, K Y Michael; Zhou, Changsong

    2016-01-08

    Self-organized critical states (SOCs) and stochastic oscillations (SOs) are simultaneously observed in neural systems, which appears to be theoretically contradictory since SOCs are characterized by scale-free avalanche sizes but oscillations indicate typical scales. Here, we show that SOs can emerge in SOCs of small size systems due to temporal correlation between large avalanches at the finite-size cutoff, resulting from the accumulation-release process in SOCs. In contrast, the critical branching process without accumulation-release dynamics cannot exhibit oscillations. The reconciliation of SOCs and SOs is demonstrated both in the sandpile model and robustly in biologically plausible neuronal networks. The oscillations can be suppressed if external inputs eliminate the prominent slow accumulation process, providing a potential explanation of the widely studied Berger effect or event-related desynchronization in neural response. The features of neural oscillations and suppression are confirmed during task processing in monkey eye-movement experiments. Our results suggest that finite-size, columnar neural circuits may play an important role in generating neural oscillations around the critical states, potentially enabling functional advantages of both SOCs and oscillations for sensitive response to transient stimuli.

  2. Neural activations are related to body-shape, anxiety, and outcomes in adolescent anorexia nervosa.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Xu, Jie; Harper, Jessica A; Van Enkevort, Erin A; Latimer, Kelsey; Kelley, Urszula; McAdams, Carrie J

    2017-04-01

    Anorexia nervosa (AN) is an illness that frequently begins during adolescence and involves weight loss. Two groups of adolescent girls (AN-A, weight-recovered following AN) and (HC-A, healthy comparison) completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging task involving social evaluations, allowing comparison of neural activations during self-evaluations, friend-evaluations, and perspective-taking self-evaluations. Although the two groups were not different in their whole-brain activations, anxiety and body shape concerns were correlated with neural activity in a priori regions of interest. A cluster in medial prefrontal cortex and the dorsal anterior cingulate correlated with the body shape questionnaire; subjects with more body shape concerns used this area less during self than friend evaluations. A cluster in medial prefrontal cortex and the cingulate also correlated with anxiety such that more anxiety was associated with engagement when disagreeing rather than agreeing with social terms during self-evaluations. This data suggests that differences in the utilization of frontal brain regions during social evaluations may contribute to both anxiety and body shape concerns in adolescents with AN. Clinical follow-up was obtained, allowing exploration of whether brain function early in course of disease relates to illness trajectory. The adolescents successful in recovery used the posterior cingulate and precuneus more for friend than self evaluations than the adolescents that remained ill, suggesting that neural differences related to social evaluations may provide clinical predictive value. Utilization of both MPFC and the precuneus during social and self evaluations may be a key biological component for achieving sustained weight-recovery in adolescents with AN. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  3. Cardiovascular events in patients with mild autonomous cortisol secretion: analysis with artificial neural networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Morelli, Valentina; Palmieri, Serena; Lania, Andrea; Tresoldi, Alberto; Corbetta, Sabrina; Cairoli, Elisa; Eller-Vainicher, Cristina; Arosio, Maura; Copetti, Massimiliano; Grossi, Enzo; Chiodini, Iacopo

    2017-07-01

    The independent role of mild autonomous cortisol secretion (ACS) in influencing the cardiovascular event (CVE) occurrence is a topic of interest. We investigated the role of mild ACS in the CVE occurrence in patients with adrenal incidentaloma (AI) by standard statistics and artificial neural networks (ANNs). We analyzed a retrospective record of 518 AI patients. Data regarding cortisol levels after 1 mg dexamethasone suppression (1 mg DST) and the presence of obesity (OB), hypertension (AH), type-2 diabetes (T2DM), dyslipidemia (DL), familial CVE history, smoking habit and CVE were collected. The receiver-operating characteristic curve analysis suggested that 1 mg DST, at a cut-off of 1.8 µg/dL, had the best accuracy for detecting patients with increased CVE risk. In patients with 1 mg-DST ≥1.8 µg/dL (DST+, n  = 223), age and prevalence of AH, T2DM, DL and CVE (66 years, 74.5, 25.9, 41.4 and 26.8% respectively) were higher than that of patients with 1 mg-DST ≤1.8 µg/dL (61.9 years, 60.7, 18.5, 32.9 and 10%, respectively, P  Cortisol after 1 mg-DST is independently associated with the CVE occurrence. The ANNs might help for assessing the CVE risk in AI patients. © 2017 European Society of Endocrinology.

  4. The missing link: Mothers’ neural response to infant cry related to infant attachment behaviors

    Science.gov (United States)

    Laurent, Heidemarie K.; Ablow, Jennifer C.

    2012-01-01

    This study addresses a gap in the attachment literature by investigating maternal neural response to cry related to infant attachment classifications and behaviors. Twenty-two primiparous mothers and their 18-month old infants completed the Strange Situation Procedure (SS) to elicit attachment behaviors. During a separate functional MRI session, mothers were exposed to their own infant’s cry sound, as well as an unfamiliar infant’s cry and control sound. Maternal neural response to own infant cry related to both overall attachment security and specific infant behaviors. Mothers of less secure infants maintained greater activation to their cry in left parahippocampal and amygdala regions and the right posterior insula. consistent with a negative schematic response bias. Mothers of infants exhibiting more avoidant or contact maintaining behaviors during the SS showed diminished response across left prefrontal, parietal, and cerebellar areas involved in attentional processing and cognitive control. Mothers of infants exhibiting more disorganized behavior showed reduced response in bilateral temporal and subcallosal areas relevant to social cognition and emotion regulation. No differences by attachment classification were found. Implications for attachment transmission models are discussed. PMID:22982277

  5. The missing link: mothers' neural response to infant cry related to infant attachment behaviors.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Laurent, Heidemarie K; Ablow, Jennifer C

    2012-12-01

    This study addresses a gap in the attachment literature by investigating maternal neural response to cry related to infant attachment classifications and behaviors. Twenty-two primiparous mothers and their 18-month old infants completed the Strange Situation (SS) procedure to elicit attachment behaviors. During a separate functional MRI session, mothers were exposed to their own infant's cry sound, as well as an unfamiliar infant's cry and control sound. Maternal neural response to own infant cry related to both overall attachment security and specific infant behaviors. Mothers of less secure infants maintained greater activation to their cry in left parahippocampal and amygdala regions and the right posterior insula consistent with a negative schematic response bias. Mothers of infants exhibiting more avoidant or contact maintaining behaviors during the SS showed diminished response across left prefrontal, parietal, and cerebellar areas involved in attentional processing and cognitive control. Mothers of infants exhibiting more disorganized behavior showed reduced response in bilateral temporal and subcallosal areas relevant to social cognition and emotion regulation. No differences by attachment classification were found. Implications for attachment transmission models are discussed. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  6. Are event-related potentials to dynamic facial expressions of emotion related to individual differences in the accuracy of processing facial expressions and identity?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Recio, Guillermo; Wilhelm, Oliver; Sommer, Werner; Hildebrandt, Andrea

    2017-04-01

    Despite a wealth of knowledge about the neural mechanisms behind emotional facial expression processing, little is known about how they relate to individual differences in social cognition abilities. We studied individual differences in the event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by dynamic facial expressions. First, we assessed the latent structure of the ERPs, reflecting structural face processing in the N170, and the allocation of processing resources and reflexive attention to emotionally salient stimuli, in the early posterior negativity (EPN) and the late positive complex (LPC). Then we estimated brain-behavior relationships between the ERP factors and behavioral indicators of facial identity and emotion-processing abilities. Structural models revealed that the participants who formed faster structural representations of neutral faces (i.e., shorter N170 latencies) performed better at face perception (r = -.51) and memory (r = -.42). The N170 amplitude was not related to individual differences in face cognition or emotion processing. The latent EPN factor correlated with emotion perception (r = .47) and memory (r = .32), and also with face perception abilities (r = .41). Interestingly, the latent factor representing the difference in EPN amplitudes between the two neutral control conditions (chewing and blinking movements) also correlated with emotion perception (r = .51), highlighting the importance of tracking facial changes in the perception of emotional facial expressions. The LPC factor for negative expressions correlated with the memory for emotional facial expressions. The links revealed between the latency and strength of activations of brain systems and individual differences in processing socio-emotional information provide new insights into the brain mechanisms involved in social communication.

  7. The development of prospective memory (PM across adolescence: An Event-related potential analysis.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Candice eBowman

    2015-06-01

    Full Text Available Prospective memory (PM is an important cognitive function vital for day-to-day functioning. Although there has been extensive research into the decline of PM in older adulthood, little is known about its developmental trajectory throughout adolescence, a time of important brain maturation. In the present study, the development of PM was examined in 85 participants across the following groups: 12 to 13-year-olds (n = 19, 14 to 15-year-olds (n = 21, 16 to 17-year-olds (n = 19, and 18 to 19-year-olds (n = 26. A 30-cue (30 minute event-based PM task (with font-colour stimuli as PM cues and a lexical-decision task as the ongoing task was used while recording Event-Related Potentials (ERPs. The well-established neural correlates of PM, the N300 and parietal positivity, were examined across the age groups. In addition, hierarchical multiple regressions were used to examine the unique contribution of executive functioning measures (viz., the Self-Ordered Pointing Task [SOPT], the Stroop task, and Trail Making Test [TMT] on the ERP components of PM (after controlling for age. First, the established components of ERPs associated with prospective remembering (i.e., N300 and parietal positivity were detected for each age group. Second, although there were no significant age- group differences on the amplitude of the N300, the amplitude of the parietal positivity was found to be different between the 12 to 13-year-olds and 18 to 19-year-olds (viz., the 12 to 13-year-olds had the highest amplitude. Third, for the contribution of executive functioning measures on the amplitude of the ERP components of PM, the regression on the N300 was not significant, however, the SOPT beta weights were significant predictors of the amplitude of the parietal positivity. This relationship was found to be specific for the central and right electrode region. These findings are discussed within the context of brain development and executive functioning along with particular task

  8. Neural Mechanisms Underlying the Cost of Task Switching: An ERP Study

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Ling; Wang, Meng; Zhao, Qian-Jing; Fogelson, Noa

    2012-01-01

    Background When switching from one task to a new one, reaction times are prolonged. This phenomenon is called switch cost (SC). Researchers have recently used several kinds of task-switching paradigms to uncover neural mechanisms underlying the SC. Task-set reconfiguration and passive dissipation of a previously relevant task-set have been reported to contribute to the cost of task switching. Methodology/Principal Findings An unpredictable cued task-switching paradigm was used, during which subjects were instructed to switch between a color and an orientation discrimination task. Electroencephalography (EEG) and behavioral measures were recorded in 14 subjects. Response-stimulus interval (RSI) and cue-stimulus interval (CSI) were manipulated with short and long intervals, respectively. Switch trials delayed reaction times (RTs) and increased error rates compared with repeat trials. The SC of RTs was smaller in the long CSI condition. For cue-locked waveforms, switch trials generated a larger parietal positive event-related potential (ERP), and a larger slow parietal positivity compared with repeat trials in the short and long CSI condition. Neural SC of cue-related ERP positivity was smaller in the long RSI condition. For stimulus-locked waveforms, a larger switch-related central negative ERP component was observed, and the neural SC of the ERP negativity was smaller in the long CSI. Results of standardized low resolution electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA) for both ERP positivity and negativity showed that switch trials evoked larger activation than repeat trials in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and posterior parietal cortex (PPC). Conclusions/Significance The results provide evidence that both RSI and CSI modulate the neural activities in the process of task-switching, but that these have a differential role during task-set reconfiguration and passive dissipation of a previously relevant task-set. PMID:22860090

  9. Neural mechanisms underlying the cost of task switching: an ERP study.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ling Li

    Full Text Available BACKGROUND: When switching from one task to a new one, reaction times are prolonged. This phenomenon is called switch cost (SC. Researchers have recently used several kinds of task-switching paradigms to uncover neural mechanisms underlying the SC. Task-set reconfiguration and passive dissipation of a previously relevant task-set have been reported to contribute to the cost of task switching. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: An unpredictable cued task-switching paradigm was used, during which subjects were instructed to switch between a color and an orientation discrimination task. Electroencephalography (EEG and behavioral measures were recorded in 14 subjects. Response-stimulus interval (RSI and cue-stimulus interval (CSI were manipulated with short and long intervals, respectively. Switch trials delayed reaction times (RTs and increased error rates compared with repeat trials. The SC of RTs was smaller in the long CSI condition. For cue-locked waveforms, switch trials generated a larger parietal positive event-related potential (ERP, and a larger slow parietal positivity compared with repeat trials in the short and long CSI condition. Neural SC of cue-related ERP positivity was smaller in the long RSI condition. For stimulus-locked waveforms, a larger switch-related central negative ERP component was observed, and the neural SC of the ERP negativity was smaller in the long CSI. Results of standardized low resolution electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA for both ERP positivity and negativity showed that switch trials evoked larger activation than repeat trials in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC and posterior parietal cortex (PPC. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The results provide evidence that both RSI and CSI modulate the neural activities in the process of task-switching, but that these have a differential role during task-set reconfiguration and passive dissipation of a previously relevant task-set.

  10. Emotion and attention : Event-related brain potential studies

    OpenAIRE

    Schupp, Harald Thomas; Flaisch, Tobias; Stockburger, Jessica; Junghöfer, Markus

    2006-01-01

    Emotional pictures guide selective visual attention. A series of event-related brain potential (ERP) studies is reviewed demonstrating the consistent and robust modulation of specific ERP components by emotional images. Specifically, pictures depicting natural pleasant and unpleasant scenes are associated with an increased early posterior negativity, late positive potential, and sustained positive slow wave compared with neutral contents. These modulations are considered to index different st...

  11. Decision Trajectories in Dementia Care Networks: Decisions and Related Key Events.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Groen-van de Ven, Leontine; Smits, Carolien; Oldewarris, Karen; Span, Marijke; Jukema, Jan; Eefsting, Jan; Vernooij-Dassen, Myrra

    2017-10-01

    This prospective multiperspective study provides insight into the decision trajectories of people with dementia by studying the decisions made and related key events. This study includes three waves of interviews, conducted between July 2010 and July 2012, with 113 purposefully selected respondents (people with beginning to advanced stages of dementia and their informal and professional caregivers) completed in 12 months (285 interviews). Our multilayered qualitative analysis consists of content analysis, timeline methods, and constant comparison. Four decision themes emerged-managing daily life, arranging support, community living, and preparing for the future. Eight key events delineate the decision trajectories of people with dementia. Decisions and key events differ between people with dementia living alone and living with a caregiver. Our study clarifies that decisions relate not only to the disease but to living with the dementia. Individual differences in decision content and sequence may effect shared decision-making and advance care planning.

  12. Analysis of Paks NPP Personnel Activity during Safety Related Event Sequences

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Bareith, A.; Hollo, Elod; Karsa, Z.; Nagy, S.

    1998-01-01

    Within the AGNES Project (Advanced Generic and New Evaluation of Safety) the Level-1 PSA model of the Paks NPP Unit 3 was developed in form of a detailed event tree/fault tree structure (53 initiating events, 580 event sequences, 6300 basic events are involved). This model gives a good basis for quantitative evaluation of potential consequences of actually occurred safety-related events, i.e. for precursor event studies. To make these studies possible and efficient, the current qualitative event analysis practice should be reviewed and a new additional quantitative analysis procedure and system should be developed and applied. The present paper gives an overview of the method outlined for both qualitative and quantitative analyses of the operator crew activity during off-normal situations. First, the operator performance experienced during past operational events is discussed. Sources of raw information, the qualitative evaluation process, the follow-up actions, as well as the documentation requirements are described. Second, the general concept of the proposed precursor event analysis is described. Types of modeled interactions and the considered performance influences are presented. The quantification of the potential consequences of the identified precursor events is based on the task-oriented, Level-1 PSA model of the plant unit. A precursor analysis system covering the evaluation of operator activities is now under development. Preliminary results gained during a case study evaluation of a past historical event are presented. (authors)

  13. Wood Modification at High Temperature and Pressurized Steam: a Relational Model of Mechanical Properties Based on a Neural Network

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hong Yang

    2015-07-01

    Full Text Available Thermally modified wood has high dimensional stability and biological durability.But if the process parameters of thermal modification are not appropriate, then there will be a decline in the physical properties of wood.A neural network algorithm was employed in this study to establish the relationship between the process parameters of high-temperature and high-pressure thermal modification and the mechanical properties of the wood. Three important parameters: temperature, relative humidity, and treatment time, were considered as the inputs to the neural network. Back propagation (BP neural network and radial basis function (RBF neural network models for prediction were built and compared. The comparison showed that the RBF neural network model had advantages in network structure, convergence speed, and generalization capacity. On this basis, the inverse model, reflecting the relationship between the process parameters and the mechanical properties of wood, was established. Given the desired mechanical properties of the wood, the thermal modification process parameters could be inversely optimized and predicted. The results indicated that the model has good learning ability and generalization capacity. This is of great importance for the theoretical and applicational studies of the thermal modification of wood.

  14. The neural correlates of agrammatism: Evidence from aphasic and healthy speakers performing an overt picture description task

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Eva eSchoenberger

    2014-03-01

    Full Text Available Functional brain imaging studies have improved our knowledge of the neural localization of language functions and the functional recovery after a lesion. However, the neural correlates of agrammatic symptoms in aphasia remain largely unknown. The present fMRI study examined the neural correlates of morpho-syntactic encoding and agrammatic errors in continuous language production by combining three approaches. First, the neural mechanisms underlying natural morpho-syntactic processing in a picture description task were analyzed in 15 healthy speakers. Second, agrammatic-like speech behavior was induced in the same group of healthy speakers to study the underlying functional processes by limiting the utterance length. In a third approach, five agrammatic participants performed the picture description task to gain insights in the neural correlates of agrammatism and the functional reorganization of language processing after stroke. In all approaches, utterances were analyzed for syntactic completeness, complexity and morphology. Event-related data analysis was conducted by defining every clause-like unit (CLU as an event with its onset-time and duration. Agrammatic and correct CLUs were contrasted. Due to the small sample size as well as heterogeneous lesion sizes and sites with lesion foci in the insula lobe, inferior frontal, superior temporal and inferior parietal areas the activation patterns in the agrammatic speakers were analyzed on a single subject level. In the group of healthy speakers, posterior temporal and inferior parietal areas were associated with greater morpho-syntactic demands in complete and complex CLUs. The intentional manipulation of morpho-syntactic structures and the omission of function words were associated with additional inferior frontal activation. Overall, the results revealed that the investigation of the neural correlates of agrammatic language production can be reasonably conducted with an overt language production

  15. The neural correlates of agrammatism: Evidence from aphasic and healthy speakers performing an overt picture description task.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schönberger, Eva; Heim, Stefan; Meffert, Elisabeth; Pieperhoff, Peter; da Costa Avelar, Patricia; Huber, Walter; Binkofski, Ferdinand; Grande, Marion

    2014-01-01

    Functional brain imaging studies have improved our knowledge of the neural localization of language functions and the functional reorganization after a lesion. However, the neural correlates of agrammatic symptoms in aphasia remain largely unknown. The present fMRI study examined the neural correlates of morpho-syntactic encoding and agrammatic errors in continuous language production by combining three approaches. First, the neural mechanisms underlying natural morpho-syntactic processing in a picture description task were analyzed in 15 healthy speakers. Second, agrammatic-like speech behavior was induced in the same group of healthy speakers to study the underlying functional processes by limiting the utterance length. In a third approach, five agrammatic participants performed the picture description task to gain insights in the neural correlates of agrammatism and the functional reorganization of language processing after stroke. In all approaches, utterances were analyzed for syntactic completeness, complexity, and morphology. Event-related data analysis was conducted by defining every clause-like unit (CLU) as an event with its onset-time and duration. Agrammatic and correct CLUs were contrasted. Due to the small sample size as well as heterogeneous lesion sizes and sites with lesion foci in the insula lobe, inferior frontal, superior temporal and inferior parietal areas the activation patterns in the agrammatic speakers were analyzed on a single subject level. In the group of healthy speakers, posterior temporal and inferior parietal areas were associated with greater morpho-syntactic demands in complete and complex CLUs. The intentional manipulation of morpho-syntactic structures and the omission of function words were associated with additional inferior frontal activation. Overall, the results revealed that the investigation of the neural correlates of agrammatic language production can be reasonably conducted with an overt language production paradigm.

  16. Integration of sensory information precedes the sensation of vection: a combined behavioral and event-related brain potential (ERP) study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Keshavarz, Behrang; Berti, Stefan

    2014-02-01

    Illusory self-motion (known as vection) describes the sensation of ego-motion in the absence of physical movement. Vection typically occurs in stationary observers being exposed to visual information that suggest self-motion (e.g. simulators, virtual reality). In the present study, we tested whether sensory integration of visual information triggers vection: participants (N=13) perceived patterns of moving altered black-and-white vertical stripes on a screen that was divided into a central and a surrounding peripheral visual field. In both fields the pattern was either moving or stationary, resulting in four combinations of central and peripheral motions: (1) central and peripheral stripes moved into the same direction, (2) central and peripheral stripes moved in opposite directions, or (3) either the central or (4) the peripheral stripes were stable while the other stripes were in motion. This stimulation induced vection: Results showed significantly higher vection ratings when the stationary center of the pattern was surrounded by a moving periphery. Event-related potentials mirrored this finding: The occipital N2 was largest with stationary central and moving peripheral stripes. Our findings suggest that sensory integration of peripheral and central visual information triggers the perception of vection. Furthermore, we found evidence that neural processes precede the subjective perception of vection strength prior to the actual onset of vection. We will discuss our findings with respect to the role of stimulus eccentricity, stimulus' depth, and neural correlates involved during the genesis of vection. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  17. Visual working memory load-related changes in neural activity and functional connectivity.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ling Li

    Full Text Available BACKGROUND: Visual working memory (VWM helps us store visual information to prepare for subsequent behavior. The neuronal mechanisms for sustaining coherent visual information and the mechanisms for limited VWM capacity have remained uncharacterized. Although numerous studies have utilized behavioral accuracy, neural activity, and connectivity to explore the mechanism of VWM retention, little is known about the load-related changes in functional connectivity for hemi-field VWM retention. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: In this study, we recorded electroencephalography (EEG from 14 normal young adults while they performed a bilateral visual field memory task. Subjects had more rapid and accurate responses to the left visual field (LVF memory condition. The difference in mean amplitude between the ipsilateral and contralateral event-related potential (ERP at parietal-occipital electrodes in retention interval period was obtained with six different memory loads. Functional connectivity between 128 scalp regions was measured by EEG phase synchronization in the theta- (4-8 Hz, alpha- (8-12 Hz, beta- (12-32 Hz, and gamma- (32-40 Hz frequency bands. The resulting matrices were converted to graphs, and mean degree, clustering coefficient and shortest path length was computed as a function of memory load. The results showed that brain networks of theta-, alpha-, beta-, and gamma- frequency bands were load-dependent and visual-field dependent. The networks of theta- and alpha- bands phase synchrony were most predominant in retention period for right visual field (RVF WM than for LVF WM. Furthermore, only for RVF memory condition, brain network density of theta-band during the retention interval were linked to the delay of behavior reaction time, and the topological property of alpha-band network was negative correlation with behavior accuracy. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: We suggest that the differences in theta- and alpha- bands between LVF and RVF

  18. Visual Working Memory Load-Related Changes in Neural Activity and Functional Connectivity

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Ling; Zhang, Jin-Xiang; Jiang, Tao

    2011-01-01

    Background Visual working memory (VWM) helps us store visual information to prepare for subsequent behavior. The neuronal mechanisms for sustaining coherent visual information and the mechanisms for limited VWM capacity have remained uncharacterized. Although numerous studies have utilized behavioral accuracy, neural activity, and connectivity to explore the mechanism of VWM retention, little is known about the load-related changes in functional connectivity for hemi-field VWM retention. Methodology/Principal Findings In this study, we recorded electroencephalography (EEG) from 14 normal young adults while they performed a bilateral visual field memory task. Subjects had more rapid and accurate responses to the left visual field (LVF) memory condition. The difference in mean amplitude between the ipsilateral and contralateral event-related potential (ERP) at parietal-occipital electrodes in retention interval period was obtained with six different memory loads. Functional connectivity between 128 scalp regions was measured by EEG phase synchronization in the theta- (4–8 Hz), alpha- (8–12 Hz), beta- (12–32 Hz), and gamma- (32–40 Hz) frequency bands. The resulting matrices were converted to graphs, and mean degree, clustering coefficient and shortest path length was computed as a function of memory load. The results showed that brain networks of theta-, alpha-, beta-, and gamma- frequency bands were load-dependent and visual-field dependent. The networks of theta- and alpha- bands phase synchrony were most predominant in retention period for right visual field (RVF) WM than for LVF WM. Furthermore, only for RVF memory condition, brain network density of theta-band during the retention interval were linked to the delay of behavior reaction time, and the topological property of alpha-band network was negative correlation with behavior accuracy. Conclusions/Significance We suggest that the differences in theta- and alpha- bands between LVF and RVF conditions in

  19. Intrusive images in psychological disorders: characteristics, neural mechanisms, and treatment implications.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brewin, Chris R; Gregory, James D; Lipton, Michelle; Burgess, Neil

    2010-01-01

    Involuntary images and visual memories are prominent in many types of psychopathology. Patients with posttraumatic stress disorder, other anxiety disorders, depression, eating disorders, and psychosis frequently report repeated visual intrusions corresponding to a small number of real or imaginary events, usually extremely vivid, detailed, and with highly distressing content. Both memory and imagery appear to rely on common networks involving medial prefrontal regions, posterior regions in the medial and lateral parietal cortices, the lateral temporal cortex, and the medial temporal lobe. Evidence from cognitive psychology and neuroscience implies distinct neural bases to abstract, flexible, contextualized representations (C-reps) and to inflexible, sensory-bound representations (S-reps). We revise our previous dual representation theory of posttraumatic stress disorder to place it within a neural systems model of healthy memory and imagery. The revised model is used to explain how the different types of distressing visual intrusions associated with clinical disorders arise, in terms of the need for correct interaction between the neural systems supporting S-reps and C-reps via visuospatial working memory. Finally, we discuss the treatment implications of the new model and relate it to existing forms of psychological therapy.

  20. Neural activation associated with the cognitive emotion regulation of sadness in healthy children

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Andy C. Belden

    2014-07-01

    Full Text Available When used effectively, cognitive reappraisal of distressing events is a highly adaptive cognitive emotion regulation (CER strategy, with impairments in cognitive reappraisal associated with greater risk for psychopathology. Despite extensive literature examining the neural correlates of cognitive reappraisal in healthy and psychiatrically ill adults, there is a dearth of data to inform the neural bases of CER in children, a key gap in the literature necessary to map the developmental trajectory of cognitive reappraisal. In this fMRI study, psychiatrically healthy schoolchildren were instructed to use cognitive reappraisal to modulate their emotional reactions and responses of negative affect after viewing sad photos. Consistent with the adult literature, when actively engaged in reappraisal compared to passively viewing sad photos, children showed increased activation in the vlPFC, dlPFC, and dmPFC as well as in parietal and temporal lobe regions. When children used cognitive reappraisal to minimize their experience of negative affect after viewing sad stimuli they exhibited dampened amygdala responses. Results are discussed in relation to the importance of identifying and characterizing neural processes underlying adaptive CER strategies in typically developing children in order to understand how these systems go awry and relate to the risk and occurrence of affective disorders.

  1. Network Events on Multiple Space and Time Scales in Cultured Neural Networks and in a Stochastic Rate Model.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Guido Gigante

    2015-11-01

    Full Text Available Cortical networks, in-vitro as well as in-vivo, can spontaneously generate a variety of collective dynamical events such as network spikes, UP and DOWN states, global oscillations, and avalanches. Though each of them has been variously recognized in previous works as expression of the excitability of the cortical tissue and the associated nonlinear dynamics, a unified picture of the determinant factors (dynamical and architectural is desirable and not yet available. Progress has also been partially hindered by the use of a variety of statistical measures to define the network events of interest. We propose here a common probabilistic definition of network events that, applied to the firing activity of cultured neural networks, highlights the co-occurrence of network spikes, power-law distributed avalanches, and exponentially distributed 'quasi-orbits', which offer a third type of collective behavior. A rate model, including synaptic excitation and inhibition with no imposed topology, synaptic short-term depression, and finite-size noise, accounts for all these different, coexisting phenomena. We find that their emergence is largely regulated by the proximity to an oscillatory instability of the dynamics, where the non-linear excitable behavior leads to a self-amplification of activity fluctuations over a wide range of scales in space and time. In this sense, the cultured network dynamics is compatible with an excitation-inhibition balance corresponding to a slightly sub-critical regime. Finally, we propose and test a method to infer the characteristic time of the fatigue process, from the observed time course of the network's firing rate. Unlike the model, possessing a single fatigue mechanism, the cultured network appears to show multiple time scales, signalling the possible coexistence of different fatigue mechanisms.

  2. Long-Term Effects of Concussion on Electrophysiological Indices of Attention in Varsity College Athletes: An Event-Related Potential and Standardized Low-Resolution Brain Electromagnetic Tomography Approach

    Science.gov (United States)

    Molfese, Dennis L.

    2016-01-01

    Abstract This study investigated the effects of a past concussion on electrophysiological indices of attention in college athletes. Forty-four varsity football athletes (22 with at least one past concussion) participated in three neuropsychological tests and a two-tone auditory oddball task while undergoing high-density event-related potential (ERP) recording. Athletes previously diagnosed with a concussion experienced their most recent injury approximately 4 years before testing. Previously concussed and control athletes performed equivalently on three neuropsychological tests. Behavioral accuracy and reaction times on the oddball task were also equivalent across groups. However, athletes with a concussion history exhibited significantly larger N2 and P3b amplitudes and longer P3b latencies. Source localization using standardized low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography indicated that athletes with a history of concussion generated larger electrical current density in the left inferior parietal gyrus compared to control athletes. These findings support the hypothesis that individuals with a past concussion recruit compensatory neural resources in order to meet executive functioning demands. High-density ERP measures combined with source localization provide an important method to detect long-term neural consequences of concussion in the absence of impaired neuropsychological performance. PMID:27025905

  3. Using recurrent neural network models for early detection of heart failure onset.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Choi, Edward; Schuetz, Andy; Stewart, Walter F; Sun, Jimeng

    2017-03-01

    We explored whether use of deep learning to model temporal relations among events in electronic health records (EHRs) would improve model performance in predicting initial diagnosis of heart failure (HF) compared to conventional methods that ignore temporality. Data were from a health system's EHR on 3884 incident HF cases and 28 903 controls, identified as primary care patients, between May 16, 2000, and May 23, 2013. Recurrent neural network (RNN) models using gated recurrent units (GRUs) were adapted to detect relations among time-stamped events (eg, disease diagnosis, medication orders, procedure orders, etc.) with a 12- to 18-month observation window of cases and controls. Model performance metrics were compared to regularized logistic regression, neural network, support vector machine, and K-nearest neighbor classifier approaches. Using a 12-month observation window, the area under the curve (AUC) for the RNN model was 0.777, compared to AUCs for logistic regression (0.747), multilayer perceptron (MLP) with 1 hidden layer (0.765), support vector machine (SVM) (0.743), and K-nearest neighbor (KNN) (0.730). When using an 18-month observation window, the AUC for the RNN model increased to 0.883 and was significantly higher than the 0.834 AUC for the best of the baseline methods (MLP). Deep learning models adapted to leverage temporal relations appear to improve performance of models for detection of incident heart failure with a short observation window of 12-18 months. © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association.

  4. Intracerebral recording of cortical activity related to self-paced voluntary movements: a Bereitschaftspotential and event-related desynchronization/synchronization. SEEG study

    Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

    Sochůrková, D.; Rektor, I.; Jurák, Pavel; Stančák, A.

    2006-01-01

    Roč. 173, č. 4 (2006), s. 637-649 ISSN 0014-4819 R&D Projects: GA ČR(CZ) GA102/05/0402 Institutional research plan: CEZ:AV0Z20650511 Keywords : SEEG * Bereitschaftspotential * Event-related desynchronization * Event-related synchronization Subject RIV: FS - Medical Facilities ; Equipment Impact factor: 1.959, year: 2006

  5. An Event Related Potentials Study of the Effects of Age, Load and Maintenance Duration on Working Memory Recognition.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pinal, Diego; Zurrón, Montserrat; Díaz, Fernando

    2015-01-01

    Age-related decline in cognitive capacities has been attributed to a generalized slowing of processing speed and a reduction in working memory (WM) capacity. Nevertheless, it is unclear how age affects visuospatial WM recognition and its underlying brain electrical activity. Whether age modulates the effects of memory load or information maintenance duration, which determine the limits of WM, remains also elusive. In this exploratory study, performance in a delayed match to sample task declined with age, particularly in conditions with high memory load. Event related potentials analysis revealed longer N2 and P300 latencies in old than in young adults during WM recognition, which may reflect slowing of stimulus evaluation and classification processes, respectively. Although there were no differences between groups in N2 or P300 amplitudes, the latter was more homogeneously distributed in old than in young adults, which may indicate an age-related increased reliance in frontal vs parietal resources during WM recognition. This was further supported by an age-related reduced posterior cingulate activation and increased superior frontal gyrus activation revealed through standardized low resolution electromagnetic tomography. Memory load and maintenance duration effects on brain activity were similar in both age groups. These behavioral and electrophysiological results add evidence in support of age-related decline in WM recognition theories, with a slowing of processing speed that may be limited to stimulus evaluation and categorization processes--with no effects on perceptual processes--and a posterior to anterior shift in the recruitment of neural resources.

  6. An Event Related Potentials Study of the Effects of Age, Load and Maintenance Duration on Working Memory Recognition.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Diego Pinal

    Full Text Available Age-related decline in cognitive capacities has been attributed to a generalized slowing of processing speed and a reduction in working memory (WM capacity. Nevertheless, it is unclear how age affects visuospatial WM recognition and its underlying brain electrical activity. Whether age modulates the effects of memory load or information maintenance duration, which determine the limits of WM, remains also elusive. In this exploratory study, performance in a delayed match to sample task declined with age, particularly in conditions with high memory load. Event related potentials analysis revealed longer N2 and P300 latencies in old than in young adults during WM recognition, which may reflect slowing of stimulus evaluation and classification processes, respectively. Although there were no differences between groups in N2 or P300 amplitudes, the latter was more homogeneously distributed in old than in young adults, which may indicate an age-related increased reliance in frontal vs parietal resources during WM recognition. This was further supported by an age-related reduced posterior cingulate activation and increased superior frontal gyrus activation revealed through standardized low resolution electromagnetic tomography. Memory load and maintenance duration effects on brain activity were similar in both age groups. These behavioral and electrophysiological results add evidence in support of age-related decline in WM recognition theories, with a slowing of processing speed that may be limited to stimulus evaluation and categorization processes--with no effects on perceptual processes--and a posterior to anterior shift in the recruitment of neural resources.

  7. An Event Related Potentials Study of the Effects of Age, Load and Maintenance Duration on Working Memory Recognition

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pinal, Diego; Zurrón, Montserrat; Díaz, Fernando

    2015-01-01

    Age-related decline in cognitive capacities has been attributed to a generalized slowing of processing speed and a reduction in working memory (WM) capacity. Nevertheless, it is unclear how age affects visuospatial WM recognition and its underlying brain electrical activity. Whether age modulates the effects of memory load or information maintenance duration, which determine the limits of WM, remains also elusive. In this exploratory study, performance in a delayed match to sample task declined with age, particularly in conditions with high memory load. Event related potentials analysis revealed longer N2 and P300 latencies in old than in young adults during WM recognition, which may reflect slowing of stimulus evaluation and classification processes, respectively. Although there were no differences between groups in N2 or P300 amplitudes, the latter was more homogeneously distributed in old than in young adults, which may indicate an age-related increased reliance in frontal vs parietal resources during WM recognition. This was further supported by an age-related reduced posterior cingulate activation and increased superior frontal gyrus activation revealed through standardized low resolution electromagnetic tomography. Memory load and maintenance duration effects on brain activity were similar in both age groups. These behavioral and electrophysiological results add evidence in support of age-related decline in WM recognition theories, with a slowing of processing speed that may be limited to stimulus evaluation and categorization processes -with no effects on perceptual processes- and a posterior to anterior shift in the recruitment of neural resources. PMID:26569113

  8. Changes in event-related potential functional networks predict traumatic brain injury in piglets.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Atlan, Lorre S; Lan, Ingrid S; Smith, Colin; Margulies, Susan S

    2018-06-01

    Traumatic brain injury is a leading cause of cognitive and behavioral deficits in children in the US each year. None of the current diagnostic tools, such as quantitative cognitive and balance tests, have been validated to identify mild traumatic brain injury in infants, adults and animals. In this preliminary study, we report a novel, quantitative tool that has the potential to quickly and reliably diagnose traumatic brain injury and which can track the state of the brain during recovery across multiple ages and species. Using 32 scalp electrodes, we recorded involuntary auditory event-related potentials from 22 awake four-week-old piglets one day before and one, four, and seven days after two different injury types (diffuse and focal) or sham. From these recordings, we generated event-related potential functional networks and assessed whether the patterns of the observed changes in these networks could distinguish brain-injured piglets from non-injured. Piglet brains exhibited significant changes after injury, as evaluated by five network metrics. The injury prediction algorithm developed from our analysis of the changes in the event-related potentials functional networks ultimately produced a tool with 82% predictive accuracy. This novel approach is the first application of auditory event-related potential functional networks to the prediction of traumatic brain injury. The resulting tool is a robust, objective and predictive method that offers promise for detecting mild traumatic brain injury, in particular because collecting event-related potentials data is noninvasive and inexpensive. Copyright © 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

  9. Event and Apparent Horizon Finders for 3+1 Numerical Relativity

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Thornburg Jonathan

    2007-06-01

    Full Text Available Event and apparent horizons are key diagnostics for the presence and properties of black holes. In this article I review numerical algorithms and codes for finding event and apparent horizons in numerically-computed spacetimes, focusing on calculations done using the 3+1 ADM formalism. The event horizon of an asymptotically-flat spacetime is the boundary between those events from which a future-pointing null geodesic can reach future null infinity and those events from which no such geodesic exists. The event horizon is a (continuous null surface in spacetime. The event horizon is defined nonlocally in time: it is a global property of the entire spacetime and must be found in a separate post-processing phase after all (or at least the nonstationary part of spacetime has been numerically computed.There are three basic algorithms for finding event horizons, based on integrating null geodesics forwards in time, integrating null geodesics backwards in time, and integrating null surfaces backwards in time. The last of these is generally the most efficient and accurate.In contrast to an event horizon, an apparent horizon is defined locally in time in a spacelike slice and depends only on data in that slice, so it can be (and usually is found during the numerical computation of a spacetime. A marginally outer trapped surface (MOTS in a slice is a smooth closed 2-surface whose future-pointing outgoing null geodesics have zero expansion Theta. An apparent horizon is then defined as a MOTS not contained in any other MOTS. The MOTS condition is a nonlinear elliptic partial differential equation (PDE for the surface shape, containing the ADM 3-metric, its spatial derivatives, and the extrinsic curvature as coefficients. Most “apparent horizon” finders actually find MOTSs.There are a large number of apparent horizon finding algorithms, with differing trade-offs between speed, robustness, accuracy, and ease of programming. In axisymmetry, shooting

  10. Event-related potential responses to beloved and familiar faces in different marriage styles: evidence from Mosuo subjects

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Haiyan eWu

    2016-02-01

    Full Text Available Research on familiar face recognition has largely focused on the neural correlates of recognizing a beloved partner or family member. However, no research has explored the effect of marriage style on the recognition of a beloved partner’s face, especially in matriarchal societies. Here, we examined the time course of event-related potentials (ERP in response to the face of a beloved partner, sibling, or unknown person in a sample of individuals from the matriarchal Mosuo tribe. Two groups were assessed: intermarriage and walking marriage groups (i.e., couples in a committed relationship who do not cohabitate during the daytime. In agreement with previous reports, ERP results revealed more positive VPP, N250, and P300 waveforms for beloved faces than sibling faces in both groups. Moreover, P300 was more positive for beloved partner versus sibling faces; however, this difference emerged at fronto-central sites for the walking marriage group and at posterior sites for the intermarriage group. Overall, we observed that marriage style affects the later stage processing of a beloved partner’s face, and this may be associated with greater affective arousal and familiarity.

  11. Neural responses to feedback information produced by self-generated or other-generated decision-making and their impairment in schizophrenia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Toyomaki, Atsuhito; Hashimoto, Naoki; Kako, Yuki; Murohashi, Harumitsu; Kusumi, Ichiro

    2017-01-01

    Several studies of self-monitoring dysfunction in schizophrenia have focused on the sense of agency to motor action using behavioral and psychophysiological techniques. So far, no study has ever tried to investigate whether the sense of agency or causal attribution for external events produced by self-generated decision-making is abnormal in schizophrenia. The purpose of this study was to investigate neural responses to feedback information produced by self-generated or other-generated decision-making in a multiplayer gambling task using even-related potentials and electroencephalogram synchronization. We found that the late positive component and theta/alpha synchronization were increased in response to feedback information in the self-decision condition in normal controls, but that these responses were significantly decreased in patients with schizophrenia. These neural activities thus reflect the self-reference effect that affects the cognitive appraisal of external events following decision-making and their impairment in schizophrenia.

  12. Organization of the sleep-related neural systems in the brain of the minke whale (Balaenoptera acutorostrata).

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dell, Leigh-Anne; Karlsson, Karl Ae; Patzke, Nina; Spocter, Muhammad A; Siegel, Jerome M; Manger, Paul R

    2016-07-01

    The current study analyzed the nuclear organization of the neural systems related to the control and regulation of sleep and wake in the basal forebrain, diencephalon, midbrain, and pons of the minke whale, a mysticete cetacean. While odontocete cetaceans sleep in an unusual manner, with unihemispheric slow wave sleep (USWS) and suppressed REM sleep, it is unclear whether the mysticete whales show a similar sleep pattern. Previously, we detailed a range of features in the odontocete brain that appear to be related to odontocete-type sleep, and here present our analysis of these features in the minke whale brain. All neural elements involved in sleep regulation and control found in bihemispheric sleeping mammals and the harbor porpoise were present in the minke whale, with no specific nuclei being absent, and no novel nuclei being present. This qualitative similarity relates to the cholinergic, noradrenergic, serotonergic and orexinergic systems, and the GABAergic elements of these nuclei. Quantitative analysis revealed that the numbers of pontine cholinergic (274,242) and noradrenergic (203,686) neurons, and hypothalamic orexinergic neurons (277,604), are markedly higher than other large-brained bihemispheric sleeping mammals. Small telencephalic commissures (anterior, corpus callosum, and hippocampal), an enlarged posterior commissure, supernumerary pontine cholinergic and noradrenergic cells, and an enlarged peripheral division of the dorsal raphe nuclear complex of the minke whale, all indicate that the suite of neural characteristics thought to be involved in the control of USWS and the suppression of REM in the odontocete cetaceans are present in the minke whale. J. Comp. Neurol. 524:2018-2035, 2016. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  13. Trait self-esteem and neural activities related to self-evaluation and social feedback

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yang, Juan; Xu, Xiaofan; Chen, Yu; Shi, Zhenhao; Han, Shihui

    2016-01-01

    Self-esteem has been associated with neural responses to self-reflection and attitude toward social feedback but in different brain regions. The distinct associations might arise from different tasks or task-related attitudes in the previous studies. The current study aimed to clarify these by investigating the association between self-esteem and neural responses to evaluation of one’s own personality traits and of others’ opinion about one’s own personality traits. We scanned 25 college students using functional MRI during evaluation of oneself or evaluation of social feedback. Trait self-esteem was measured using the Rosenberg self-esteem scale after scanning. Whole-brain regression analyses revealed that trait self-esteem was associated with the bilateral orbitofrontal activity during evaluation of one’s own positive traits but with activities in the medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate, and occipital cortices during evaluation of positive social feedback. Our findings suggest that trait self-esteem modulates the degree of both affective processes in the orbitofrontal cortex during self-reflection and cognitive processes in the medial prefrontal cortex during evaluation of social feedback. PMID:26842975

  14. Trait self-esteem and neural activities related to self-evaluation and social feedback.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yang, Juan; Xu, Xiaofan; Chen, Yu; Shi, Zhenhao; Han, Shihui

    2016-02-04

    Self-esteem has been associated with neural responses to self-reflection and attitude toward social feedback but in different brain regions. The distinct associations might arise from different tasks or task-related attitudes in the previous studies. The current study aimed to clarify these by investigating the association between self-esteem and neural responses to evaluation of one's own personality traits and of others' opinion about one's own personality traits. We scanned 25 college students using functional MRI during evaluation of oneself or evaluation of social feedback. Trait self-esteem was measured using the Rosenberg self-esteem scale after scanning. Whole-brain regression analyses revealed that trait self-esteem was associated with the bilateral orbitofrontal activity during evaluation of one's own positive traits but with activities in the medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate, and occipital cortices during evaluation of positive social feedback. Our findings suggest that trait self-esteem modulates the degree of both affective processes in the orbitofrontal cortex during self-reflection and cognitive processes in the medial prefrontal cortex during evaluation of social feedback.

  15. Dose-Related Modulation of Event-Related Potentials to Novel and Target Stimuli by Intravenous Δ9-THC in Humans

    Science.gov (United States)

    D'Souza, Deepak Cyril; Fridberg, Daniel J; Skosnik, Patrick D; Williams, Ashley; Roach, Brian; Singh, Nagendra; Carbuto, Michelle; Elander, Jacqueline; Schnakenberg, Ashley; Pittman, Brian; Sewell, R Andrew; Ranganathan, Mohini; Mathalon, Daniel

    2012-01-01

    Cannabinoids induce a host of perceptual alterations and cognitive deficits in humans. However, the neural correlates of these deficits have remained elusive. The current study examined the acute, dose-related effects of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ9-THC) on psychophysiological indices of information processing in humans. Healthy subjects (n=26) completed three test days during which they received intravenous Δ9-THC (placebo, 0.015 and 0.03 mg/kg) in a within-subject, double-blind, randomized, cross-over, and counterbalanced design. Psychophysiological data (electroencephalography) were collected before and after drug administration while subjects engaged in an event-related potential (ERP) task known to be a valid index of attention and cognition (a three-stimulus auditory ‘oddball' P300 task). Δ9-THC dose-dependently reduced the amplitude of both the target P300b and the novelty P300a. Δ9-THC did not have any effect on the latency of either the P300a or P300b, or on early sensory-evoked ERP components preceding the P300 (the N100). Concomitantly, Δ9-THC induced psychotomimetic effects, perceptual alterations, and subjective ‘high' in a dose-dependent manner. Δ9-THC -induced reductions in P3b amplitude correlated with Δ9-THC-induced perceptual alterations. Lastly, exploratory analyses examining cannabis use status showed that whereas recent cannabis users had blunted behavioral effects to Δ9-THC, there were no dose-related effects of Δ9-THC on P300a/b amplitude between cannabis-free and recent cannabis users. Overall, these data suggest that at doses that produce behavioral and subjective effects consistent with the known properties of cannabis, Δ9-THC reduced P300a and P300b amplitudes without altering the latency of these ERPs. Cannabinoid agonists may therefore disrupt cortical processes responsible for context updating and the automatic orientation of attention, while leaving processing speed and earlier sensory ERP components intact

  16. Histamine H3 receptor density is negatively correlated with neural activity related to working memory in humans.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ito, Takehito; Kimura, Yasuyuki; Seki, Chie; Ichise, Masanori; Yokokawa, Keita; Kawamura, Kazunori; Takahashi, Hidehiko; Higuchi, Makoto; Zhang, Ming-Rong; Suhara, Tetsuya; Yamada, Makiko

    2018-06-14

    The histamine H 3 receptor is regarded as a drug target for cognitive impairments in psychiatric disorders. H 3 receptors are expressed in neocortical areas, including the prefrontal cortex, the key region of cognitive functions such as working memory. However, the role of prefrontal H 3 receptors in working memory has not yet been clarified. Therefore, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) techniques, we aimed to investigate the association between the neural activity of working memory and the density of H 3 receptors in the prefrontal cortex. Ten healthy volunteers underwent both fMRI and PET scans. The N-back task was used to assess the neural activities related to working memory. H 3 receptor density was measured with the selective PET radioligand [ 11 C] TASP457. The neural activity of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during the performance of the N-back task was negatively correlated with the density of H 3 receptors in this region. Higher neural activity of working memory was associated with lower H 3 receptor density in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. This finding elucidates the role of H 3 receptors in working memory and indicates the potential of H 3 receptors as a therapeutic target for the cognitive impairments associated with neuropsychiatric disorders.

  17. Self-Exciting Point Process Modeling of Conversation Event Sequences

    Science.gov (United States)

    Masuda, Naoki; Takaguchi, Taro; Sato, Nobuo; Yano, Kazuo

    Self-exciting processes of Hawkes type have been used to model various phenomena including earthquakes, neural activities, and views of online videos. Studies of temporal networks have revealed that sequences of social interevent times for individuals are highly bursty. We examine some basic properties of event sequences generated by the Hawkes self-exciting process to show that it generates bursty interevent times for a wide parameter range. Then, we fit the model to the data of conversation sequences recorded in company offices in Japan. In this way, we can estimate relative magnitudes of the self excitement, its temporal decay, and the base event rate independent of the self excitation. These variables highly depend on individuals. We also point out that the Hawkes model has an important limitation that the correlation in the interevent times and the burstiness cannot be independently modulated.

  18. On the connection between level of education and the neural circuitry of emotion perception

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Liliana Ramona Demenescu

    2014-10-01

    Full Text Available Through education, a social group transmits accumulated knowledge, skills, customs, and values to its members. So far, to the best of our knowledge, the association between educational attainment and neural correlates of emotion processing has been left unexplored. In a retrospective analysis of the NESDA fMRI study, we compared two groups of fourteen healthy volunteers with intermediate and high educational attainment, matched for age and gender. The data concerned event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging of brain activation during perception of facial emotional expressions. The region of interest analysis showed stronger right amygdala activation to facial expressions in participants with lower relative to higher educational attainment. The psychophysiological interaction analysis revealed that participants with higher educational attainment exhibited stronger right amygdala – right insula connectivity during perception of emotional and neutral facial expressions. This exploratory study suggests the relevance of educational attainment on the neural mechanism of facial expression processing.

  19. Neural substrates of negativity bias in women with and without major depression.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gollan, Jackie K; Connolly, Megan; Buchanan, Angel; Hoxha, Denada; Rosebrock, Laina; Cacioppo, John; Csernansky, John; Wang, Xue

    2015-07-01

    The functional localization of negativity bias, an influential index of emotion information processing, has yet to be identified. Depressed (n=47) and healthy participants (n=58) completed a clinical interview for DSM-IV Axis I disorders, symptom checklists, a behavioral task to measure negativity bias, and then viewed positive and negative images of social and nonsocial scenes during an event-related fMRI task. Two subsamples of participants with high (i.e., 75%; n=26) and low (i.e., 25%; n=26) negativity bias scores were as included in subsequent analyses to examine neural differences. Depressed participants with a higher, relative to lower, negative bias showed significantly greater neural activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus. High negativity bias evokes a distinctive pattern of brain activation in the frontal cortex of depressed participants. Increased activation occurred in the left inferior frontal gyrus, related to Brodmann area 44, which is associated with language and semantic processing, response inhibition, and cognitive reappraisal. This finding may reflect an abnormality in integrative emotional processing rather than processing of individual emotional dimensions in depressed participants with negativity bias. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  20. Empathy and Stress Related Neural Responses in Maternal Decision Making

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    S. Shaun Ho

    2014-06-01

    Full Text Available Mothers need to make caregiving decisions to meet the needs of children, which may or may not result in positive child feedback. Variations in caregivers’ emotional reactivity to unpleasant child-feedback may be partially explained by their dispositional empathy levels. Furthermore, empathic response to the child’s unpleasant feedback likely helps mothers to regulate their own stress. We investigated the relationship between maternal dispositional empathy, stress reactivity, and neural correlates of child feedback to caregiving decisions. In Part 1 of the study, 33 female participants were recruited to undergo a lab-based mild stressor, the Social Evaluation Test (SET, and then in Part 2 of the study, a subset of the participants, fourteen mothers, performed a Parenting Decision Making Task (PDMT in an fMRI setting. Four dimensions of dispositional empathy based on the Interpersonal Reactivity Index were measured in all participants – Personal Distress, Empathic Concern, Perspective Taking, and Fantasy. Overall, we found that the Personal Distress and Perspective Taking were associated with greater and lesser cortisol reactivity, respectively. The four types of empathy were distinctly associated with the negative (versus positive child feedback activation in the brain. Personal Distress was associated with amygdala and hypothalamus activation, Empathic Concern with the left ventral striatum, ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC, and supplemental motor area (SMA activation, and Fantasy with the septal area, right SMA and VLPFC activation. Interestingly, hypothalamus-septal coupling during the negative feedback condition was associated with less PDMT-related cortisol reactivity. The roles of distinct forms of dispositional empathy in neural and stress responses are discussed.

  1. Expected reward modulates encoding-related theta activity before an event.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gruber, Matthias J; Watrous, Andrew J; Ekstrom, Arne D; Ranganath, Charan; Otten, Leun J

    2013-01-01

    Oscillatory brain activity in the theta frequency range (4-8 Hz) before the onset of an event has been shown to affect the likelihood of successfully encoding the event into memory. Recent work has also indicated that frontal theta activity might be modulated by reward, but it is not clear how reward expectancy, anticipatory theta activity, and memory formation might be related. Here, we used scalp electroencephalography (EEG) to assess the relationship between these factors. EEG was recorded from healthy adults while they memorized a series of words. Each word was preceded by a cue that indicated whether a high or low monetary reward would be earned if the word was successfully remembered in a later recognition test. Frontal theta power between the presentation of the reward cue and the onset of a word was predictive of later memory for the word, but only in the high reward condition. No theta differences were observed before word onset following low reward cues. The magnitude of prestimulus encoding-related theta activity in the high reward condition was correlated with the number of high reward words that were later confidently recognized. These findings provide strong evidence for a link between reward expectancy, theta activity, and memory encoding. Theta activity before event onset seems to be especially important for the encoding of motivationally significant stimuli. One possibility is that dopaminergic activity during reward anticipation mediates frontal theta activity related to memory. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  2. Different event-related patterns of gamma-band power in brain waves of fast- and slow-reacting subjects.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jokeit, H; Makeig, S

    1994-01-01

    Fast- and slow-reacting subjects exhibit different patterns of gamma-band electroencephalogram (EEG) activity when responding as quickly as possible to auditory stimuli. This result appears to confirm long-standing speculations of Wundt that fast- and slow-reacting subjects produce speeded reactions in different ways and demonstrates that analysis of event-related changes in the amplitude of EEG activity recorded from the human scalp can reveal information about event-related brain processes unavailable using event-related potential measures. Time-varying spectral power in a selected (35- to 43-Hz) gamma frequency band was averaged across trials in two experimental conditions: passive listening and speeded reacting to binaural clicks, forming 40-Hz event-related spectral responses. Factor analysis of between-subject event-related spectral response differences split subjects into two near-equal groups composed of faster- and slower-reacting subjects. In faster-reacting subjects, 40-Hz power peaked near 200 ms and 400 ms poststimulus in the react condition, whereas in slower-reacting subjects, 40-Hz power just before stimulus delivery was larger in the react condition. These group differences were preserved in separate averages of relatively long and short reaction-time epochs for each group. gamma-band (20-60 Hz)-filtered event-related potential response averages did not differ between the two groups or conditions. Because of this and because gamma-band power in the auditory event-related potential is small compared with the EEG, the observed event-related spectral response features must represent gamma-band EEG activity reliably induced by, but not phase-locked to, experimental stimuli or events. PMID:8022783

  3. Enhancing the top-quark signal at Fermilab Tevatron using neural nets

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Ametller, L.; Garrido, L.; Talavera, P.

    1994-01-01

    We show, in agreement with previous studies, that neural nets can be useful for top-quark analysis at the Fermilab Tevatron. The main features of t bar t and background events in a mixed sample are projected on a single output, which controls the efficiency, purity, and statistical significance of the t bar t signal. We consider a feed-forward multilayer neural net for the CDF reported top-quark mass, using six kinematical variables as inputs. Our main results are based on the exhaustive comparison of the neural net performances with those obtainable from the standard experimental analysis, by imposing different sets of linear cuts over the same variables, showing how the neural net approach improves the standard analysis results

  4. Neural Networks

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Smith, Patrick I.

    2003-01-01

    Physicists use large detectors to measure particles created in high-energy collisions at particle accelerators. These detectors typically produce signals indicating either where ionization occurs along the path of the particle, or where energy is deposited by the particle. The data produced by these signals is fed into pattern recognition programs to try to identify what particles were produced, and to measure the energy and direction of these particles. Ideally, there are many techniques used in this pattern recognition software. One technique, neural networks, is particularly suitable for identifying what type of particle caused by a set of energy deposits. Neural networks can derive meaning from complicated or imprecise data, extract patterns, and detect trends that are too complex to be noticed by either humans or other computer related processes. To assist in the advancement of this technology, Physicists use a tool kit to experiment with several neural network techniques. The goal of this research is interface a neural network tool kit into Java Analysis Studio (JAS3), an application that allows data to be analyzed from any experiment. As the final result, a physicist will have the ability to train, test, and implement a neural network with the desired output while using JAS3 to analyze the results or output. Before an implementation of a neural network can take place, a firm understanding of what a neural network is and how it works is beneficial. A neural network is an artificial representation of the human brain that tries to simulate the learning process [5]. It is also important to think of the word artificial in that definition as computer programs that use calculations during the learning process. In short, a neural network learns by representative examples. Perhaps the easiest way to describe the way neural networks learn is to explain how the human brain functions. The human brain contains billions of neural cells that are responsible for processing

  5. Neural processing of gendered information is more robustly associated with mothers' gendered communication with children than mothers' implicit and explicit gender stereotypes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Endendijk, Joyce J; Spencer, Hannah; Bos, Peter A; Derks, Belle

    2018-04-26

    Processes like gender socialization (the ways in which parents convey information to their children about how girls and boys should behave) often happen unconsciously and might therefore be studied best with neuroscientific measures. We examined whether neural processing of gender-stereotype-congruent and incongruent information is more robustly related to mothers' gendered socialization of their child than mothers' implicit and explicit gender stereotypes. To this end, we examined event-related potentials (ERPs) of mothers (N = 35) completing an implicit gender-stereotype task and mothers' gender stereotypes in relation to observed gendered communication with their child (2-6 years old) in a naturalistic picture-book-reading setting. Increased N2 activity (previously related to attentional processes) to gender stimuli in the implicit gender-stereotype task was associated with mothers' positive evaluation of similar gendered behaviors and activities in the picture book they read with their child. Increased P300 activity (previously related to attention to unexpected events) to incongruent trials in the gender-stereotype task was associated with a more positive evaluation of congruent versus incongruent pictures. Compared to mothers' gender stereotypes, neural processing of gendered information was more robustly related to how mothers talk to their children about boys' and girls' stereotype-congruent and incongruent behavior, and masculine and feminine activities.

  6. Neural correlates of age-related decline and compensation in visual attention capacity

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Wiegand, Iris; Töllner, Thomas; Dyrholm, Mads

    2014-01-01

    -individual differences in K. Moreover, both parameters were selectively related to two further ERP waves in older age: The anterior N1 was reduced for older participants with lower processing speed, indicating that age-related loss of attentional resources slows encoding. An enhanced right-central positivity (RCP......We identified neural correlates of declined and preserved basic visual attention functions in aging individuals based on Bundesen’s ‘Theory of Visual Attention’ (TVA). In an inter-individual difference approach, we contrasted electrophysiology of higher- and lower-performing younger and older......) was found only for older participants with high storage capacity, suggesting compensatory recruitment for retaining vSTM performance. Together, our results demonstrate that attentional capacity in older age depends on both preservation and successful reorganization of the underlying brain circuits...

  7. Extracting Neural Oscillation Signatures of Laser-Induced Nociception in Pain-Related Regions in Rats

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Xuezhu Li

    2017-10-01

    Full Text Available Previous studies have shown that multiple brain regions are involved in pain perception and pain-related neural processes by forming a functionally connected pain network. It is still unclear how these pain-related brain areas actively work together to generate the experience of pain. To get a better insight into the pain network, we implanted electrodes in four pain-related areas of rats including the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC, orbitofrontal cortex (OFC, primary somatosensory cortex (S1 and periaqueductal gray (PAG. We analyzed the pattern of local field potential (LFP oscillations under noxious laser stimulations and innoxious laser stimulations. A high-dimensional feature matrix was built based on the LFP characters for both experimental conditions. Generalized linear models (GLMs were trained to classify recorded LFPs under noxious vs. innoxious condition. We found a general power decrease in α and β bands and power increase in γ band in the recorded areas under noxious condition. After noxious laser stimulation, there was a consistent change in LFP power and correlation in all four brain areas among all 13 rats. With GLM classifiers, noxious laser trials were distinguished from innoxious laser trials with high accuracy (86% using high-dimensional LFP features. This work provides a basis for further research to examine which aspects (e.g., sensory, motor or affective processes of noxious stimulation should drive distinct neural activity across the pain network.

  8. Event-related potential correlates of emergent inference in human arbitrary relational learning.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Ting; Dymond, Simon

    2013-01-01

    Two experiments investigated the functional-anatomical correlates of cognition supporting untrained, emergent relational inference in a stimulus equivalence task. In Experiment 1, after learning a series of conditional relations involving words and pseudowords, participants performed a relatedness task during which EEG was recorded. Behavioural performance was faster and more accurate on untrained, indirectly related symmetry (i.e., learn AB and infer BA) and equivalence trials (i.e., learn AB and AC and infer CB) than on unrelated trials, regardless of whether or not a formal test for stimulus equivalence relations had been conducted. Consistent with previous results, event related potentials (ERPs) evoked by trained and emergent trials at parietal and occipital sites differed only for those participants who had not received a prior equivalence test. Experiment 2 further replicated and extended these behavioural and ERP findings using arbitrary symbols as stimuli and demonstrated time and frequency differences for trained and untrained relatedness trials. Overall, the findings demonstrate convincingly the ERP correlates of intra-experimentally established stimulus equivalence relations consisting entirely of arbitrary symbols and offer support for a contemporary cognitive-behavioural model of symbolic categorisation and relational inference. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  9. A new perspective on behavioral inconsistency and neural noise in aging: Compensatory speeding of neural communication

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    S. Lee Hong

    2012-09-01

    Full Text Available This paper seeks to present a new perspective on the aging brain. Here, we make connections between two key phenomena of brain aging: 1 increased neural noise or random background activity; and 2 slowing of brain activity. Our perspective proposes the possibility that the slowing of neural processing due to decreasing nerve conduction velocities leads to a compensatory speeding of neuron firing rates. These increased firing rates lead to a broader distribution of power in the frequency spectrum of neural oscillations, which we propose, can just as easily be interpreted as neural noise. Compensatory speeding of neural activity, as we present, is constrained by the: A availability of metabolic energy sources; and B competition for frequency bandwidth needed for neural communication. We propose that these constraints lead to the eventual inability to compensate for age-related declines in neural function that are manifested clinically as deficits in cognition, affect, and motor behavior.

  10. Social priming modulates the neural response to ostracism: a new exploratory approach.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hudac, Caitlin M

    2018-04-16

    The present study sought to evaluate whether social priming modulates neural responses to ostracism, such that making arbitrary interpersonal decisions increases the experience of social exclusion more than making arbitrary physical decisions. This exploratory event-related potential (ERP) study utilized the Lunchroom task, in which adults (N = 28) first selected one of two options that included either interpersonal or physical descriptors. Participants then received ostracism outcome feedback within a lunchroom scenario in which they were either excluded (e.g. sitting alone) or included (e.g. surrounded by others). While the N2 component was sensitive to priming decision condition, only the P3 component discriminated between ostracism decisions. Further inspection of the neural sources indicated that the amygdala, anterior cingulate cortex, and superior temporal gyrus were more engaged for exclusion than inclusion conditions during both N2 and P3 temporal windows. Evaluation of temporal source dynamics suggest that the effects of ostracism are predominant between 250-500 ms and were larger following interpersonal than physical decisions. These results suggest that being ostracized evokes a larger neural response that is modulated following priming of the social brain.

  11. Activational and effort-related aspects of motivation: neural mechanisms and implications for psychopathology

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yohn, Samantha E.; López-Cruz, Laura; San Miguel, Noemí; Correa, Mercè

    2016-01-01

    Abstract Motivation has been defined as the process that allows organisms to regulate their internal and external environment, and control the probability, proximity and availability of stimuli. As such, motivation is a complex process that is critical for survival, which involves multiple behavioural functions mediated by a number of interacting neural circuits. Classical theories of motivation suggest that there are both directional and activational aspects of motivation, and activational aspects (i.e. speed and vigour of both the instigation and persistence of behaviour) are critical for enabling organisms to overcome work-related obstacles or constraints that separate them from significant stimuli. The present review discusses the role of brain dopamine and related circuits in behavioural activation, exertion of effort in instrumental behaviour, and effort-related decision-making, based upon both animal and human studies. Impairments in behavioural activation and effort-related aspects of motivation are associated with psychiatric symptoms such as anergia, fatigue, lassitude and psychomotor retardation, which cross multiple pathologies, including depression, schizophrenia, and Parkinson’s disease. Therefore, this review also attempts to provide an interdisciplinary approach that integrates findings from basic behavioural neuroscience, behavioural economics, clinical neuropsychology, psychiatry, and neurology, to provide a coherent framework for future research and theory in this critical field. Although dopamine systems are a critical part of the brain circuitry regulating behavioural activation, exertion of effort, and effort-related decision-making, mesolimbic dopamine is only one part of a distributed circuitry that includes multiple neurotransmitters and brain areas. Overall, there is a striking similarity between the brain areas involved in behavioural activation and effort-related processes in rodents and in humans. Animal models of effort-related

  12. Transformed Neural Pattern Reinstatement during Episodic Memory Retrieval.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Xiao, Xiaoqian; Dong, Qi; Gao, Jiahong; Men, Weiwei; Poldrack, Russell A; Xue, Gui

    2017-03-15

    Contemporary models of episodic memory posit that remembering involves the reenactment of encoding processes. Although encoding-retrieval similarity has been consistently reported and linked to memory success, the nature of neural pattern reinstatement is poorly understood. Using high-resolution fMRI on human subjects, our results obtained clear evidence for item-specific pattern reinstatement in the frontoparietal cortex, even when the encoding-retrieval pairs shared no perceptual similarity. No item-specific pattern reinstatement was found in the ventral visual cortex. Importantly, the brain regions and voxels carrying item-specific representation differed significantly between encoding and retrieval, and the item specificity for encoding-retrieval similarity was smaller than that for encoding or retrieval, suggesting different nature of representations between encoding and retrieval. Moreover, cross-region representational similarity analysis suggests that the encoded representation in the ventral visual cortex was reinstated in the frontoparietal cortex during retrieval. Together, these results suggest that, in addition to reinstatement of the originally encoded pattern in the brain regions that perform encoding processes, retrieval may also involve the reinstatement of a transformed representation of the encoded information. These results emphasize the constructive nature of memory retrieval that helps to serve important adaptive functions. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Episodic memory enables humans to vividly reexperience past events, yet how this is achieved at the neural level is barely understood. A long-standing hypothesis posits that memory retrieval involves the faithful reinstatement of encoding-related activity. We tested this hypothesis by comparing the neural representations during encoding and retrieval. We found strong pattern reinstatement in the frontoparietal cortex, but not in the ventral visual cortex, that represents visual details. Critically

  13. A face a mother could love: depression-related maternal neural responses to infant emotion faces.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Laurent, Heidemarie K; Ablow, Jennifer C

    2013-01-01

    Depressed mothers show negatively biased responses to their infants' emotional bids, perhaps due to faulty processing of infant cues. This study is the first to examine depression-related differences in mothers' neural response to their own infant's emotion faces, considering both effects of perinatal depression history and current depressive symptoms. Primiparous mothers (n = 22), half of whom had a history of major depressive episodes (with one episode occurring during pregnancy and/or postpartum), were exposed to images of their own and unfamiliar infants' joy and distress faces during functional neuroimaging. Group differences (depression vs. no-depression) and continuous effects of current depressive symptoms were tested in relation to neural response to own infant emotion faces. Compared to mothers with no psychiatric diagnoses, those with depression showed blunted responses to their own infant's distress faces in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. Mothers with higher levels of current symptomatology showed reduced responses to their own infant's joy faces in the orbitofrontal cortex and insula. Current symptomatology also predicted lower responses to own infant joy-distress in left-sided prefrontal and insula/striatal regions. These deficits in self-regulatory and motivational response circuits may help explain parenting difficulties in depressed mothers.

  14. Attentional Mechanisms in Sports via Brain-Electrical Event-Related Potentials

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hack, Johannes; Memmert, Daniel; Rup, Andre

    2009-01-01

    In this study, we examined attention processes in complex, sport-specific decision-making tasks without interdependencies from anticipation. Psychophysiological and performance data recorded from advanced and intermediate level basketball referees were compared. Event-related potentials obtained while judging game situations in foul recognition…

  15. Motivated encoding selectively promotes memory for future inconsequential semantically-related events.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Oyarzún, Javiera P; Packard, Pau A; de Diego-Balaguer, Ruth; Fuentemilla, Lluis

    2016-09-01

    Neurobiological models of long-term memory explain how memory for inconsequential events fades, unless these happen before or after other relevant (i.e., rewarding or aversive) or novel events. Recently, it has been shown in humans that retrospective and prospective memories are selectively enhanced if semantically related events are paired with aversive stimuli. However, it remains unclear whether motivating stimuli, as opposed to aversive, have the same effect in humans. Here, participants performed a three phase incidental encoding task where one semantic category was rewarded during the second phase. A memory test 24h after, but not immediately after encoding, revealed that memory for inconsequential items was selectively enhanced only if items from the same category had been previously, but not subsequently, paired with rewards. This result suggests that prospective memory enhancement of reward-related information requires, like previously reported for aversive memories, of a period of memory consolidation. The current findings provide the first empirical evidence in humans that the effects of motivated encoding are selectively and prospectively prolonged over time. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  16. Combining Neural Networks with Existing Methods to Estimate 1 in 100-Year Flood Event Magnitudes

    Science.gov (United States)

    Newson, A.; See, L.

    2005-12-01

    Over the last fifteen years artificial neural networks (ANN) have been shown to be advantageous for the solution of many hydrological modelling problems. The use of ANNs for flood magnitude estimation in ungauged catchments, however, is a relatively new and under researched area. In this paper ANNs are used to make estimates of the magnitude of the 100-year flood event (Q100) for a number of ungauged catchments. The data used in this study were provided by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology's Flood Estimation Handbook (FEH), which contains information on catchments across the UK. Sixteen catchment descriptors for 719 catchments were used to train an ANN, which was split into a training, validation and test data set. The goodness-of-fit statistics on the test data set indicated good model performance, with an r-squared value of 0.8 and a coefficient of efficiency of 79 percent. Data for twelve ungauged catchments were then put through the trained ANN to produce estimates of Q100. Two other accepted methodologies were also employed: the FEH statistical method and the FSR (Flood Studies Report) design storm technique, both of which are used to produce flood frequency estimates. The advantage of developing an ANN model is that it provides a third figure to aid a hydrologist in making an accurate estimate. For six of the twelve catchments, there was a relatively low spread between estimates. In these instances, an estimate of Q100 could be made with a fair degree of certainty. Of the remaining six catchments, three had areas greater than 1000km2, which means the FSR design storm estimate cannot be used. Armed with the ANN model and the FEH statistical method the hydrologist still has two possible estimates to consider. For these three catchments, the estimates were also fairly similar, providing additional confidence to the estimation. In summary, the findings of this study have shown that an accurate estimation of Q100 can be made using the catchment descriptors of

  17. Neural correlates of cross-domain affective priming.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Qin; Li, Xiaohua; Gold, Brian T; Jiang, Yang

    2010-05-06

    The affective priming effect has mostly been studied using reaction time (RT) measures; however, the neural bases of affective priming are not well established. To understand the neural correlates of cross-domain emotional stimuli presented rapidly, we obtained event-related potential (ERP) measures during an affective priming task using short SOA (stimulus onset asynchrony) conditions. Two sets of 480 picture-word pairs were presented at SOAs of either 150ms or 250ms between prime and target stimuli. Participants decided whether the valence of each target word was pleasant or unpleasant. Behavioral results from both SOA conditions were consistent with previous reports of affective priming, with longer RTs for incongruent than congruent pairs at SOAs of 150ms (771 vs. 738ms) and 250ms (765 vs. 720ms). ERP results revealed that the N400 effect (associated with incongruent pairs in affective processing) occurred at anterior scalp regions at an SOA of 150ms, and this effect was only observed for negative target words across the scalp at an SOA of 250ms. In contrast, late positive potentials (LPPs) (associated with attentional resource allocation) occurred across the scalp at an SOA of 250ms. LPPs were only observed for positive target words at posterior parts of the brain at an SOA of 150ms. Our finding of ERP signatures at very short SOAs provides the first neural evidence that affective pictures can exert an automatic influence on the evaluation of affective target words. Copyright 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  18. Brain-behavioral adaptability predicts response to cognitive behavioral therapy for emotional disorders: A person-centered event-related potential study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stange, Jonathan P; MacNamara, Annmarie; Kennedy, Amy E; Hajcak, Greg; Phan, K Luan; Klumpp, Heide

    2017-06-23

    Single-trial-level analyses afford the ability to link neural indices of elaborative attention (such as the late positive potential [LPP], an event-related potential) with downstream markers of attentional processing (such as reaction time [RT]). This approach can provide useful information about individual differences in information processing, such as the ability to adapt behavior based on attentional demands ("brain-behavioral adaptability"). Anxiety and depression are associated with maladaptive information processing implicating aberrant cognition-emotion interactions, but whether brain-behavioral adaptability predicts response to psychotherapy is not known. We used a novel person-centered, trial-level analysis approach to link neural indices of stimulus processing to behavioral responses and to predict treatment outcome. Thirty-nine patients with anxiety and/or depression received 12 weeks of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Prior to treatment, patients performed a speeded reaction-time task involving briefly-presented pairs of aversive and neutral pictures while electroencephalography was recorded. Multilevel modeling demonstrated that larger LPPs predicted slower responses on subsequent trials, suggesting that increased attention to the task-irrelevant nature of pictures interfered with reaction time on subsequent trials. Whereas using LPP and RT averages did not distinguish CBT responders from nonresponders, in trial-level analyses individuals who demonstrated greater ability to benefit behaviorally (i.e., faster RT) from smaller LPPs on the previous trial (greater brain-behavioral adaptability) were more likely to respond to treatment and showed greater improvements in depressive symptoms. These results highlight the utility of trial-level analyses to elucidate variability in within-subjects, brain-behavioral attentional coupling in the context of emotion processing, in predicting response to CBT for emotional disorders. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd

  19. Leveraging Long-term Seismic Catalogs for Automated Real-time Event Classification

    Science.gov (United States)

    Linville, L.; Draelos, T.; Pankow, K. L.; Young, C. J.; Alvarez, S.

    2017-12-01

    We investigate the use of labeled event types available through reviewed seismic catalogs to produce automated event labels on new incoming data from the crustal region spanned by the cataloged events. Using events cataloged by the University of Utah Seismograph Stations between October, 2012 and June, 2017, we calculate the spectrogram for a time window that spans the duration of each event as seen on individual stations, resulting in 110k event spectrograms (50% local earthquakes examples, 50% quarry blasts examples). Using 80% of the randomized example events ( 90k), a classifier is trained to distinguish between local earthquakes and quarry blasts. We explore variations of deep learning classifiers, incorporating elements of convolutional and recurrent neural networks. Using a single-layer Long Short Term Memory recurrent neural network, we achieve 92% accuracy on the classification task on the remaining 20K test examples. Leveraging the decisions from a group of stations that detected the same event by using the median of all classifications in the group increases the model accuracy to 96%. Additional data with equivalent processing from 500 more recently cataloged events (July, 2017), achieves the same accuracy as our test data on both single-station examples and multi-station medians, suggesting that the model can maintain accurate and stable classification rates on real-time automated events local to the University of Utah Seismograph Stations, with potentially minimal levels of re-training through time.

  20. Neural responses to feedback information produced by self-generated or other-generated decision-making and their impairment in schizophrenia.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Atsuhito Toyomaki

    Full Text Available Several studies of self-monitoring dysfunction in schizophrenia have focused on the sense of agency to motor action using behavioral and psychophysiological techniques. So far, no study has ever tried to investigate whether the sense of agency or causal attribution for external events produced by self-generated decision-making is abnormal in schizophrenia. The purpose of this study was to investigate neural responses to feedback information produced by self-generated or other-generated decision-making in a multiplayer gambling task using even-related potentials and electroencephalogram synchronization. We found that the late positive component and theta/alpha synchronization were increased in response to feedback information in the self-decision condition in normal controls, but that these responses were significantly decreased in patients with schizophrenia. These neural activities thus reflect the self-reference effect that affects the cognitive appraisal of external events following decision-making and their impairment in schizophrenia.

  1. Neural Signature of Value-Based Sensorimotor Prioritization in Humans.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Blangero, Annabelle; Kelly, Simon P

    2017-11-01

    In situations in which impending sensory events demand fast action choices, we must be ready to prioritize higher-value courses of action to avoid missed opportunities. When such a situation first presents itself, stimulus-action contingencies and their relative value must be encoded to establish a value-biased state of preparation for an impending sensorimotor decision. Here, we sought to identify neurophysiological signatures of such processes in the human brain (both female and male). We devised a task requiring fast action choices based on the discrimination of a simple visual cue in which the differently valued sensory alternatives were presented 750-800 ms before as peripheral "targets" that specified the stimulus-action mapping for the upcoming decision. In response to the targets, we identified a discrete, transient, spatially selective signal in the event-related potential (ERP), which scaled with relative value and strongly predicted the degree of behavioral bias in the upcoming decision both across and within subjects. This signal is not compatible with any hitherto known ERP signature of spatial selection and also bears novel distinctions with respect to characterizations of value-sensitive, spatially selective activity found in sensorimotor areas of nonhuman primates. Specifically, a series of follow-up experiments revealed that the signal was reliably invoked regardless of response laterality, response modality, sensory feature, and reward valence. It was absent, however, when the response deadline was relaxed and the strategic need for biasing removed. Therefore, more than passively representing value or salience, the signal appears to play a versatile and active role in adaptive sensorimotor prioritization. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT In many situations such as fast-moving sports, we must be ready to act fast in response to sensory events and, in our preparation, prioritize courses of action that lead to greater rewards. Although behavioral effects of

  2. Time-of-flight discrimination between gamma-rays and neutrons by using artificial neural networks

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Akkoyun, S.

    2013-01-01

    Highlights: ► Time-of-flight (tof) is an obvious method for separation between gamma and neutron particles. ► tof distributions are obtained by neural networks. ► Neural network method is consistent with the experimental results. ► Neural networks can classify different events for discrimination. - Abstract: In gamma-ray spectroscopy, a number of neutrons are emitted from the nuclei together with the gamma-rays. These neutrons influence gamma-ray spectra. An obvious method for discrimination between neutrons and gamma-rays is based on the time-of-flight (tof) technique. In this work, the tof distributions of gamma-rays and neutrons were obtained both experimentally and by using artificial neural networks (ANNs). It was shown that, ANN can correctly classify gamma-ray and neutron events. Also, for highly nonlinear detector response for tof, we have constructed consistent empirical physical formulas (EPFs) by appropriate ANNs. These ANN–EPFs can be used to derive further physical functions which could be relevant to discrimination between gamma-rays and neutrons

  3. Event-related Potentials Reflecting the Processing of Phonological Constraint Violations

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Domahs, Ulrike; Kehrein, Wolfgang; Knaus, Johannes; Wiese, Richard; Schlesewsky, Matthias

    2009-01-01

    Flow are violations of phonological constraints processed in word comprehension? The present article reports the results of ail event-related potentials (ERP) Study oil a phonological constraint of German that disallows identical segments within it syllable or word (CC(i)VC(i)). We examined three

  4. Neural correlates of encoding processes predicting subsequent cued recall and source memory.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Angel, Lucie; Isingrini, Michel; Bouazzaoui, Badiâa; Fay, Séverine

    2013-03-06

    In this experiment, event-related potentials were used to examine whether the neural correlates of encoding processes predicting subsequent successful recall differed from those predicting successful source memory retrieval. During encoding, participants studied lists of words and were instructed to memorize each word and the list in which it occurred. At test, they had to complete stems (the first four letters) with a studied word and then make a judgment of the initial temporal context (i.e. list). Event-related potentials recorded during encoding were segregated according to subsequent memory performance to examine subsequent memory effects (SMEs) reflecting successful cued recall (cued recall SME) and successful source retrieval (source memory SME). Data showed a cued recall SME on parietal electrode sites from 400 to 1200 ms and a late inversed cued recall SME on frontal sites in the 1200-1400 ms period. Moreover, a source memory SME was reported from 400 to 1400 ms on frontal areas. These findings indicate that patterns of encoding-related activity predicting successful recall and source memory are clearly dissociated.

  5. The spatial relation between the event horizon and trapping horizon

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Nielsen, Alex B

    2010-01-01

    The relation between event horizons and trapping horizons is investigated in a number of different situations with emphasis on their role in thermodynamics. A notion of constant change is introduced that in certain situations allows the location of the event horizon to be found locally. When the black hole is accreting matter the difference in area between the two different horizons can be many orders of magnitude larger than the Planck area. When the black hole is evaporating, the difference is small on the Planck scale. A model is introduced that shows how trapping horizons can be expected to appear outside the event horizon before the black hole starts to evaporate. Finally, a modified definition is introduced to invariantly define the location of the trapping horizon under a conformal transformation. In this case the trapping horizon is not always a marginally outer trapped surface.

  6. The Different Inhibition of Return (IOR Effects of Emergency Managerial Experts and Novices: An Event-Related Potentials Study

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Rong Cao

    2017-05-01

    Full Text Available Inhibition of return (IOR is an important effect of attention. However, the IOR of emergency managerial experts is unknown. By employing emergency and natural scene pictures in expert-novice paradigm, the present study explored the neural activity underlying the IOR effects for emergency managerial experts and novices. In behavioral results, there were no differences of IOR effects between novices and emergency managerial experts, while the event-related potentials (ERPs results were different between novices and experts. In Experiment 1 (novice group, ERPs results showed no any IOR was robust at both stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA of 200 ms and 400 ms. In Experiment 2 (expert group, ERPs results showed an enhanced N2 at SOA of 200 ms and attenuated P3 at cued location in the right parietal lobe and adjacent brain regions than uncued location at SOA of 200 ms. The findings of the two experiments showed that, relative to the novices, IOR for the emergency managerial experts was robust, and dominated in the right parietal lobe and adjacent brain regions, suggesting more flexible attentional processing and higher visual search efficiency of the emergency managerial experts. The findings indicate that the P3, possible N2, over the right parietal lobe and adjacent brain regions are the biological indicators for IOR elicited by post-cued emergency pictures for emergency managerial experts.

  7. Blunt splenic injury: are early adverse events related to trauma, nonoperative management, or surgery?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Frandon, Julien; Rodiere, Mathieu; Arvieux, Catherine; Vendrell, Anne; Boussat, Bastien; Sengel, Christian; Broux, Christophe; Bricault, Ivan; Ferretti, Gilbert; Thony, Frédéric

    2015-01-01

    We aimed to compare clinical outcomes and early adverse events of operative management (OM), nonoperative management (NOM), and NOM with splenic artery embolization (SAE) in blunt splenic injury (BSI) and identify the prognostic factors. Medical records of 136 consecutive patients with BSI admitted to a trauma center from 2005 to 2010 were retrospectively reviewed. Patients were separated into three groups: OM, NOM, and SAE. We focused on associated injuries and early adverse events. Multivariate analysis was performed on 23 prognostic factors to find predictors. The total survival rate was 97.1%, with four deaths all occurred in the OM group. The spleen salvage rate was 91% in NOM and SAE. At least one adverse event was observed in 32.8%, 62%, and 96% of patients in NOM, SAE, and OM groups, respectively (P events: simplified acute physiology score 2 ≥25 for almost all adverse events, age ≥50 years for acute respiratory syndrome, limb fracture for secondary bleeding, thoracic injury for pleural drainage, and at least one associated injury for pseudocyst. Adverse events were not related to the type of BSI management. Patients with BSI present worse outcome and more adverse events in OM, but this is related to the severity of injury. The main predictor of adverse events remains the severity of injury.

  8. Effects of selective serotonin reuptake inhibition on neural activity related to risky decisions and monetary rewards in healthy males

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Macoveanu, Julian; Fisher, Patrick M; Haahr, Mette E

    2014-01-01

    the involvement of the normally functioning 5HT-system in decision-making under risk and processing of monetary rewards. The data suggest that prolonged SSRI treatment might reduce emotional engagement by reducing the impact of risk during decision-making or the impact of reward during outcome evaluation....... to placebo, the SSRI intervention did not alter individual risk-choice preferences, but modified neural activity during decision-making and reward processing: During the choice phase, SSRI reduced the neural response to increasing risk in lateral orbitofrontal cortex, a key structure for value-based decision-making...... functional MRI (fMRI) to investigate how a three-week fluoxetine intervention influences neural activity related to risk taking and reward processing. Employing a double-blinded parallel-group design, 29 healthy young males were randomly assigned to receive 3 weeks of a daily dose of 40 mg fluoxetine...

  9. Neural signature of behavioural inhibition in women with bulimia nervosa.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Skunde, Mandy; Walther, Stephan; Simon, Joe J; Wu, Mudan; Bendszus, Martin; Herzog, Wolfgang; Friederich, Hans-Christoph

    2016-08-01

    Impaired inhibitory control is considered a behavioural phenotype in patients with bulimia nervosa. However, the underlying neural correlates of impaired general and food-specific behavioural inhibition are largely unknown. Therefore, we investigated brain activation during the performance of behavioural inhibition to general and food-related stimuli in adults with bulimia nervosa. Women with bulimia and healthy control women underwent event-related fMRI while performing a general and a food-specific no-go task. We included 28 women with bulimia nervosa and 29 healthy control women in our study. On a neuronal level, we observed significant group differences in response to general no-go stimuli in women with bulimia nervosa with high symptom severity; compared with healthy controls, the patients showed reduced activation in the right sensorimotor area (postcentral gyrus, precentral gyrus) and right dorsal striatum (caudate nucleus, putamen). The present results are limited to adult women with bulimia nervosa. Furthermore, it remains unclear whether impaired behavioural inhibition in patients with this disorder are a cause or consequence of chronic illness. Our findings suggest that diminished frontostriatal brain activation in patients with bulimia nervosa contribute to the severity of binge eating symptoms. Gaining further insight into the neural mechanisms of behavioural inhibition problems in individuals with this disorder may inform brain-directed treatment approaches and the development of response inhibition training approaches to improve inhibitory control in patients with bulimia nervosa. The present study does not support greater behavioural and neural impairments to food-specific behavioural inhibition in these patients.

  10. Neural signature of behavioural inhibition in women with bulimia nervosa

    Science.gov (United States)

    Skunde, Mandy; Walther, Stephan; Simon, Joe J.; Wu, Mudan; Bendszus, Martin; Herzog, Wolfgang; Friederich, Hans-Christoph

    2016-01-01

    Background Impaired inhibitory control is considered a behavioural phenotype in patients with bulimia nervosa. However, the underlying neural correlates of impaired general and food-specific behavioural inhibition are largely unknown. Therefore, we investigated brain activation during the performance of behavioural inhibition to general and food-related stimuli in adults with bulimia nervosa. Methods Women with bulimia and healthy control women underwent event-related fMRI while performing a general and a food-specific no-go task. Results We included 28 women with bulimia nervosa and 29 healthy control women in our study. On a neuronal level, we observed significant group differences in response to general no-go stimuli in women with bulimia nervosa with high symptom severity; compared with healthy controls, the patients showed reduced activation in the right sensorimotor area (postcentral gyrus, precentral gyrus) and right dorsal striatum (caudate nucleus, putamen). Limitations The present results are limited to adult women with bulimia nervosa. Furthermore, it remains unclear whether impaired behavioural inhibition in patients with this disorder are a cause or consequence of chronic illness. Conclusion Our findings suggest that diminished frontostriatal brain activation in patients with bulimia nervosa contribute to the severity of binge eating symptoms. Gaining further insight into the neural mechanisms of behavioural inhibition problems in individuals with this disorder may inform brain-directed treatment approaches and the development of response inhibition training approaches to improve inhibitory control in patients with bulimia nervosa. The present study does not support greater behavioural and neural impairments to food-specific behavioural inhibition in these patients. PMID:27575858

  11. Neural correlates of opposing effects of emotional distraction on perception and episodic memory: An event-related fMRI investigation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Andrea Taylor Shafer

    2012-09-01

    Full Text Available A main question in emotion and memory literature concerns the relationship between the immediate impact of emotional distraction on perception and the long-term impact of emotion on memory. While previous research shows both automatic and resource-mediated mechanisms to be involved in initial emotion processing and memory, it remains unclear what the exact relationship between the immediate and long-term effects is, and how this relationship may change as a function of manipulations at perception favoring the engagement of either more automatic or mediated mechanisms. Using event-related fMRI, we varied the degree of resource availability for processing task-irrelevant emotional information, to determine how the initial (impairing impact of emotional distraction related to the long-term (enhancing impact of emotion on memory. Results showed that a direct relationship between emotional distraction and memory was dependent on automatic mechanisms, as this was found only under conditions of limited resource availability and engagement of amygdala (AMY-hippocampal (HC mechanisms to both impairing and enhancing effects. A hemispheric disassociation was also identified in AMY-HC, where while both sides were associated with emotional distraction and left AMY and anterior HC were linked to emotional memory, functional asymmetry was only identified in the posterior HC, with only the left side contributing to emotional memory. Finally, areas dissociating between the two opposing effects included the medial frontal, precentral, superior temporal, and middle occipital gyri (linked to emotional distraction, and the superior parietal cortex (linked to emotional memory. These findings demonstrate the relationship between emotional distraction and memory is context dependent and that specific brain regions may be more or less susceptible to the direction of emotional modulation (increased or decreased, depending on the task manipulation and processes

  12. Event-related fMRI studies of false memory: An Activation Likelihood Estimation meta-analysis.

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    Kurkela, Kyle A; Dennis, Nancy A

    2016-01-29

    Over the last two decades, a wealth of research in the domain of episodic memory has focused on understanding the neural correlates mediating false memories, or memories for events that never happened. While several recent qualitative reviews have attempted to synthesize this literature, methodological differences amongst the empirical studies and a focus on only a sub-set of the findings has limited broader conclusions regarding the neural mechanisms underlying false memories. The current study performed a voxel-wise quantitative meta-analysis using activation likelihood estimation to investigate commonalities within the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) literature studying false memory. The results were broken down by memory phase (encoding, retrieval), as well as sub-analyses looking at differences in baseline (hit, correct rejection), memoranda (verbal, semantic), and experimental paradigm (e.g., semantic relatedness and perceptual relatedness) within retrieval. Concordance maps identified significant overlap across studies for each analysis. Several regions were identified in the general false retrieval analysis as well as multiple sub-analyses, indicating their ubiquitous, yet critical role in false retrieval (medial superior frontal gyrus, left precentral gyrus, left inferior parietal cortex). Additionally, several regions showed baseline- and paradigm-specific effects (hit/perceptual relatedness: inferior and middle occipital gyrus; CRs: bilateral inferior parietal cortex, precuneus, left caudate). With respect to encoding, analyses showed common activity in the left middle temporal gyrus and anterior cingulate cortex. No analysis identified a common cluster of activation in the medial temporal lobe. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  13. Relating derived relations as a model of analogical reasoning: reaction times and event-related potentials.

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    Barnes-Holmes, Dermot; Regan, Donal; Barnes-Holmes, Yvonne; Commins, Sean; Walsh, Derek; Stewart, Ian; Smeets, Paul M; Whelan, Robert; Dymond, Simon

    2005-11-01

    The current study aimed to test a Relational Frame Theory (RFT) model of analogical reasoning based on the relating of derived same and derived difference relations. Experiment 1 recorded reaction time measures of similar-similar (e.g., "apple is to orange as dog is to cat") versus different-different (e.g., "he is to his brother as chalk is to cheese") derived relational responding, in both speed-contingent and speed-noncontingent conditions. Experiment 2 examined the event-related potentials (ERPs) associated with these two response patterns. Both experiments showed similar-similar responding to be significantly faster than different-different responding. Experiment 2 revealed significant differences between the waveforms of the two response patterns in the left-hemispheric prefrontal regions; different-different waveforms were significantly more negative than similar-similar waveforms. The behavioral and neurophysiological data support the RFT prediction that, all things being equal, similar-similar responding is relationally "simpler" than, and functionally distinct from, different-different analogical responding. The ERP data were fully consistent with findings in the neurocognitive literature on analogy. These findings strengthen the validity of the RFT model of analogical reasoning and supplement the behavior-analytic approach to analogy based on the relating of derived relations.

  14. Pathologic Cellular Events in Smoking-Related Pancreatitis

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Thrower, Edwin [Department of Internal Medicine, Section of Digestive Diseases, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06520 (United States); Veterans Affairs Connecticut Healthcare, West Haven, CT 06516 (United States)

    2015-04-29

    Pancreatitis, a debilitating inflammatory disorder, results from pancreatic injury. Alcohol abuse is the foremost cause, although cigarette smoking has recently surfaced as a distinct risk factor. The mechanisms by which cigarette smoke and its toxins initiate pathological cellular events leading to pancreatitis, have not been clearly defined. Although cigarette smoke is composed of more than 4000 compounds, it is mainly nicotine and the tobacco-specific nitrosamine 4-(methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-butanone (NNK), which have been extensively studied with respect to pancreatic diseases. This review summarizes these research findings and highlights cellular pathways which may be of relevance in initiation and progression of smoking-related pancreatitis.

  15. Segment convolutional neural networks (Seg-CNNs) for classifying relations in clinical notes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Luo, Yuan; Cheng, Yu; Uzuner, Özlem; Szolovits, Peter; Starren, Justin

    2018-01-01

    We propose Segment Convolutional Neural Networks (Seg-CNNs) for classifying relations from clinical notes. Seg-CNNs use only word-embedding features without manual feature engineering. Unlike typical CNN models, relations between 2 concepts are identified by simultaneously learning separate representations for text segments in a sentence: preceding, concept1, middle, concept2, and succeeding. We evaluate Seg-CNN on the i2b2/VA relation classification challenge dataset. We show that Seg-CNN achieves a state-of-the-art micro-average F-measure of 0.742 for overall evaluation, 0.686 for classifying medical problem-treatment relations, 0.820 for medical problem-test relations, and 0.702 for medical problem-medical problem relations. We demonstrate the benefits of learning segment-level representations. We show that medical domain word embeddings help improve relation classification. Seg-CNNs can be trained quickly for the i2b2/VA dataset on a graphics processing unit (GPU) platform. These results support the use of CNNs computed over segments of text for classifying medical relations, as they show state-of-the-art performance while requiring no manual feature engineering. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

  16. Active Construction of Profession-Related Events: The Priming Effect among Pre-service Teachers with Different Professional Identity.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Xin-Qiang; Zhu, Jun-Cheng; Liu, Lu; Chen, Xiang-Yu; Huo, Jun-Yu

    2018-01-01

    Pre-service teachers with different professional identity may actively construct different subjective profession-related events based on the same objective profession-related events. To explore the priming effect among pre-service teachers with different professional identity, this study examined the effect of positive, negative, or neutral priming sentences in an individualized narration of profession-related events through a priming paradigm. Forty-two female volunteers were asked to complete positive, negative, and neutral priming sentences describing profession-related events. The results showed that, relative to those with weak professional identity, participants with strong professional identity generated a higher number of positive items when primed with different stimuli and displayed greater positive priming bias for positive and neutral stimuli. In addition, relative to those with strong professional identity, participants with weak professional identity generated a higher number of neutral and negative items when primed with positive and negative stimuli, respectively, and displayed greater negative priming bias toward negative stimuli. These results indicate that pre-service teachers with strong professional identity were likely to have established positive self-schemas involving profession-related events, which facilitated active, positive construction of such events.

  17. Active Construction of Profession-Related Events: The Priming Effect among Pre-service Teachers with Different Professional Identity

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Xin-qiang Wang

    2018-02-01

    Full Text Available Pre-service teachers with different professional identity may actively construct different subjective profession-related events based on the same objective profession-related events. To explore the priming effect among pre-service teachers with different professional identity, this study examined the effect of positive, negative, or neutral priming sentences in an individualized narration of profession-related events through a priming paradigm. Forty-two female volunteers were asked to complete positive, negative, and neutral priming sentences describing profession-related events. The results showed that, relative to those with weak professional identity, participants with strong professional identity generated a higher number of positive items when primed with different stimuli and displayed greater positive priming bias for positive and neutral stimuli. In addition, relative to those with strong professional identity, participants with weak professional identity generated a higher number of neutral and negative items when primed with positive and negative stimuli, respectively, and displayed greater negative priming bias toward negative stimuli. These results indicate that pre-service teachers with strong professional identity were likely to have established positive self-schemas involving profession-related events, which facilitated active, positive construction of such events.

  18. An optimization of the FPGA trigger based on the artificial neural network for a detection of neutrino-origin showers

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Szadkowski, Zbigniew; Glas, Dariusz [University of Lodz, Department of Physics and Applied Informatics, Faculty of High-Energy Astrophysics, 90-236 Lodz, Pomorska 149, (Poland); Pytel, Krzysztof [University of Lodz, Department of Physics and Applied Informatics, Faculty of Informatics, 90-236 Lodz, (Poland)

    2015-07-01

    Observations of ultra-high energy neutrinos became a priority in experimental astro-particle physics. Up to now, the Pierre Auger Observatory did not find any candidate on a neutrino event. This imposes competitive limits to the diffuse flux of ultra-high energy neutrinos in the EeV range and above. A very low rate of events potentially generated by neutrinos is a significant challenge for a detection technique and requires both sophisticated algorithms and high-resolution hardware. A trigger based on a artificial neural network was implemented into the Cyclone{sup R} V E FPGA 5CEFA9F31I7. The prototype Front-End boards for Auger-Beyond-2015 with Cyclone{sup R} V E can test the neural network algorithm in real pampas conditions in 2015. Showers for muon and tau neutrino initiating particles on various altitudes, angles and energies were simulated in CORSICA and Offline platforms giving pattern of ADC traces in Auger water Cherenkov detectors. The 3-layer 12-10-1 neural network was taught in MATLAB by simulated ADC traces according the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm. Results show that a probability of a ADC traces generation is very low due to a small neutrino cross-section. Nevertheless, ADC traces, if occur, for 1-10 EeV showers are relatively short and can be analyzed by 16-point input algorithm. For 100 EeV range traces are much longer, but with significantly higher amplitudes, which can be detected by standard threshold algorithms. We optimized the coefficients from MATLAB to get a maximal range of potentially registered events and for fixed-point FPGA processing to minimize calculation errors. Currently used Front-End boards based on no-more produced ACEXR PLDs and obsolete Cyclone{sup R} FPGAs allow an implementation of relatively simple threshold algorithms for triggers. New sophisticated trigger implemented in Cyclone{sup R} V E FPGAs with large amount of DSP blocks, embedded memory running with 120 - 160 MHz sampling may support to discover neutrino events

  19. A review on the neural bases of episodic odor memory: from laboratory-based to autobiographical approaches

    Science.gov (United States)

    Saive, Anne-Lise; Royet, Jean-Pierre; Plailly, Jane

    2014-01-01

    Odors are powerful cues that trigger episodic memories. However, in light of the amount of behavioral data describing the characteristics of episodic odor memory, the paucity of information available on the neural substrates of this function is startling. Furthermore, the diversity of experimental paradigms complicates the identification of a generic episodic odor memory network. We conduct a systematic review of the literature depicting the current state of the neural correlates of episodic odor memory in healthy humans by placing a focus on the experimental approaches. Functional neuroimaging data are introduced by a brief characterization of the memory processes investigated. We present and discuss laboratory-based approaches, such as odor recognition and odor associative memory, and autobiographical approaches, such as the evaluation of odor familiarity and odor-evoked autobiographical memory. We then suggest the development of new laboratory-ecological approaches allowing for the controlled encoding and retrieval of specific multidimensional events that could open up new prospects for the comprehension of episodic odor memory and its neural underpinnings. While large conceptual differences distinguish experimental approaches, the overview of the functional neuroimaging findings suggests relatively stable neural correlates of episodic odor memory. PMID:25071494

  20. A review on the neural bases of episodic odor memory: from laboratory-based to autobiographical approaches

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Anne-Lise eSaive

    2014-07-01

    Full Text Available Odors are powerful cues that trigger episodic memories. However, in light of the amount of behavioral data describing the characteristics of episodic odor memory, the paucity of information available on the neural substrates of this function is startling. Furthermore, the diversity of experimental paradigms complicates the identification of a generic episodic odor memory network. We conduct a systematic review of the literature depicting the current state of the neural correlates of episodic odor memory in healthy humans by placing a focus on the experimental approaches. Functional neuroimaging data are introduced by a brief characterization of the memory processes investigated. We present and discuss laboratory-based approaches, such as odor recognition and odor associative memory, and autobiographical approaches, such as the evaluation of odor familiarity and odor-evoked autobiographical memory. We then suggest the development of new laboratory-ecological approaches allowing for the controlled encoding and retrieval of specific multidimensional events that could open up new prospects for the comprehension of episodic odor memory and its neural underpinnings. While large conceptual differences distinguish experimental approaches, the overview of the functional neuroimaging findings suggests relatively stable neural correlates of episodic odor memory.