scholarly journals Unexpected complexity of everyday manual behaviors

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuke Yan ◽  
James M. Goodman ◽  
Dalton D. Moore ◽  
Sara A. Solla ◽  
Sliman J. Bensmaia
Keyword(s):  
American Sign Language ◽  
Neural Control ◽  
Dimensional Space ◽  
Hand Movements ◽  
Higher Dimensional ◽  
Dimensionality Reduction Technique ◽  
Hand Control ◽  
Components Analysis ◽  
Human Participants ◽  
The Brain

AbstractHow does the brain control an effector as complex and versatile as the hand? One possibility is that the neural control of the hand is simplified by limiting the space of achievable hand postures. Indeed, hand kinematics can be largely accounted for within a small subspace of postures. This oft replicated finding has been interpreted as evidence that hand postures are confined to this subspace, and that leaving it volitionally is impossible. A prediction from this hypothesis is that measured hand movements that fall outside of this subspace reflect motor or measurement noise. To address this question, we track hand postures of human participants as they perform two distinct tasks – grasping and signing in American Sign Language. We then apply a standard dimensionality reduction technique – principal components analysis – and replicate the finding that hand movements can be largely described within a reduced subspace. However, we show that postural dimensions that fall outside of this subspace are highly structured and task dependent, suggesting that they too are under volitional control. We conclude that hand control occupies a higher dimensional space than previously considered, and propose that controlling the complexity of hand movements is well within the scope of the brain’s computational power.

Celestial Tapestry

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Mee
Keyword(s):  
Mathematics Curriculum ◽  
Dimensional Space ◽  
Golden Section ◽  
Single Point ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Computer Art ◽  
Lightning Strike ◽  
Secret Message ◽  
Axiomatic Method ◽  
Higher Dimensional

Celestial Tapestry places mathematics within a vibrant cultural and historical context, highlighting links to the visual arts and design, and broader areas of artistic creativity. Threads are woven together telling of surprising influences that have passed between the arts and mathematics. The story involves many intriguing characters: Gaston Julia, who laid the foundations for fractals and computer art while recovering in hospital after suffering serious injury in the First World War; Charles Howard, Hinton who was imprisoned for bigamy but whose books had a huge influence on twentieth-century art; Michael Scott, the Scottish necromancer who was the dedicatee of Fibonacci’s Book of Calculation, the most important medieval book of mathematics; Richard of Wallingford, the pioneer clockmaker who suffered from leprosy and who never recovered from a lightning strike on his bedchamber; Alicia Stott Boole, the Victorian housewife who amazed mathematicians with her intuition for higher-dimensional space. The book includes more than 200 colour illustrations, puzzles to engage the reader, and many remarkable tales: the secret message in Hans Holbein’s The Ambassadors; the link between Viking runes, a Milanese banking dynasty, and modern sculpture; the connection between astrology, religion, and the Apocalypse; binary numbers and the I Ching. It also explains topics on the school mathematics curriculum: algorithms; arithmetic progressions; combinations and permutations; number sequences; the axiomatic method; geometrical proof; tessellations and polyhedra, as well as many essential topics for arts and humanities students: single-point perspective; fractals; computer art; the golden section; the higher-dimensional inspiration behind modern art.

scholarly journals Aperiodic Crystals

2014 ◽  
Vol 70 (a1) ◽  
pp. C1-C1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ted Janssen ◽  
Aloysio Janner
Keyword(s):  
Physical Properties ◽  
Dimensional Space ◽  
X Rays ◽  
New Techniques ◽  
New Family ◽  
Modulated Phases ◽  
Open Questions ◽  
Higher Dimensional ◽  
Lattice Periodicity ◽  
Aperiodic Crystals

2014 is the International Year of Crystallography. During at least fifty years after the discovery of diffraction of X-rays by crystals, it was believed that crystals have lattice periodicity, and crystals were defined by this property. Now it has become clear that there is a large class of compounds with interesting properties that should be called crystals as well, but are not lattice periodic. A method has been developed to describe and analyze these aperiodic crystals, using a higher-dimensional space. In this lecture the discovery of aperiodic crystals and the development of the formalism of the so-called superspace will be described. There are several classes of such materials. After the incommensurate modulated phases, incommensurate magnetic crystals, incommensurate composites and quasicrystals were discovered. They could all be studied using the same technique. Their main properties of these classes and the ways to characterize them will be discussed. The new family of aperiodic crystals has led also to new physical properties, to new techniques in crystallography and to interesting mathematical questions. Much has been done in the last fifty years by hundreds of crystallographers, crystal growers, physicists, chemists, mineralogists and mathematicians. Many new insights have been obtained. But there are still many questions, also of fundamental nature, to be answered. We end with a discussion of these open questions.

The Brain Stem Saccadic Burst Generator Encodes Gaze in Three-Dimensional Space

2008 ◽  
Vol 99 (5) ◽  
pp. 2602-2616 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marion R. Van Horn ◽  
Pierre A. Sylvestre ◽  
Kathleen E. Cullen
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movements ◽  
Brain Stem ◽  
Dimensional Space ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Saccadic Eye Movements ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Related Information ◽  
Computer Based ◽  
Different Depths ◽  
The Brain

When we look between objects located at different depths the horizontal movement of each eye is different from that of the other, yet temporally synchronized. Traditionally, a vergence-specific neuronal subsystem, independent from other oculomotor subsystems, has been thought to generate all eye movements in depth. However, recent studies have challenged this view by unmasking interactions between vergence and saccadic eye movements during disconjugate saccades. Here, we combined experimental and modeling approaches to address whether the premotor command to generate disconjugate saccades originates exclusively in “vergence centers.” We found that the brain stem burst generator, which is commonly assumed to drive only the conjugate component of eye movements, carries substantial vergence-related information during disconjugate saccades. Notably, facilitated vergence velocities during disconjugate saccades were synchronized with the burst onset of excitatory and inhibitory brain stem saccadic burst neurons (SBNs). Furthermore, the time-varying discharge properties of the majority of SBNs (>70%) preferentially encoded the dynamics of an individual eye during disconjugate saccades. When these experimental results were implemented into a computer-based simulation, to further evaluate the contribution of the saccadic burst generator in generating disconjugate saccades, we found that it carries all the vergence drive that is necessary to shape the activity of the abducens motoneurons to which it projects. Taken together, our results provide evidence that the premotor commands from the brain stem saccadic circuitry, to the target motoneurons, are sufficient to ensure the accurate control shifts of gaze in three dimensions.

scholarly journals Active palpation underlying shape perception is shaped by physiological thresholds and experience

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neomi Mizrachi ◽  
Guy Nelinger ◽  
Ehud Ahissar ◽  
Amos Arieli
Keyword(s):  
High Speed ◽  
Shape Perception ◽  
Tactile Perception ◽  
Hand Movements ◽  
Hand Tracking ◽  
Experimental Session ◽  
Temporal Adaptation ◽  
Planar Shape ◽  
Contour Following ◽  
Human Participants

ABSTRACTHand movements are essential for tactile perception of objects. However, why different individuals converge on specific movement patterns is not yet clear. Focusing on planar shape perception, we tracked the hands of 11 participants while they practiced shape recognition. Our results show that planar shape perception is mediated by contour-following movements, either tangential to the contour or spatially-oscillating perpendicular to it, and by scanning movements, crossing between distant parts of the shapes’ contour. Both strategies exhibited non-uniform coverage of the shapes’ contours. We found that choice of strategy during the first experimental session was strongly correlated with two idiosyncratic parameters: participants with lower tactile resolution tended to move faster; and faster-adapting participants tended to employ oscillatory movements more often. In addition, practicing on isolated geometric features increased the tendency to use the contour-following strategy. These results provide insights into the processes of strategy selection in tactile perception.SIGNIFICANCE STATMENTHand movements are integral components of tactile perception. Yet, the specific motion strategies used to perceive specific objects and features, and their dependence on physiological features and on experience, are understudied. Focusing on planar shape perception and using high-speed hand tracking we show that human participants employ two basic palpation strategies: Contour-following and scanning. We further show that the strategy chosen by each participant and its kinematics depend strongly on the participant’s physiological thresholds – indicative of spatial resolution and temporal adaptation - and on their perceptual experience.

scholarly journals Celestial Spheres

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-186
Author(s):  
Austin M. Freeman
Keyword(s):  
Dimensional Space ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Good Evidence ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Higher Dimensional ◽  
Spatial Dimensions ◽  
Modern Physics ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Three Dimensional Space

Angels probably have bodies. There is no good evidence (biblical, philosophical, or historical) to argue against their bodiliness; there is an abundance of evidence (biblical, philosophical, historical) that makes the case for angelic bodies. After surveying biblical texts alleged to demonstrate angelic incorporeality, the discussion moves to examine patristic, medieval, and some modern figures on the subject. In short, before the High Medieval period belief in angelic bodies was the norm, and afterwards it is the exception. A brief foray into modern physics and higher spatial dimensions (termed “hyperspace”), coupled with an analogical use of Edwin Abbott’s Flatland, serves to explain the way in which appealing to higher-dimensional angelic bodies matches the record of angelic activity in the Bible remarkably well. This position also cuts through a historical equivocation on the question of angelic embodiment. Angels do have bodies, but they are bodies very unlike our own. They do not have bodies in any three-dimensional space we can observe, but are nevertheless embodied beings.

scholarly journals Visualising higher-dimensional space-time and space-scale objects as projections to ℝ3

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. e123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ken Arroyo Ohori ◽  
Hugo Ledoux ◽  
Jantien Stoter
Keyword(s):  
Dimensional Space ◽  
Space Time ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
3D Objects ◽  
Levels Of Detail ◽  
Higher Dimensional Space Time ◽  
Space Scale ◽  
Higher Dimensional ◽  
Dimensional Space Time

Objects of more than three dimensions can be used to model geographic phenomena that occur in space, time and scale. For instance, a single 4D object can be used to represent the changes in a 3D object’s shape across time or all its optimal representations at various levels of detail. In this paper, we look at how such higher-dimensional space-time and space-scale objects can be visualised as projections from ℝ4to ℝ3. We present three projections that we believe are particularly intuitive for this purpose: (i) a simple ‘long axis’ projection that puts 3D objects side by side; (ii) the well-known orthographic and perspective projections; and (iii) a projection to a 3-sphere (S3) followed by a stereographic projection to ℝ3, which results in an inwards-outwards fourth axis. Our focus is in using these projections from ℝ4to ℝ3, but they are formulated from ℝnto ℝn−1so as to be easily extensible and to incorporate other non-spatial characteristics. We present a prototype interactive visualiser that applies these projections from 4D to 3D in real-time using the programmable pipeline and compute shaders of the Metal graphics API.

On the structure of quasi-crystals in the higher-dimensional space

2013 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Ya. Shevchenko ◽  
G. V. Zhizhin ◽  
A. L. Mackay
Keyword(s):  
Dimensional Space ◽  
Higher Dimensional ◽  
Quasi Crystals

Dynamical Variation of Weierstrass-Mandelbrot Function in Higher Dimensional Space

2013 ◽  
Vol 470 ◽  
pp. 767-771
Author(s):  
L. Zhang ◽  
Shu Tang Liu
Keyword(s):  
Hurst Exponent ◽  
Dimensional Space ◽  
Dynamical Behavior ◽  
Fractal Dimensions ◽  
Statistical Characteristics ◽  
3 Dimensional ◽  
Higher Dimensional ◽  
Complex Phenomena ◽  
Real Complex

Many real complex phenomena are related with Weierstrass-Mandelbrot function (WMF). Most researches focus on the systems as parameters fixed, such as calculations of its different fractal dimensions or the statistical characteristics of its generalized form and so on. Moreover, real systems always change according to different environments, so that to study the dynamical behavior of these systems as parameters change is important. However, there is few results about this aim. In this paper, we propose simulated results for the effects of parameters changeably on the graph of WMF in higher dimensional space. In addition, the relationships between the Hurst exponent of WMF and its parameters dynamically in 2-and 3-dimensional spaces are also given.

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