Spatial orientation in the lamprey. I. Control of pitch and roll

1995 ◽  
Vol 198 (3) ◽  
pp. 665-673 ◽  
Author(s):  
F Ullén ◽  
T G Deliagina ◽  
G N Orlovsky ◽  
S Grillner

Two major tasks must be fulfilled during locomotion: propulsion and spatial orientation. In the lamprey, the propulsive force is generated by laterally directed body undulations propagated from the rostral to the caudal end of the body. The neuronal networks underlying this basic locomotor pattern have been described in considerable detail. The present study was undertaken to provide the necessary behavioural background for parallel studies of the vestibular neuronal networks responsible for spatial orientation during locomotion. The following results were obtained. 1. The lamprey actively stabilized its pitch angle during swimming and usually kept a linear trajectory in the sagittal plane, despite large changes in the speed of swimming. During repeated tests, a certain preferred pitch angle could be maintained over a period of several minutes, even if the initial starting angle of the animal was changed considerably. 2. Two different strategies were observed for active turning in the downward direction: a smooth turn accomplished by weak ventral flexion of the whole body, and a sharp turn accomplished by localized ventral flexion of a region of the body just posterior to the gills. 3. The lampreys were oriented with the dorsal side up while swimming at any pitch angle. The control systems for pitch and roll can thus operate independently. When swimming, lampreys kept the tail region flexed somewhat ventrally. This body configuration will cause lateral movements of the tail to generate a torque that rotates the body around its longitudinal axis. This mechanism is presumably used to correct deviations from the dorsal-side-up orientation. After amputation of the dorsal and tail fins, lampreys maintained a proper spatial orientation during swimming. 4. After a unilateral labyrinthectomy, swimming lampreys continuously rolled towards the lesioned side. Unilaterally labyrinthectomized animals displayed a tonic twisting of the body into a helical shape. This presumably represents an additional strategy for performing roll turns. Bilaterally labyrinthectomized animals never maintained a linear trajectory in any plane, but turned continuously in all directions.

2017 ◽  
Vol 118 (4) ◽  
pp. 2499-2506 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Pomante ◽  
L. P. J. Selen ◽  
W. P. Medendorp

The vestibular system provides information for spatial orientation. However, this information is ambiguous: because the otoliths sense the gravitoinertial force, they cannot distinguish gravitational and inertial components. As a consequence, prolonged linear acceleration of the head can be interpreted as tilt, referred to as the somatogravic effect. Previous modeling work suggests that the brain disambiguates the otolith signal according to the rules of Bayesian inference, combining noisy canal cues with the a priori assumption that prolonged linear accelerations are unlikely. Within this modeling framework the noise of the vestibular signals affects the dynamic characteristics of the tilt percept during linear whole-body motion. To test this prediction, we devised a novel paradigm to psychometrically characterize the dynamic visual vertical—as a proxy for the tilt percept—during passive sinusoidal linear motion along the interaural axis (0.33 Hz motion frequency, 1.75 m/s2peak acceleration, 80 cm displacement). While subjects ( n=10) kept fixation on a central body-fixed light, a line was briefly flashed (5 ms) at different phases of the motion, the orientation of which had to be judged relative to gravity. Consistent with the model’s prediction, subjects showed a phase-dependent modulation of the dynamic visual vertical, with a subject-specific phase shift with respect to the imposed acceleration signal. The magnitude of this modulation was smaller than predicted, suggesting a contribution of nonvestibular signals to the dynamic visual vertical. Despite their dampening effect, our findings may point to a link between the noise components in the vestibular system and the characteristics of dynamic visual vertical.NEW & NOTEWORTHY A fundamental question in neuroscience is how the brain processes vestibular signals to infer the orientation of the body and objects in space. We show that, under sinusoidal linear motion, systematic error patterns appear in the disambiguation of linear acceleration and spatial orientation. We discuss the dynamics of these illusory percepts in terms of a dynamic Bayesian model that combines uncertainty in the vestibular signals with priors based on the natural statistics of head motion.


1976 ◽  
Vol 15 (05) ◽  
pp. 248-253
Author(s):  
A. K. Basu ◽  
S. K. Guha ◽  
B. N. Tandon ◽  
M. M. Gupta ◽  
M. ML. Rehani

SummaryThe conventional radioisotope scanner has been used as a whole body counter. The background index of the system is 10.9 counts per minute per ml of sodium iodide crystal. The sensitivity and derived sensitivity parameters have been evaluated and found to be suitable for clinical studies. The optimum parameters for a single detector at two positions above the lying subject have been obtained. It has been found that for the case of 131I measurement it is possible to assay a source located at any point in the body with coefficient of variation less than 5%. To add to the versatility, a fixed geometry for in-vitro counting of large samples has been obtained. The retention values obtained by the whole body counter have been found to correlate with those obtained by in-vitro assay of urine and stool after intravenous administration of 51Cr-albumin.


2008 ◽  
Vol 396-398 ◽  
pp. 569-572
Author(s):  
Fumio Watari ◽  
Shigeaki Abe ◽  
I.D. Rosca ◽  
Atsuro Yokoyama ◽  
Motohiro Uo ◽  
...  

Nanoparticles may invade directly into the internal body through the respiratory or digestive system and diffuse inside body. The behavior of nanoparticles in the internal body is also essential to comprehend for the realization of DDS. Thus it is necessary to reveal the internal dynamics for the proper treatments and biomedical applications of nanoparticles. In the present study the plural methods with different principles such as X-ray scanning analytical microscope (XSAM), MRI and Fluorescent microscopy were applied to enable the observation of the internal diffusion of micro/nanoparticles in the (1) whole body level, (2) inner organ level and (3) tissue and intracellular level. Chemical analysis was also done by ICP-AES for organs and compared with the results of XSAM mapping.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dmitry M. Davydov ◽  
Andrey Boev ◽  
Stas Gorbunov

AbstractSituational or persistent body fluid deficit (i.e., de- or hypo-hydration) is considered a significant health risk factor. Bioimpedance analysis (BIA) has been suggested as an alternative to less reliable subjective and biochemical indicators of hydration status. The present study aimed to compare various BIA models in the prediction of direct measures of body compartments associated with hydration/osmolality. Fish (n = 20) was selected as a biological model for physicochemically measuring proximate body compartments associated with hydration such as water, dissolved proteins, and non-osseous minerals as the references or criterion points. Whole-body and segmental/local impedance measures were used to investigate a pool of BIA models, which were compared by Akaike Information Criterion in their ability to accurately predict the body components. Statistical models showed that ‘volumetric-based’ BIA measures obtained in parallel, such as distance2/Rp, could be the best approach in predicting percent of body moisture, proteins, and minerals in the whole-body schema. However, serially-obtained BIA measures, such as the ratio of the reactance to resistance and the resistance adjusted for distance between electrodes, were the best fitting in predicting the compartments in the segmental schema. Validity of these results should be confirmed on humans before implementation in practice.


Birds ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 138-146
Author(s):  
Eduardo J. Rodríguez-Rodríguez ◽  
Juan J. Negro

The family Ciconiidae comprises 19 extant species which are highly social when nesting and foraging. All species share similar morphotypes, with long necks, a bill, and legs, and are mostly coloured in the achromatic spectrum (white, black, black, and white, or shades of grey). Storks may have, however, brightly coloured integumentary areas in, for instance, the bill, legs, or the eyes. These chromatic patches are small in surface compared with the whole body. We have analyzed the conservatism degree of colouration in 10 body areas along an all-species stork phylogeny derived from BirdTRee using Geiger models. We obtained low conservatism in frontal areas (head and neck), contrasting with a high conservatism in the rest of the body. The frontal areas tend to concentrate the chromatic spectrum whereas the rear areas, much larger in surface, are basically achromatic. These results lead us to suggest that the divergent evolution of the colouration of frontal areas is related to species recognition through visual cue assessment in the short-range, when storks form mixed-species flocks in foraging or resting areas.


2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 422-430
Author(s):  
Federico Massini ◽  
Lars Ebert ◽  
Garyfalia Ampanozi ◽  
Sabine Franckenberg ◽  
Lena Benz ◽  
...  

AbstractEvidence acquisition, interpretation and preservation are essential parts of forensic case work that make a standardized documentation process fundamental. The most commonly used method for the documentation and interpretation of superficial wounds is a combination of two modalities: two-dimensional (2D) photography for evidence preservation and real-life examination for wound analysis. As technologies continue to develop, 2D photography is being enhanced with three-dimensional (3D) documentation technology. In our study, we compared the real-life examination of superficial wounds using four different technical documentation and visualization methods.To test the different methods, a mannequin was equipped with several injury stickers, and then the different methods were applied. A total of 42 artificial injury stickers were documented in regard to orientation, form, color, size, wound borders, wound corners and suspected mechanism of injury for the injury mechanism. As the gold standard, superficial wounds were visually examined by two board-certified forensic pathologists directly on the mannequin. These results were compared to an examination using standard 2D forensic photography; 2D photography using the multicamera system Botscan©, which included predefined viewing positions all around the body; and 3D photogrammetric reconstruction based on images visualized both on screen and in a virtual reality (VR) using a head-mounted display (HMD).The results of the gold standard examination showed that the two forensic pathologists had an inter-reader agreement ranging from 69% for the orientation and 11% for the size of the wounds. A substantial portion of the direct visual documentation showed only a partial overlap, especially for the items of size and color, thereby prohibiting the statistical comparison of these two items. A forest plot analysis of the remaining six items showed no significant difference between the methods. We found that among the forensic pathologists, there was high variability regarding the vocabulary used for the description of wound morphology, which complicated the exact comparison of the two documentations of the same wound.There were no significant differences for any of the four methods compared to the gold standard, thereby challenging the role of real-life examination and 2D photography as the most reliable documentation approaches. Further studies with real injuries are necessary to support our evaluation that technical examination methods involving multicamera systems and 3D visualization for whole-body examination might be a valid alternative in future forensic documentation.


Author(s):  
Dominic L. C. Guebelin ◽  
Akos Dobay ◽  
Lars Ebert ◽  
Eva Betschart ◽  
Michael J. Thali ◽  
...  

AbstractDead bodies exhibit a variable range of changes with advancing decomposition. To quantify intracorporeal gas, the radiological alteration index (RAI) has been implemented in the assessment of postmortem whole-body computed tomography. We used this RAI as a proxy for the state of decomposition. This study aimed to (I) investigate the correlation between the state of decomposition and the season in which the body was discovered; and (II) evaluate the correlations between sociodemographic factors (age, sex) and the state of decomposition, by using the RAI as a proxy for the extent of decomposition. In a retrospective study, we analyzed demographic data from all autopsy reports from the Institute of Forensic Medicine of Zurich between January 2017 to July 2019 and evaluated the radiological alteration index from postmortem whole-body computed tomography for each case. The bodies of older males showed the highest RAI. Seasonal effects had no significant influence on the RAI in our urban study population with bodies mostly being discovered indoors. Autopsy reports contain valuable data that allow interpretation for reasons beyond forensic purposes, such as sociopolitical observations.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 1667
Author(s):  
Kerstin Klaser ◽  
Pedro Borges ◽  
Richard Shaw ◽  
Marta Ranzini ◽  
Marc Modat ◽  
...  

Synthesising computed tomography (CT) images from magnetic resonance images (MRI) plays an important role in the field of medical image analysis, both for quantification and diagnostic purposes. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have achieved state-of-the-art results in image-to-image translation for brain applications. However, synthesising whole-body images remains largely uncharted territory, involving many challenges, including large image size and limited field of view, complex spatial context, and anatomical differences between images acquired at different times. We propose the use of an uncertainty-aware multi-channel multi-resolution 3D cascade network specifically aiming for whole-body MR to CT synthesis. The Mean Absolute Error on the synthetic CT generated with the MultiResunc network (73.90 HU) is compared to multiple baseline CNNs like 3D U-Net (92.89 HU), HighRes3DNet (89.05 HU) and deep boosted regression (77.58 HU) and shows superior synthesis performance. We ultimately exploit the extrapolation properties of the MultiRes networks on sub-regions of the body.


Author(s):  
Joanna M. Bukowska ◽  
Małgorzata Jekiełek ◽  
Dariusz Kruczkowski ◽  
Tadeusz Ambroży ◽  
Jarosław Jaszczur-Nowicki

Background: The aim of the study is to assess the body balance and podological parameters and body composition of young footballers in the context of the control of football training. Methods: The study examined the distribution of the pressure of the part of the foot on the ground, the arch of the foot, and the analysis of the body composition of the boys. The pressure center for both feet and the whole body was also examined. The study involved 90 youth footballers from Olsztyn and Barczewo in three age groups: 8–10 years, 11–13 years old, and 14–16 years. The study used the Inbody 270 body composition analyzer and the EPSR1, a mat that measures the pressure distribution of the feet on the ground. Results: The results showed statistically significant differences in almost every case for each area of the foot between the groups of the examined boys. The most significant differences were observed for the metatarsal area and the left heel. In the case of stabilization of the whole body, statistically significant differences were noted between all study groups. In the case of the body composition parameters, in the examined boys, a coherent direction of changes was noticed for most of them. The relationships and correlations between the examined parameters were also investigated. The significance level in the study was set at p < 0.05. Conclusions: Under the training rigor, a statistically significant increase in stability was observed with age. The total length of the longitudinal arch of both feet of the examined boys showed a tendency to flatten in direct proportion to the age of the examined boys. Mean values of the body composition parameters reflect changes with the ontogenetic development, basic somatic parameters (body height and weight) and training experience, and thus with the intensity and volume of training. This indicates a correct training process that does not interfere with the proper development of the body in terms of tissue and biochemical composition.


1996 ◽  
Vol 75 (2) ◽  
pp. 529-537 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. P. Norekian ◽  
R. A. Satterlie

1. The behavioral repertoire of the holoplanktonic pteropod mollusk Clione limacina includes a few well-defined behaviors organized in a priority sequence. Whole body withdrawal takes precedence over slow swimming behavior, whereas feeding behavior is dominant over withdrawal. In this study a group of neurons is described in the pleural ganglia, which controls whole body withdrawal behavior in Clione. Each pleural withdrawal (Pl-W) neuron has a high threshold for spike generation and is capable of inducing whole body withdrawal in a semi-intact preparation: retraction of the body-tail, wings, and head. Each Pl-W neuron projects axons into the main central nerves and innervates all major regions of the body. 2. Stimulation of Pl-W neurons produces inhibitory inputs to swim motor neurons that terminate swimming activity in the preparation. In turn, Pl-W neurons receive inhibitory inputs from the cerebral neurons involved in the control of feeding behavior in Clione, neurons underlying extrusion of specialized prey capture appendages. Thus it appears that specific inhibitory connections between motor centers can explain the dominance of withdrawal behavior over slow swimming and feeding over withdrawal in Clione.


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