Estimation of a Human-Maneuvered Target Incorporating Human Intention

This paper presents a new approach for estimating the motion state of a target that is maneuvered by an unknown human from observations. To improve the estimation accuracy, the proposed approach associates the recurring motion behaviors with human intentions, and models the association as an intention-pattern model. The human intentions relate to labels of continuous states; the motion patterns characterize the change of continuous states. In the preprocessing, an Interacting Multiple Model (IMM) estimation technique is used to infer the intentions and extract motions, which eventually construct the intention-pattern model. Once the intention-pattern model has been constructed, the proposed approach incorporate the intention-pattern model to estimation using any state estimator including Kalman filter. The proposed approach not only estimates the mean using the human intention more accurately but also updates the covariance using the human intention more precisely. The performance of the proposed approach was investigated through the estimation of a human-maneuvered multirotor. The result of the application has first indicated the effectiveness of the proposed approach for constructing the intention-pattern model. The ability of the proposed approach in state estimation over the conventional technique without intention incorporation has then been demonstrated.

Towards Diffractive Ways of Knowing Women’s Moving Bodies: A Baradian Experiment With the Fitbit–Motherhood Entanglement

This article presents a diffractive experiment in thinking about mothers’ engagements with self-tracking technologies as materially and discursively produced phenomena. Inspired by St. Pierre’s claim that any empirical adventure with new materialisms must begin by living with theory, we share our feminist, collaborative journey with Fitbits and Karen Barad’s agential realism to consider what might emerge when we begin thinking and living with concepts such as diffraction, entanglement, and intra-action. Unfolding within the uncertain intersections of theory, method, and data, our diffractive methodology prompted understandings of maternal, moving bodies as entangled agencies in continuous states of becoming and fostered generative feminist relationships that allowed us to embrace new ways of thinking, knowing, and being.

Frequency- and state-dependent effects of hippocampal neural disinhibition on hippocampal local field potential oscillations in anaesthetised rats

Reduced inhibitory GABA function, so-called neural disinhibition, has been implicated in cognitive disorders, including schizophrenia and age-related cognitive decline. We previously showed in rats that hippocampal disinhibition by local microinfusion of the GABA-A antagonist picrotoxin disrupted memory and attention and enhanced hippocampal multi-unit burst firing recorded around the infusion site under isoflurane anaesthesia. Here, we analysed the hippocampal LFP recorded alongside the multi-unit data. We predicted frequency-specific LFP changes, based on previous studies implicating GABA in hippocampal oscillations, with the weight of evidence suggesting that disinhibition would facilitate theta and disrupt gamma oscillations. Using a new semi-automated method based on the kurtosis of the LFP peak-amplitude distribution as well as on amplitude envelope thresholding, we separated three distinct hippocampal LFP states under isoflurane anaesthesia: ‘burst’ and ‘suppression’ states – high-amplitude LFP-spike bursts and the interspersed low-amplitude periods – and a medium-amplitude ‘continuous’ state. The burst state showed greater overall power than suppression and continuous states and higher relative delta/theta power, but lower relative beta/gamma power. The burst state also showed reduced functional connectivity across the hippocampal recording area, especially around theta and beta frequencies. Overall neuronal firing was higher in the burst than the other two states, whereas the proportion of burst firing was higher in burst and continuous states than the suppression state. Disinhibition caused state- and frequency-dependent LFP changes, tending to increase power at lower frequencies (<20Hz), but to decrease power and connectivity at higher frequencies (>20Hz) in burst and suppression states. The disinhibition-induced enhancement of multi-unit bursting was also state-dependent, tending to be more pronounced in burst and suppression states than the continuous state. Overall, we characterized three distinct hippocampal LFP states in isoflurane-anaesthetized rats. Disinhibition changed hippocampal LFP oscillations in a state- and frequency-dependent way. Moreover, the disinhibition-induced enhancement of multi-unit bursting was also LFP-state dependent.