scholarly journals Context learning before birth: evidence from the chick embryo

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (7) ◽  
pp. 20190104
Author(s):  
Massimo Turatto ◽  
Andrea Dissegna ◽  
Cinzia Chiandetti
Keyword(s):  
Chick Embryo ◽  
Brain Function ◽  
Contextual Information ◽  
Cognitive Skill ◽  
Avian Species ◽  
Survival Advantage ◽  
Associative Memories ◽  
Freezing Response ◽  
Context Learning ◽  
Surrounding Environment

Learning contextual information to form associative memories with stimuli of interest is an important brain function in both human and non-human animals. Intuitively, one would expect that such a sophisticated cognitive skill develops postnatally, as the organism starts exploring the surrounding environment to search for significant contingencies among stimuli. Here we show, instead, that even before hatching, domestic chicks are capable of forming associative memories between discrete alerting sounds and the surrounding context, as attested by the fact that habituation of the freezing response to the sounds is affected by the context of stimulation. This finding indicates that, while in the egg, chicks recognize and learn the context in which they are stimulated. Hence, context learning in chicks is an innate brain function already active before birth, which can provide an immediate survival advantage to the newborns of this precocial avian species.

Virtual Recollection: Artifact Engagement in Three-Dimensional Environments

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Ryan Achten
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Contextual Information ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
Dimensional Representation ◽  
Digital Representations ◽  
Surrounding Environment ◽  
Environmental Narratives ◽  
Three Dimensional Representation ◽  
The Common

<p>Cultural institutions, specifically libraries, museums, and archives, have long been recognised for their collection and preservation of artifacts as a means of conserving cultural memory. With an emergence of digital modes of archiving, an emphasis has been placed on reproducing existing physical artifacts as digital representations and archival of born-digital media. Within the common practice of representing three-dimensional digital artifacts as two-dimensional counterparts, only a facet of the original artifact is represented; omitting valuable spatial and contextual information while precluding opportunities for new forms of artifactual engagement.  By adopting the gaming engine Unity3D, software for interfacing with archive collections was developed to explore how digital three-dimensional spatiality within cultural institution practice may enhance interaction between users and artifacts. Using a combination of configuration, probe, and abstract experimentalist devices, this research explored ways users may engage with digital artifacts in their native spatiality, and the opportunities or limitations these interactions may give rise to. By exploiting diegetic space intrinsic within interfaces, environmental narratives may become powerful tools when communicating and understanding artifactual information. This paper delineates aspects of narrative potential within artifacts and their surrounding environment possible through three-dimensional representation.</p>

scholarly journals Corynebacterium glutamicum Mechanosensing: From Osmoregulation to L-Glutamate Secretion for the Avian Microbiota-Gut-Brain Axis

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoshitaka Nakayama
Keyword(s):  
Corynebacterium Glutamicum ◽  
Brain Function ◽  
Monosodium Glutamate ◽  
Turgor Pressure ◽  
Avian Host ◽  
Mechanosensitive Channels ◽  
Hypoosmotic Shock ◽  
Surrounding Environment ◽  
Present Information ◽  
Glutamate Production

After the discovery of Corynebacterium glutamicum from avian feces-contaminated soil, its enigmatic L-glutamate secretion by corynebacterial MscCG-type mechanosensitive channels has been utilized for industrial monosodium glutamate production. Bacterial mechanosensitive channels are activated directly by increased membrane tension upon hypoosmotic downshock; thus; the physiological significance of the corynebacterial L-glutamate secretion has been considered as adjusting turgor pressure by releasing cytoplasmic solutes. In this review, we present information that corynebacterial mechanosensitive channels have been evolutionally specialized as carriers to secrete L-glutamate into the surrounding environment in their habitats rather than osmotic safety valves. The lipid modulation activation of MscCG channels in L-glutamate production can be explained by the “Force-From-Lipids” and “Force-From-Tethers” mechanosensing paradigms and differs significantly from mechanical activation upon hypoosmotic shock. The review also provides information on the search for evidence that C. glutamicum was originally a gut bacterium in the avian host with the aim of understanding the physiological roles of corynebacterial mechanosensing. C. glutamicum is able to secrete L-glutamate by mechanosensitive channels in the gut microbiota and help the host brain function via the microbiota–gut–brain axis.

scholarly journals Self-directed Learning by Preschoolers in a Naturalistic Overhearing Context

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruthe Foushee ◽  
Mahesh Srinivasan ◽  
Fei Xu
Keyword(s):  
Learning Ability ◽  
Phone Call ◽  
Older Children ◽  
Self Directed Learning ◽  
New Words ◽  
Context Learning ◽  
Surrounding Environment ◽  
Directed Learning ◽  
Novel Words

Three studies investigated preschoolers' self-directed learning ability in a naturalistic context: learning from overheard speech. In Experiment 1, 4.5- to 6-year-olds were exposed to 4 novel words and 6 arbitrary facts corresponding to a set of co-present toys; in Experiment 2, 3- to 4.5-year-olds heard 5 nouns and 3 facts. In the Pedagogical conditions, children were taught the information with the aid of multiple pedagogical cues, but in the Overhearing conditions, children had to listen in to one side of a phone call to learn the information. Older preschoolers (Experiment 1) learned all items above chance in both conditions. Younger preschoolers (Experiment 2) learned words and facts above chance in the Pedagogical condition but were at chance at learning words in the Overhearing condition, despite reliably learning facts from overhearing. Experiment 3 demonstrated that younger children's difficulty at learning new words from overhearing could not be explained by only being able to hear one side of the phone conversation, as they similarly struggled when the phone call took place over speakerphone. Measures of children's touch behavior suggest that older children were better able to coordinate their attention between the overheard speech and objects, though even younger children showed evidence of attention to the overheard speech. Together, our results demonstrate that by age 5, children can learn multiple new words and facts via overhearing. This self-directed learning ability depends on being able to coordinate attention between speech and the surrounding environment, a capacity that develops throughout preschool.

Virtual Recollection: Artifact Engagement in Three-Dimensional Environments

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Ryan Achten
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Contextual Information ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
Dimensional Representation ◽  
Digital Representations ◽  
Surrounding Environment ◽  
Environmental Narratives ◽  
Three Dimensional Representation ◽  
The Common

<p>Cultural institutions, specifically libraries, museums, and archives, have long been recognised for their collection and preservation of artifacts as a means of conserving cultural memory. With an emergence of digital modes of archiving, an emphasis has been placed on reproducing existing physical artifacts as digital representations and archival of born-digital media. Within the common practice of representing three-dimensional digital artifacts as two-dimensional counterparts, only a facet of the original artifact is represented; omitting valuable spatial and contextual information while precluding opportunities for new forms of artifactual engagement.  By adopting the gaming engine Unity3D, software for interfacing with archive collections was developed to explore how digital three-dimensional spatiality within cultural institution practice may enhance interaction between users and artifacts. Using a combination of configuration, probe, and abstract experimentalist devices, this research explored ways users may engage with digital artifacts in their native spatiality, and the opportunities or limitations these interactions may give rise to. By exploiting diegetic space intrinsic within interfaces, environmental narratives may become powerful tools when communicating and understanding artifactual information. This paper delineates aspects of narrative potential within artifacts and their surrounding environment possible through three-dimensional representation.</p>

scholarly journals Bridge Crack Detection Based on SSENets

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 4230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haotian Li ◽  
Hongyan Xu ◽  
Xiaodong Tian ◽  
Yi Wang ◽  
Huaiyu Cai ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Neural Networks ◽  
Computational Complexity ◽  
Crack Detection ◽  
Contextual Information ◽  
Detection Accuracy ◽  
Multi Scale ◽  
Surrounding Environment ◽  
Spatial Pyramid Pooling ◽  
Spatial Pyramid ◽  
Better Than

Bridge crack detection is essential to prevent transportation accidents. However, the surrounding environment has great interference with the detection of cracks, which makes it difficult to ensure the accuracy of the detection. In order to accurately detect bridge cracks, we proposed an end-to-end model named Skip-Squeeze-and-Excitation Networks (SSENets). It is mainly composed of the Skip-Squeeze-Excitation (SSE) module and the Atrous Spatial Pyramid Pooling (ASPP) module. The SSE module uses skip-connection strategy to enhance the gradient correlation between the shallow network and deeper network, alleviating the vanishing gradient caused by the deepening of the network. The ASPP module can extract multi-scale contextual information of images, while the depthwise separable convolution reduces computational complexity. In order to avoid destroying the topology of crack, we used atrous convolution instead of the pooling layer. The proposed SSENets achieved a detection accuracy of 97.77%, which performed better than the models we compared it with. The designed SSE module which used skip-connection strategy can be embedded in other convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to improve their performance.

scholarly journals Corynebacterium Glutamicum Mechanosensing: From Osmoregulation to L-Glutamate Secretion for the Avian Microbiota-Gut-Brain Axis

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoshitaka Nakayama
Keyword(s):  
Corynebacterium Glutamicum ◽  
Brain Function ◽  
Monosodium Glutamate ◽  
Turgor Pressure ◽  
Avian Host ◽  
Mechanosensitive Channels ◽  
Hypoosmotic Shock ◽  
Surrounding Environment ◽  
Present Information ◽  
Glutamate Production

After the discovery of Corynebacterium glutamicum from the avian feces contaminated soil, its enigmatic L-glutamate secretion by corynebacterial MscCG-type mechanosensitive channels has been utilized for the industrial monosodium glutamate production. Bacterial mechanosensitive channels are activated directly by increased membrane tension upon hypoosmotic downshock, thus the physiological significance of the corynebacterial L-glutamate secretion has been considered as adjusting turgor pressure by releasing cytoplasmic solutes. In this review, we present information that corynebacterial mechanosensitive channels have been evolutionally specialized as carriers to secrete L-glutamate into the surrounding environment in their habitats rather than osmotic safety valves. The lipid modulation activation of MscCG channels in L-glutamate production can be explained by the &ldquo;Force-From-Lipids&rdquo; and &ldquo;Force-From-Tethers&rdquo; mechanosensing paradigms and differs significantly from the mechanical activation upon hypoosmotic shock. The review also provides information on the search for possibilities that Corynebacterium glutamicum was originally a gut bacterium in the avian host in the aim of understanding physiological roles of corynebacterial mechanosensing. Corynebacterium glutamicum is able to secrete L-glutamate by mechanosensitive channels in the gut microbiota and help the host brain function via the microbiota-gut-brain axis.

A challenge for predictive coding: Representational or experiential diversity?

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martina G. Vilas ◽  
Lucia Melloni
Keyword(s):  
Brain Function ◽  
Predictive Coding ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Process Theory

Abstract To become a unifying theory of brain function, predictive processing (PP) must accommodate its rich representational diversity. Gilead et al. claim such diversity requires a multi-process theory, and thus is out of reach for PP, which postulates a universal canonical computation. We contend this argument and instead propose that PP fails to account for the experiential level of representations.

Otoconia formation in the chick embryo

1983 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
pp. 572-573
Author(s):  
C.D. Fermin ◽  
M. Igarashi
Keyword(s):  
Chick Embryo ◽  
Inner Ear ◽  
Gallus Domesticus ◽  
The Body ◽  
Abnormal Behavior ◽  
Intensive Study ◽  
Basic Fuchsin ◽  
Gestational Period ◽  
Sensory Epithelia ◽  
Transmission Electron

Otoconia are microscopic geometric structures that cover the sensory epithelia of the utricle and saccule (gravitational receptors) of mammals, and the lagena macula of birds. The importance of otoconia for maintanance of the body balance is evidenced by the abnormal behavior of species with genetic defects of otolith. Although a few reports have dealt with otoconia formation, some basic questions remain unanswered. The chick embryo is desirable for studying otoconial formation because its inner ear structures are easily accessible, and its gestational period is short (21 days of incubation).The results described here are part of an intensive study intended to examine the morphogenesis of the otoconia in the chick embryo (Gallus- domesticus) inner ear. We used chick embryos from the 4th day of incubation until hatching, and examined the specimens with light (LM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The embryos were decapitated, and fixed by immersion with 3% cold glutaraldehyde. The ears and their parts were dissected out under the microscope; no decalcification was used. For LM, the ears were embedded in JB-4 plastic, cut serially at 5 micra and stained with 0.2% toluidine blue and 0.1% basic fuchsin in 25% alcohol.

Morphological Examination of a Herpes-type Virus Indigenous for Tree Shrews

1970 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 160-161
Author(s):  
J. P. Brunschwig ◽  
R. M. McCombs ◽  
R. Mirkovic ◽  
M. Benyesh-Melnick
Keyword(s):  
Electron Microscopy ◽  
Soft Tissue ◽  
Chick Embryo ◽  
Soft Tissue Sarcoma ◽  
Cell Cultures ◽  
Tree Shrew ◽  
Type Virus ◽  
Morphological Examination ◽  
Tree Shrews ◽  
Embryo Cells

A new virus, established as a member of the herpesvirus group by electron microscopy, was isolated from spontaneously degenerating cell cultures derived from the kidneys and lungs of two normal tree shrews. The virus was found to replicate best in cells derived from the homologous species. The cells used were a tree shrew cell line, T-23, which was derived from a spontaneous soft tissue sarcoma. The virus did not multiply or did so poorly for a limited number of passages in human, monkey, rodent, rabbit or chick embryo cells. In the T-23 cells, the virus behaved as members of the subgroup B of herpesvirus, in that the virus remained primarily cell associated.

Scanning electron microscopic study of collagen fibrillogenesis and extracellular compartmentalization in the chick embryo tendon

1986 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 208-209
Author(s):  
Grace C.H. Yang
Keyword(s):  
Chick Embryo ◽  
Extracellular Space ◽  
Fibroblast Cell ◽  
Collagen Fibrils ◽  
Electron Microscopic ◽  
Voltage Electron ◽  
Scanning Electron Microscopic Study ◽  
Microscopic Studies ◽  
And Function

The size and organization of collagen fibrils in the extracellular matrix is an important determinant of tissue structure and function. The synthesis and deposition of collagen involves multiple steps which begin within the cell and continue in the extracellular space. High-voltage electron microscopic studies of the chick embryo cornea and tendon suggested that the extracellular space is compartmentalized by the fibroblasts for the regulation of collagen fibril, bundle, and tissue specific macroaggregate formation. The purpose of this study is to gather direct evidence regarding the association of the fibroblast cell surface with newly formed collagen fibrils, and to define the role of the fibroblast in the control and the precise positioning of collagen fibrils, bundles, and macroaggregates during chick tendon development.

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