Regulation of Burst Dynamics Improves Differential Encoding of Stimulus Frequency by Spike Train Segregation

2007 ◽  
Vol 98 (2) ◽  
pp. 939-951 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Hamish Mehaffey ◽  
Fernando R. Fernandez ◽  
Leonard Maler ◽  
Ray W. Turner

Distinguishing between different signals conveyed in a single sensory modality presents a significant problem for sensory processing. The weakly electric fish Apteronotus leptorhynchus use electrosensory information to encode both low-frequency signals associated with environmental and prey signals and high-frequency communication signals between conspecifics. We identify a mechanism whereby the GABAB component of a feedback pathway to the electrosensory lobe is recruited to regulate the intrinsic burst dynamics and coding properties of pyramidal cells for these behaviorally relevant input signals. Through recordings in an in vitro slice preparation and a reduced model of pyramidal cells, we show that recruitment of dendritic GABAB currents can shift the timing of a backpropagating spike and its influence on an intrinsic burst mechanism. This regulation of burst firing alters the coding properties of pyramidal cells by improving the correlation of burst and tonic spikes with respect to low- or high-frequency components of complex stimuli. GABAB modulation of spike backpropagation thus improves the segregation of burst and tonic spikes evoked by simulated sensory input, allowing pyramidal cells to parcel the spike train into coding streams for the low- and high-frequency components. As the feedback pathway is predicted to be activated in circumstances where environmental and communication stimuli coexist, these data reveal a novel means by which inhibitory input can regulate spike backpropagation to improve signal segregation.

2009 ◽  
Vol 102 (2) ◽  
pp. 714-723 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Marsat ◽  
Rémi D. Proville ◽  
Leonard Maler

It is an important task in neuroscience to find general principles that relate neural codes to the structure of the signals they encode. The structure of sensory signals can be described in many ways, but one important categorization distinguishes continuous from transient signals. We used the communication signals of the weakly electric fish to reveal how transient signals (chirps) can be easily distinguished from the continuous signal they disrupt. These communication signals—low-frequency sinusoids interrupted by high-frequency transients—were presented to pyramidal cells of the electrosensory lateral line lobe (ELL) during in vivo recordings. We show that a specific population of electrosensory neurons encodes the occurrence of the transient signal by synchronously producing a burst of spikes, whereas bursting was neither common nor synchronous in response to the continuous signal. We also confirmed that burst can be triggered by low-frequency modulations typical of prey signals. However, these bursts are more common in a different segment of the ELL and during spatially localized stimulation. These localized stimuli will elicit synchronized bursting only in a restricted number of cells the receptive fields of which overlap the spatial extent of the stimulus. Therefore the number of cells simultaneously producing a burst and the ELL segment responding most strongly may carry the information required to disambiguate chirps from prey signals. Finally we show that the burst response to chirps is due to a biophysical mechanism previously characterized by in vitro studies of electrosensory neurons. We conclude that bursting and synchrony across cells are important mechanisms used by sensory neurons to carry the information about behaviorally relevant but transient signals.


Author(s):  
G. Y. Fan ◽  
J. M. Cowley

It is well known that the structure information on the specimen is not always faithfully transferred through the electron microscope. Firstly, the spatial frequency spectrum is modulated by the transfer function (TF) at the focal plane. Secondly, the spectrum suffers high frequency cut-off by the aperture (or effectively damping terms such as chromatic aberration). While these do not have essential effect on imaging crystal periodicity as long as the low order Bragg spots are inside the aperture, although the contrast may be reversed, they may change the appearance of images of amorphous materials completely. Because the spectrum of amorphous materials is continuous, modulation of it emphasizes some components while weakening others. Especially the cut-off of high frequency components, which contribute to amorphous image just as strongly as low frequency components can have a fundamental effect. This can be illustrated through computer simulation. Imaging of a whitenoise object with an electron microscope without TF limitation gives Fig. 1a, which is obtained by Fourier transformation of a constant amplitude combined with random phases generated by computer.


2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (7) ◽  
pp. 658-666
Author(s):  
Kai-jian Xia ◽  
Jian-qiang Wang ◽  
Jian Cai

Background: Lung cancer is one of the common malignant tumors. The successful diagnosis of lung cancer depends on the accuracy of the image obtained from medical imaging modalities. Objective: The fusion of CT and PET is combining the complimentary and redundant information both images and can increase the ease of perception. Since the existing fusion method sare not perfect enough, and the fusion effect remains to be improved, the paper proposes a novel method called adaptive PET/CT fusion for lung cancer in Piella framework. Methods: This algorithm firstly adopted the DTCWT to decompose the PET and CT images into different components, respectively. In accordance with the characteristics of low-frequency and high-frequency components and the features of PET and CT image, 5 membership functions are used as a combination method so as to determine the fusion weight for low-frequency components. In order to fuse different high-frequency components, we select the energy difference of decomposition coefficients as the match measure, and the local energy as the activity measure; in addition, the decision factor is also determined for the high-frequency components. Results: The proposed method is compared with some of the pixel-level spatial domain image fusion algorithms. The experimental results show that our proposed algorithm is feasible and effective. Conclusion: Our proposed algorithm can better retain and protrude the lesions edge information and the texture information of lesions in the image fusion.


Author(s):  
Priya R. Kamath ◽  
Kedarnath Senapati ◽  
P. Jidesh

Speckles are inherent to SAR. They hide and undermine several relevant information contained in the SAR images. In this paper, a despeckling algorithm using the shrinkage of two-dimensional discrete orthonormal S-transform (2D-DOST) coefficients in the transform domain along with shock filter is proposed. Also, an attempt has been made as a post-processing step to preserve the edges and other details while removing the speckle. The proposed strategy involves decomposing the SAR image into low and high-frequency components and processing them separately. A shock filter is used to smooth out the small variations in low-frequency components, and the high-frequency components are treated with a shrinkage of 2D-DOST coefficients. The edges, for enhancement, are detected using a ratio-based edge detection algorithm. The proposed method is tested, verified, and compared with some well-known models on C-band and X-band SAR images. A detailed experimental analysis is illustrated.


2013 ◽  
Vol 109 (7) ◽  
pp. 1713-1723 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael R. Markham ◽  
Leonard K. Kaczmarek ◽  
Harold H. Zakon

We investigated the ionic mechanisms that allow dynamic regulation of action potential (AP) amplitude as a means of regulating energetic costs of AP signaling. Weakly electric fish generate an electric organ discharge (EOD) by summing the APs of their electric organ cells (electrocytes). Some electric fish increase AP amplitude during active periods or social interactions and decrease AP amplitude when inactive, regulated by melanocortin peptide hormones. This modulates signal amplitude and conserves energy. The gymnotiform Eigenmannia virescens generates EODs at frequencies that can exceed 500 Hz, which is energetically challenging. We examined how E. virescens meets that challenge. E. virescens electrocytes exhibit a voltage-gated Na+current ( INa) with extremely rapid recovery from inactivation (τrecov= 0.3 ms) allowing complete recovery of Na+current between APs even in fish with the highest EOD frequencies. Electrocytes also possess an inwardly rectifying K+current and a Na+-activated K+current ( IKNa), the latter not yet identified in any gymnotiform species. In vitro application of melanocortins increases electrocyte AP amplitude and the magnitudes of all three currents, but increased IKNais a function of enhanced Na+influx. Numerical simulations suggest that changing INamagnitude produces corresponding changes in AP amplitude and that KNachannels increase AP energy efficiency (10–30% less Na+influx/AP) over model cells with only voltage-gated K+channels. These findings suggest the possibility that E. virescens reduces the energetic demands of high-frequency APs through rapidly recovering Na+channels and the novel use of KNachannels to maximize AP amplitude at a given Na+conductance.


2021 ◽  
pp. 35-44
Author(s):  
Ю.Г. Матвиенко ◽  
И.Е. Васильев ◽  
Д.В. Чернов ◽  
В.И. Иванов ◽  
С.В. Елизаров

The accuracy of the location of acoustic emission (AE) sources in the concentrator zones (central holes 5 mm in diameter) located at a distance of 40 mm from the receiving transducers during tensile tests of steel, aluminum alloy and composite flat specimens with dimensions of 550x50x4 mm was evaluated. Calculated speed dependence of propagation of pulses on the level of their amplitude and the partial energy of the high-frequency components of the spectrum is studied. With the threshold method of signal registration, the error in the location of AE event sources arising in the near zone of the receiving transducers at a distance 𝛥L<0.1 m can significantly exceed 10% relative to the base size (B) of the location area, when B<0.5 m. Moreover, with a decrease in the distance 𝛥L<0.05 m, the level of possible error will increase, reaching 20-30% relative to the basic size of the antenna array, when recording pulses with an amplitude level um<60 dB and a fraction of the energy of high-frequency spectrum components not exceeding 10%.


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