scholarly journals Mid-level visual features underlie the high-level categorical organization of the ventral stream

2018 ◽  
Vol 115 (38) ◽  
pp. E9015-E9024 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bria Long ◽  
Chen-Ping Yu ◽  
Talia Konkle
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Texture Synthesis ◽  
Ventral Stream ◽  
Neural Responses ◽  
Intermediate Layers ◽  
Coarse Texture ◽  
Explicit Recognition ◽  
Ventral Pathway ◽  
High Level ◽  
Form Information

Human object-selective cortex shows a large-scale organization characterized by the high-level properties of both animacy and object size. To what extent are these neural responses explained by primitive perceptual features that distinguish animals from objects and big objects from small objects? To address this question, we used a texture synthesis algorithm to create a class of stimuli—texforms—which preserve some mid-level texture and form information from objects while rendering them unrecognizable. We found that unrecognizable texforms were sufficient to elicit the large-scale organizations of object-selective cortex along the entire ventral pathway. Further, the structure in the neural patterns elicited by texforms was well predicted by curvature features and by intermediate layers of a deep convolutional neural network, supporting the mid-level nature of the representations. These results provide clear evidence that a substantial portion of ventral stream organization can be accounted for by coarse texture and form information without requiring explicit recognition of intact objects.

scholarly journals A mid-level organization of the ventral stream

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bria Long ◽  
Chen-Ping Yu ◽  
Talia Konkle
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Texture Synthesis ◽  
Ventral Stream ◽  
Object Size ◽  
Neural Responses ◽  
Visual Stream ◽  
Visual Appearance ◽  
Explicit Recognition ◽  
High Level ◽  
Form Information

ABSTRACTHuman object-selective cortex shows a large-scale organization characterized by the high-level properties of both animacy and object-size. To what extent are these neural responses explained by primitive perceptual features that distinguish animals from objects and big objects from small objects? To address this question, we used a texture synthesis algorithm to create a novel class of stimuli—texforms—which preserve some mid-level texture and form information from objects while rendering them unrecognizable. We found that unrecognizable texforms were sufficient to elicit the large-scale organizations of object-selective cortex along the entire ventral pathway. Further, the structure in the neural patterns elicited by texforms was well predicted by curvature features and by intermediate layers of a deep convolutional neural network, supporting the mid-level nature of the representations. These results provide clear evidence that a substantial portion of ventral stream organization can be accounted for by coarse texture and form information, without requiring explicit recognition of intact objects.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENTWhile neural responses to object categories are remarkably systematic across human visual cortex, the nature of these responses been hotly debated for the past 20 years. In this paper, a new class of stimuli (“texforms”) is used to examine how mid-level features contribute to the large-scale organization of the ventral visual stream. Despite their relatively primitive visual appearance, these unrecognizable texforms elicited the entire large-scale organizations of the ventral stream by animacy and object size. This work demonstrates that much of ventral stream organization can be explained by relatively primitive mid-level features, without requiring explicit recognition of the objects themselves.

scholarly journals Mid-level feature differences underlie early animacy and object size distinctions: Evidence from EEG decoding

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruosi Wang ◽  
Daniel Janini ◽  
Talia Konkle
Keyword(s):  
Temporal Processing ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Object Size ◽  
Cortical Surface ◽  
Neural Processing ◽  
Neural Responses ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Topographical Organization ◽  
Explicit Recognition ◽  
Feature Information

Responses to visually-presented objects along the cortical surface of the human brain have a large-scale organization reflecting the broad categorical divisions of animacy and object size. Mounting evidence indicates that this topographical organization is driven by differences between objects in mid-level perceptual features. With regard to the timing of neural responses, images of objects quickly evoke neural responses with decodable information about animacy and object size, but are mid-level features sufficient to evoke these rapid neural responses? Or is slower iterative neural processing required to untangle information about animacy and object size from mid-level features? To answer this question, we used electroencephalography(EEG) to measure human neural responses to images of objects and their texform counterparts - unrecognizable images which preserve some mid-level feature information about texture and coarse form. We found that texform images evoked neural responses with early decodable information about both animacy and real-world size, as early as responses evoked by original images. Further, successful cross-decoding indicates that both texform and original images evoke information about animacy and size through a common underlying neural basis. Broadly, these results indicate that the visual system contains a mid-level feature bank carrying linearly decodable information on animacy and size, which can be rapidly activated without requiring explicit recognition or protracted temporal processing.

scholarly journals Domain-Specific Diaschisis: Lesions to Parietal Action Areas Modulate Neural Responses to Tools in the Ventral Stream

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (7) ◽  
pp. 3168-3181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank E Garcea ◽  
Jorge Almeida ◽  
Maxwell H Sims ◽  
Andrew Nunno ◽  
Steven P Meyers ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Parietal Cortex ◽  
Functional Neuroimaging ◽  
Temporal Cortex ◽  
Dorsal Stream ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Ventral Stream ◽  
Middle Temporal Gyrus ◽  
Neural Responses ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
High Level

Abstract Neural responses to small manipulable objects (“tools”) in high-level visual areas in ventral temporal cortex (VTC) provide an opportunity to test how anatomically remote regions modulate ventral stream processing in a domain-specific manner. Prior patient studies indicate that grasp-relevant information can be computed about objects by dorsal stream structures independently of processing in VTC. Prior functional neuroimaging studies indicate privileged functional connectivity between regions of VTC exhibiting tool preferences and regions of parietal cortex supporting object-directed action. Here we test whether lesions to parietal cortex modulate tool preferences within ventral and lateral temporal cortex. We found that lesions to the left anterior intraparietal sulcus, a region that supports hand-shaping during object grasping and manipulation, modulate tool preferences in left VTC and in the left posterior middle temporal gyrus. Control analyses demonstrated that neural responses to “place” stimuli in left VTC were unaffected by lesions to parietal cortex, indicating domain-specific consequences for ventral stream neural responses in the setting of parietal lesions. These findings provide causal evidence that neural specificity for “tools” in ventral and lateral temporal lobe areas may arise, in part, from online inputs to VTC from parietal areas that receive inputs via the dorsal visual pathway.

Social inequality in the evolution of human societies

2019 ◽  
pp. 98-120
Author(s):  
Georgi Derluguian
Keyword(s):  
Social Inequality ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Mass Violence ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Tangible Assets ◽  
Transition To Agriculture ◽  
New Institutions ◽  
High Level ◽  
Political Economic

The author develops ideas about the origin of social inequality during the evolution of human societies and reflects on the possibilities of its overcoming. What makes human beings different from other primates is a high level of egalitarianism and altruism, which contributed to more successful adaptability of human collectives at early stages of the development of society. The transition to agriculture, coupled with substantially increasing population density, was marked by the emergence and institutionalisation of social inequality based on the inequality of tangible assets and symbolic wealth. Then, new institutions of warfare came into existence, and they were aimed at conquering and enslaving the neighbours engaged in productive labour. While exercising control over nature, people also established and strengthened their power over other people. Chiefdom as a new type of polity came into being. Elementary forms of power (political, economic and ideological) served as a basis for the formation of early states. The societies in those states were characterised by social inequality and cruelties, including slavery, mass violence and numerous victims. Nowadays, the old elementary forms of power that are inherent in personalistic chiefdom are still functioning along with modern institutions of public and private bureaucracy. This constitutes the key contradiction of our time, which is the juxtaposition of individual despotic power and public infrastructural one. However, society is evolving towards an ever more efficient combination of social initiatives with the sustainability and viability of large-scale organisations.

scholarly journals Cortical response to naturalistic stimuli is largely predictable with deep neural networks

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (22) ◽  
pp. eabe7547
Author(s):  
Meenakshi Khosla ◽  
Gia H. Ngo ◽  
Keith Jamison ◽  
Amy Kuceyeski ◽  
Mert R. Sabuncu
Keyword(s):  
Brain Function ◽  
Deep Neural Networks ◽  
Neural Responses ◽  
Dynamic Interactions ◽  
Hierarchical Processing ◽  
Human Connectome Project ◽  
Neural Information ◽  
Neural Information Processing ◽  
Visual Interactions ◽  
High Level

Naturalistic stimuli, such as movies, activate a substantial portion of the human brain, invoking a response shared across individuals. Encoding models that predict neural responses to arbitrary stimuli can be very useful for studying brain function. However, existing models focus on limited aspects of naturalistic stimuli, ignoring the dynamic interactions of modalities in this inherently context-rich paradigm. Using movie-watching data from the Human Connectome Project, we build group-level models of neural activity that incorporate several inductive biases about neural information processing, including hierarchical processing, temporal assimilation, and auditory-visual interactions. We demonstrate how incorporating these biases leads to remarkable prediction performance across large areas of the cortex, beyond the sensory-specific cortices into multisensory sites and frontal cortex. Furthermore, we illustrate that encoding models learn high-level concepts that generalize to task-bound paradigms. Together, our findings underscore the potential of encoding models as powerful tools for studying brain function in ecologically valid conditions.

scholarly journals Arabidopsis Genes Essential for Seedling Viability: Isolation of Insertional Mutants and Molecular Cloning

Genetics ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 159 (4) ◽  
pp. 1765-1778
Author(s):  
Gregory J Budziszewski ◽  
Sharon Potter Lewis ◽  
Lyn Wegrich Glover ◽  
Jennifer Reineke ◽  
Gary Jones ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Protein Translocation ◽  
Gene Families ◽  
Mutant Phenotype ◽  
Lethal Mutant ◽  
A Genome ◽  
Genes Encoding ◽  
High Level ◽  
Mutant Lines ◽  
Genome Scale

Abstract We have undertaken a large-scale genetic screen to identify genes with a seedling-lethal mutant phenotype. From screening ~38,000 insertional mutant lines, we identified >500 seedling-lethal mutants, completed cosegregation analysis of the insertion and the lethal phenotype for >200 mutants, molecularly characterized 54 mutants, and provided a detailed description for 22 of them. Most of the seedling-lethal mutants seem to affect chloroplast function because they display altered pigmentation and affect genes encoding proteins predicted to have chloroplast localization. Although a high level of functional redundancy in Arabidopsis might be expected because 65% of genes are members of gene families, we found that 41% of the essential genes found in this study are members of Arabidopsis gene families. In addition, we isolated several interesting classes of mutants and genes. We found three mutants in the recently discovered nonmevalonate isoprenoid biosynthetic pathway and mutants disrupting genes similar to Tic40 and tatC, which are likely to be involved in chloroplast protein translocation. Finally, we directly compared T-DNA and Ac/Ds transposon mutagenesis methods in Arabidopsis on a genome scale. In each population, we found only about one-third of the insertion mutations cosegregated with a mutant phenotype.

New Harvesting and Curing Techniques in the Production of Breeder's Seed Peanuts1

1979 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 70-72
Author(s):  
T. A. Coffelt ◽  
F. S. Wright ◽  
J. L. Steele
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Combine Method ◽  
Frost Damage ◽  
New Method ◽  
Experimental Equipment ◽  
Harvesting Method ◽  
Curing Methods ◽  
Labor Requirements ◽  
High Level ◽  
Varietal Purity

Abstract A new method of harvesting and curing breeder's seed peanuts in Virginia was initiated that would 1) reduce the labor requirements, 2) maintain a high level of germination, 3) maintain varietal purity at 100%, and 4) reduce the risk of frost damage. Three possible harvesting and curing methods were studied. The traditional stack-pole method satisfied the latter 3 objectives, but not the first. The windrow-combine method satisfied the first 2 objectives, but not the last 2. The direct harvesting method satisfied all four objectives. The experimental equipment and curing procedures for direct harvesting had been developed but not tested on a large scale for seed harvesting. This method has been used in Virginia to produce breeder's seed of 3 peanut varieties (Florigiant, VA 72R and VA 61R) during five years. Compared to the stackpole method, labor requirements have been reduced, satisfactory levels of germination and varietal purity have been obtained, and the risk of frost damage has been minimized.

Results from a Large-Scale Epidemiologic Look-Back Investigation of Improperly Reprocessed Endoscopy Equipment

2012 ◽  
Vol 33 (07) ◽  
pp. 649-656 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Holodniy ◽  
Gina Oda ◽  
Patricia L. Schirmer ◽  
Cynthia A. Lucero ◽  
Yury E. Khudyakov ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Testing ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Bloodborne Pathogens ◽  
Medical Centers ◽  
B Virus ◽  
Immunodeficiency Virus ◽  
Viral Testing ◽  
Veterans Affairs Medical Centers ◽  
High Level ◽  
Nose And Throat

Objective.To determine whether improper high-level disinfection practices during endoscopy procedures resulted in bloodborne viral infection transmission.Design.Retrospective cohort study.Setting.Four Veterans Affairs medical centers (VAMCs).Patients.Veterans who underwent colonoscopy and laryngoscopy (ear, nose, and throat [ENT]) procedures from 2003 to 2009.Methods.Patients were identified through electronic health record searches and serotested for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis C virus (HCV), and hepatitis B virus (HBV). Newly discovered case patients were linked to a potential source with known identical infection, whose procedure occurred no more than 1 day prior to the case patient's procedure. Viral genetic testing was performed for case/proximate pairs to determine relatedness.Results.Of 10,737 veterans who underwent endoscopy at 4 VAMCs, 9,879 patients agreed to viral testing. Of these, 90 patients were newly diagnosed with 1 or more viral bloodborne pathogens (BBPs). There were no case/proximate pairings found for patients with either HIV or HBV; 24 HCV case/proximate pairings were found, of which 7 case patients and 8 proximate patients had sufficient viral load for further genetic testing. Only 2 of these cases, both of whom underwent laryngoscopy, and their 4 proximates agreed to further testing. None of the 4 remaining proximate patients who underwent colonoscopy agreed to further testing. Mean genetic distance between the 2 case patients and 4 proximate patients ranged from 13.5% to 19.1%.Conclusions.Our investigation revealed that exposure to improperly reprocessed ENT endoscopes did not result in viral transmission in those patients who had viral genetic analysis performed. Any potential transmission of BBPs from colonoscopy remains unknown.

scholarly journals Revealing the constituents of Egypt’s oldest beer using infrared and mass spectrometry

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohamed A. Farag ◽  
Moamen M. Elmassry ◽  
Masahiro Baba ◽  
Renée Friedman
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Beer Brewing ◽  
Chemical Signatures ◽  
Chemical Determination ◽  
Materials Used ◽  
High Level ◽  
Beer Production ◽  
First Time ◽  
Detailed Chemical

Abstract Previous studies have shown that the Ancient Egyptians used malted wheat and barley as the main ingredients in beer brewing, but the chemical determination of the exact recipe is still lacking. To investigate the constituents of ancient beer, we conducted a detailed IR and GC-MS based metabolite analyses targeting volatile and non-volatile metabolites on the residues recovered from the interior of vats in what is currently the world’s oldest (c. 3600 BCE) installation for large-scale beer production located at the major pre-pharaonic political center at Hierakonpolis, Egypt. In addition to distinguishing the chemical signatures of various flavoring agents, such as dates, a significant result of our analysis is the finding, for the first time, of phosphoric acid in high level probably used as a preservative much like in modern beverages. This suggests that the early brewers had acquired the knowledge needed to efficiently produce and preserve large quantities of beer. This study provides the most detailed chemical profile of an ancient beer using modern spectrometric techniques and providing evidence for the likely starting materials used in beer brewing.

scholarly journals Quantifying the signals contained in heterogeneous neural responses and determining their relationships with task performance

2014 ◽  
Vol 112 (6) ◽  
pp. 1584-1598 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marino Pagan ◽  
Nicole C. Rust
Keyword(s):  
Task Performance ◽  
Single Neuron ◽  
Weighted Sums ◽  
Neural Responses ◽  
Signal Modulation ◽  
Neural Data ◽  
Match To Sample ◽  
Neural Populations ◽  
Different Types ◽  
High Level

The responses of high-level neurons tend to be mixtures of many different types of signals. While this diversity is thought to allow for flexible neural processing, it presents a challenge for understanding how neural responses relate to task performance and to neural computation. To address these challenges, we have developed a new method to parse the responses of individual neurons into weighted sums of intuitive signal components. Our method computes the weights by projecting a neuron's responses onto a predefined orthonormal basis. Once determined, these weights can be combined into measures of signal modulation; however, in their raw form these signal modulation measures are biased by noise. Here we introduce and evaluate two methods for correcting this bias, and we report that an analytically derived approach produces performance that is robust and superior to a bootstrap procedure. Using neural data recorded from inferotemporal cortex and perirhinal cortex as monkeys performed a delayed-match-to-sample target search task, we demonstrate how the method can be used to quantify the amounts of task-relevant signals in heterogeneous neural populations. We also demonstrate how these intuitive quantifications of signal modulation can be related to single-neuron measures of task performance ( d′).

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