scholarly journals Supracategorical fear information revealed by aversively conditioning multiple categories

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seth M. Levine ◽  
Miriam Kumpf ◽  
Rainer Rupprecht ◽  
Jens V. Schwarzbach
Keyword(s):  
Fear Conditioning ◽  
Activity Patterns ◽  
Occipital Cortex ◽  
Fear Learning ◽  
Critical Function ◽  
Three Phase ◽  
Temporal Pole ◽  
Diamondback Rattlesnake ◽  
The Right ◽  
Multiple Categories

Fear-generalization is a critical function for survival, in which an organism extracts information from a specific instantiation of a threat (e.g., the western diamondback rattlesnake in my front yard on Sunday) and learns to fear—and accordingly respond to—pertinent higher-order information (e.g., snakes live in my yard). Previous work investigating fear-conditioning in humans has used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to demonstrate that activity-patterns of stimuli from an aversively-conditioned category (CS+) are more similar to each other than those of a neutral category (CS-). Here we designed a three-phase (i.e., baseline, conditioned, extinction) experiment using fMRI and multiple aversively-conditioned categories to ask whether we would find only similarity increases within the CS+ categories or also an increase in similarity between the CS+ categories. Using representational similarity analysis, we correlated a set of models to activity-patterns underlying several regions of interest and found that, following fear-conditioning, between-category and within-category similarity increased for the CS+ categories in the superior frontal gyrus (SFG) and the right temporal pole (rTP). Activity patterns in the object-selective lateral occipital cortex tended to prefer the semantic model, regardless of the experimental phase. These results advance prior pattern-based neuroimaging work by exploring the effect of aversively-conditioning multiple categories and indicate an extended role for the SFG and rTP in potentially linking discrete information or abstractly representing supracategorical information during fear-learning for the purpose of proper generalization.

Phosphene perceptions and safety of chronic visual cortex stimulation in a blind subject

2020 ◽  
Vol 132 (6) ◽  
pp. 2000-2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Soroush Niketeghad ◽  
Abirami Muralidharan ◽  
Uday Patel ◽  
Jessy D. Dorn ◽  
Laura Bonelli ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Adverse Events ◽  
Clinical Intervention ◽  
Occipital Cortex ◽  
Neuronal Population ◽  
Serious Adverse Events ◽  
Stimulation Parameters ◽  
The Right ◽  
Visual Cortical ◽  
Stimulation Of

Stimulation of primary visual cortices has the potential to restore some degree of vision to blind individuals. Developing safe and reliable visual cortical prostheses requires assessment of the long-term stability, feasibility, and safety of generating stimulation-evoked perceptions.A NeuroPace responsive neurostimulation system was implanted in a blind individual with an 8-year history of bare light perception, and stimulation-evoked phosphenes were evaluated over 19 months (41 test sessions). Electrical stimulation was delivered via two four-contact subdural electrode strips implanted over the right medial occipital cortex. Current and charge thresholds for eliciting visual perception (phosphenes) were measured, as were the shape, size, location, and intensity of the phosphenes. Adverse events were also assessed.Stimulation of all contacts resulted in phosphene perception. Phosphenes appeared completely or partially in the left hemifield. Stimulation of the electrodes below the calcarine sulcus elicited phosphenes in the superior hemifield and vice versa. Changing the stimulation parameters of frequency, pulse width, and burst duration affected current thresholds for eliciting phosphenes, and increasing the amplitude or frequency of stimulation resulted in brighter perceptions. While stimulation thresholds decreased between an average of 5% and 12% after 19 months, spatial mapping of phosphenes remained consistent over time. Although no serious adverse events were observed, the subject experienced mild headaches and dizziness in three instances, symptoms that did not persist for more than a few hours and for which no clinical intervention was required.Using an off-the-shelf neurostimulator, the authors were able to reliably generate phosphenes in different areas of the visual field over 19 months with no serious adverse events, providing preliminary proof of feasibility and safety to proceed with visual epicortical prosthetic clinical trials. Moreover, they systematically explored the relationship between stimulation parameters and phosphene thresholds and discovered the direct relation of perception thresholds based on primary visual cortex (V1) neuronal population excitation thresholds.

scholarly journals Neural alignment predicts learning outcomes in students taking an introduction to computer science course

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Meir Meshulam ◽  
Liat Hasenfratz ◽  
Hanna Hillman ◽  
Yun-Fei Liu ◽  
Mai Nguyen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Computer Science ◽  
Learning Outcomes ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Activity Patterns ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Final Exam ◽  
Neural Representations ◽  
Real Life Setting ◽  
The Right ◽  
Mri Study

AbstractDespite major advances in measuring human brain activity during and after educational experiences, it is unclear how learners internalize new content, especially in real-life and online settings. In this work, we introduce a neural approach to predicting and assessing learning outcomes in a real-life setting. Our approach hinges on the idea that successful learning involves forming the right set of neural representations, which are captured in canonical activity patterns shared across individuals. Specifically, we hypothesized that learning is mirrored in neural alignment: the degree to which an individual learner’s neural representations match those of experts, as well as those of other learners. We tested this hypothesis in a longitudinal functional MRI study that regularly scanned college students enrolled in an introduction to computer science course. We additionally scanned graduate student experts in computer science. We show that alignment among students successfully predicts overall performance in a final exam. Furthermore, within individual students, we find better learning outcomes for concepts that evoke better alignment with experts and with other students, revealing neural patterns associated with specific learned concepts in individuals.

scholarly journals Fear conditioning and stimulus generalization in association with age in children and adolescents

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Reinhard ◽  
Anna Slyschak ◽  
Miriam A. Schiele ◽  
Marta Andreatta ◽  
Katharina Kneer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Children And Adolescents ◽  
Fear Conditioning ◽  
Repeated Measures ◽  
Conditioned Fear ◽  
Fear Learning ◽  
Stimulus Generalization ◽  
Healthy Children ◽  
Older Individuals ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Current Task

AbstractThe aim of the study was to investigate age-related differences in fear learning and generalization in healthy children and adolescents (n = 133), aged 8–17 years, using an aversive discriminative fear conditioning and generalization paradigm adapted from Lau et al. (2008). In the current task, participants underwent 24 trials of discriminative conditioning of two female faces with neutral facial expressions, with (CS+) or without (CS−) a 95-dB loud female scream, presented simultaneously with a fearful facial expression (US). The discriminative conditioning was followed by 72 generalization trials (12 CS+, 12 GS1, 12 GS2, 12 GS3, 12 GS4, and 12 CS−): four generalization stimuli depicting gradual morphs from CS+ to CS− in 20%-steps were created for the generalization phases. We hypothesized that generalization in children and adolescents is negatively correlated with age. The subjective ratings of valence, arousal, and US expectancy (the probability of an aversive noise following each stimulus), as well as skin conductance responses (SCRs) were measured. Repeated-measures ANOVAs on ratings and SCR amplitudes were calculated with the within-subject factors stimulus type (CS+, CS−, GS1-4) and phase (Pre-Acquisition, Acquisition 1, Acquisition 2, Generalization 1, Generalization 2). To analyze the modulatory role of age, we additionally calculated ANCOVAs considering age as covariate. Results indicated that (1) subjective and physiological responses were generally lower with increasing age irrespective to the stimulus quality, and (2) stimulus discrimination improved with increasing age paralleled by reduced overgeneralization in older individuals. Longitudinal follow-up studies are required to analyze fear generalization with regard to brain maturational aspects and clarify whether overgeneralization of conditioned fear promotes the development of anxiety disorders or vice versa.

scholarly journals The Rapid Extraction of Gist—Early Neural Correlates of High-level Visual Processing

2012 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 521-529 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Oppermann ◽  
Uwe Hassler ◽  
Jörg D. Jescheniak ◽  
Thomas Gruber
Keyword(s):  
Visual Processing ◽  
Time Course ◽  
Occipital Cortex ◽  
Stimulus Onset ◽  
Gamma Band ◽  
Oscillatory Activity ◽  
Rapid Extraction ◽  
The Right ◽  
High Level ◽  
Individual Objects

The human cognitive system is highly efficient in extracting information from our visual environment. This efficiency is based on acquired knowledge that guides our attention toward relevant events and promotes the recognition of individual objects as they appear in visual scenes. The experience-based representation of such knowledge contains not only information about the individual objects but also about relations between them, such as the typical context in which individual objects co-occur. The present EEG study aimed at exploring the availability of such relational knowledge in the time course of visual scene processing, using oscillatory evoked gamma-band responses as a neural correlate for a currently activated cortical stimulus representation. Participants decided whether two simultaneously presented objects were conceptually coherent (e.g., mouse–cheese) or not (e.g., crown–mushroom). We obtained increased evoked gamma-band responses for coherent scenes compared with incoherent scenes beginning as early as 70 msec after stimulus onset within a distributed cortical network, including the right temporal, the right frontal, and the bilateral occipital cortex. This finding provides empirical evidence for the functional importance of evoked oscillatory activity in high-level vision beyond the visual cortex and, thus, gives new insights into the functional relevance of neuronal interactions. It also indicates the very early availability of experience-based knowledge that might be regarded as a fundamental mechanism for the rapid extraction of the gist of a scene.

scholarly journals Longitudinal changes in brain activation during anticipation of monetary loss in bipolar disorder

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (16) ◽  
pp. 2781-2788 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Manelis ◽  
Richelle Stiffler ◽  
Jeanette C. Lockovich ◽  
Jorge R. C. Almeida ◽  
Haris A. Aslam ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Bipolar Disorder ◽  
Mood State ◽  
Brain Activation ◽  
Emotional Arousal ◽  
Occipital Cortex ◽  
Cortical Activation ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Longitudinal Changes ◽  
The Right ◽  
Cue Processing

AbstractBackgroundIndividuals with bipolar disorder (BD) show aberrant brain activation patterns during reward and loss anticipation. We examined for the first time longitudinal changes in brain activation during win and loss anticipation to identify trait markers of aberrant anticipatory processing in BD.MethodsThirty-four euthymic and depressed individuals with BD-I and 17 healthy controls (HC) were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging twice 6 months apart during a reward task.ResultsHC, but not individuals with BD, showed longitudinal reductions in the right lateral occipital cortex (RLOC) activation during processing of cues predicting possible money loss (p-corrected <0.05). This result was not affected by psychotropic medication, mood state or the changes in depression/mania severity between the two scans in BD. Elevated symptoms of subthreshold hypo/mania at baseline predicted more aberrant longitudinal patterns of RLOC activation explaining 12.5% of variance in individuals with BD.ConclusionsIncreased activation in occipital cortex during negative outcome anticipation may be related to elevated negative emotional arousal during anticipatory cue processing. One interpretation is that, unlike HC, individuals with BD were not able to learn at baseline that monetary losses were smaller than monetary gains and were not able to reduce emotional arousal for negative cues 6 months later. Future research in BD should examine how modulating occipital cortical activation affects learning from experience in individuals with BD.

scholarly journals Prefrontal High Gamma in ECoG tags periodicity of musical rhythms in perception and imagination

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. A. Herff ◽  
C. Herff ◽  
A. J. Milne ◽  
G. D. Johnson ◽  
J. J. Shih ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Auditory Processing ◽  
Right Hemisphere ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Activity Patterns ◽  
Superior Temporal Gyrus ◽  
Gamma Activity ◽  
Rhythm Perception ◽  
High Gamma ◽  
The Right ◽  
Musical Rhythms

AbstractRhythmic auditory stimuli are known to elicit matching activity patterns in neural populations. Furthermore, recent research has established the particular importance of high-gamma brain activity in auditory processing by showing its involvement in auditory phrase segmentation and envelope-tracking. Here, we use electrocorticographic (ECoG) recordings from eight human listeners, to see whether periodicities in high-gamma activity track the periodicities in the envelope of musical rhythms during rhythm perception and imagination. Rhythm imagination was elicited by instructing participants to imagine the rhythm to continue during pauses of several repetitions. To identify electrodes whose periodicities in high-gamma activity track the periodicities in the musical rhythms, we compute the correlation between the autocorrelations (ACC) of both the musical rhythms and the neural signals. A condition in which participants listened to white noise was used to establish a baseline. High-gamma autocorrelations in auditory areas in the superior temporal gyrus and in frontal areas on both hemispheres significantly matched the autocorrelation of the musical rhythms. Overall, numerous significant electrodes are observed on the right hemisphere. Of particular interest is a large cluster of electrodes in the right prefrontal cortex that is active during both rhythm perception and imagination. This indicates conscious processing of the rhythms’ structure as opposed to mere auditory phenomena. The ACC approach clearly highlights that high-gamma activity measured from cortical electrodes tracks both attended and imagined rhythms.

scholarly journals Intrinsic functional connectivity resembles cortical architecture at various levels of isoflurane anesthesia

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Fischer ◽  
Florian Pieper ◽  
Edgar Galindo-Leon ◽  
Gerhard Engler ◽  
Claus C. Hilgetag ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Functional Connectivity ◽  
Activity Patterns ◽  
Structural Connectivity ◽  
Occipital Cortex ◽  
Amplitude Envelope ◽  
Cortical Areas ◽  
Temporal Properties ◽  
Connectivity Patterns ◽  
Different Depths ◽  
Amplitude Correlation

AbstractCortical activity patterns change in different depths of general anesthesia. Here we investigate the associated network level changes of functional connectivity. We recorded ongoing electrocorticographic (ECoG) activity from the ferret temporo-parieto-occipital cortex under various levels of isoflurane and determined the functional connectivity by computing amplitude envelope correlations. Through hierarchical clustering, we derived typical connectivity patterns corresponding to light, intermediate and deep anesthesia. Generally, amplitude correlation strength increased strongly with depth of anesthesia across all cortical areas and frequency bands. This was accompanied by the emergence of burstsuppression activity in the ECoG signal and a change of the spectrum of the amplitude envelope. Normalizing the functional connectivity patterns showed that the topographical structure remained similar across depths of anesthesia, resembling the functional association of the underlying cortical areas. Thus, while strength and temporal properties of amplitude co-modulation vary depending on the activity of local neural circuits, their network-level interaction pattern is presumably most strongly determined by the underlying structural connectivity.

scholarly journals Coupling Influence on the dq Impedance Stability Analysis for the Three-Phase Grid-Connected Inverter

Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (19) ◽  
pp. 3676
Author(s):  
Chuanyue Li ◽  
Taoufik Qoria ◽  
Frederic Colas ◽  
Jun Liang ◽  
Wenlong Ming ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Stability Analysis ◽  
Nyquist Plot ◽  
Current Control ◽  
Impedance Ratio ◽  
Three Phase ◽  
Grid Impedance ◽  
Nyquist Criterion ◽  
Grid Connected Inverter ◽  
The Stability ◽  
The Right

The dq impedance stability analysis for a grid-connected current-control inverter is based on the impedance ratio matrix. However, the coupled matrix brings difficulties in deriving its eigenvalues for the analysis based on the general Nyquist criterion. If the couplings are ignored for simplification, unacceptable errors will be present in the analysis. In this paper, the influence of the couplings on the dq impedance stability analysis is studied. To take the couplings into account simply, the determinant-based impedance stability analysis is used. The mechanism between the determinant of the impedance-ratio matrix and the inverter stability is unveiled. Compared to the eigenvalues-based analysis, only one determinant rather than two eigenvalue s-function is required for the stability analysis. One Nyquist plot or pole map can be applied to the determinant to check the right-half-plane poles. The accuracy of the determinant-based stability analysis is also checked by comparing with the state-space stability analysis method. For the stability analysis, the coupling influence on the current control, the phase-locked loop, and the grid impedance are studied. The errors can be 10% in the stability analysis if the couplings are ignored.

scholarly journals Estimation of gender-specific connectional brain templates using joint multi-view cortical morphological network integration

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nada Chaari ◽  
Hatice Camgöz Akdağ ◽  
Islem Rekik
Keyword(s):  
Right Hemisphere ◽  
Occipital Cortex ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Middle Temporal Gyrus ◽  
Network Clustering ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Clustering Model ◽  
Net Method ◽  
The Right ◽  
Gender Specific

Abstract The estimation of a connectional brain template (CBT) integrating a population of brain networks while capturing shared and differential connectional patterns across individuals remains unexplored in gender fingerprinting. This paper presents the first study to estimate gender-specific CBTs using multi-view cortical morphological networks (CMNs) estimated from conventional T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Specifically, each CMN view is derived from a specific cortical attribute (e.g. thickness), encoded in a network quantifying the dissimilarity in morphology between pairs of cortical brain regions. To this aim, we propose Multi-View Clustering and Fusion Network (MVCF-Net), a novel multi-view network fusion method, which can jointly identify consistent and differential clusters of multi-view datasets in order to capture simultaneously similar and distinct connectional traits of samples. Our MVCF-Net method estimates a representative and well-centered CBTs for male and female populations, independently, to eventually identify their fingerprinting regions of interest (ROIs) in four main steps. First, we perform multi-view network clustering model based on manifold optimization which groups CMNs into shared and differential clusters while preserving their alignment across views. Second, for each view, we linearly fuse CMNs belonging to each cluster, producing local CBTs. Third, for each cluster, we non-linearly integrate the local CBTs across views, producing a cluster-specific CBT. Finally, by linearly fusing the cluster-specific centers we estimate a final CBT of the input population. MVCF-Net produced the most centered and representative CBTs for male and female populations and identified the most discriminative ROIs marking gender differences. The most two gender-discriminative ROIs involved the lateral occipital cortex and pars opercularis in the left hemisphere and the middle temporal gyrus and lingual gyrus in the right hemisphere.

scholarly journals Myelin Oligodendrocyte Glycoprotein Antibody-Associated Disease Presenting as Recurrent and Migrating Focal Cortical Encephalitis

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 2329048X2096617
Author(s):  
Xinran Maria Xiang ◽  
Rachel Evans ◽  
Jesus Lovera ◽  
Rashmi Rao
Keyword(s):  
Brain Mri ◽  
Occipital Cortex ◽  
Myelin Oligodendrocyte Glycoprotein ◽  
New Right ◽  
High Dose ◽  
Antibody Testing ◽  
Leptomeningeal Enhancement ◽  
The Right ◽  
Work Up ◽  
New Onset

Although pediatric myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein (MOG) antibody-associated disease is increasingly well-recognized, its full clinical spectrum is still being defined. Cortical encephalitis is emerging as a distinct clinico-radiologic syndrome of adult MOG antibody-associated disease. We describe a 12-year-old girl who presented with new onset seizures and left-sided hemiparesis. Brain MRI showed edema of the right temporal-parietal-occipital cortex with associated focal leptomeningeal enhancement. Patient received high-dose corticosteroids and 21 days of acyclovir despite negative infectious work-up due to the focal nature of encephalitis. Patient remained seizure-free for 20 months before presenting with new right hemiclonic seizures with right-sided hemiparesis and edema of the left temporal-parietal cortex with associated leptomeningeal enhancement. Patient’s MOG antibody titer was 1:40. She completed high-dose corticosteroids and intravenous immunoglobulin. Our patient highlights the importance of MOG antibody testing in pediatric focal cortical encephalitis to avoid unnecessary anti-viral agents and provide more appropriate immunotherapy and a more informed prognosis.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document