46,030 research outputs found
Selective gating of neuronal activity by intrinsic properties in distinct motor rhythms
This research has been supported by the Royal Society, Wellcome Trust (089319), and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BB/L0011X/1). I thank Drs. Steve Soffe, Alan Roberts, Erik Svensson, Hong-Yan Zhang, and Stefan Pulver for commenting on the manuscript.Many neural circuits show fast reconfiguration following altered sensory or modulatory inputs to generate stereotyped outputs. In the motor circuit of Xenopus tadpoles, I study how certain voltage-dependent ionic currents affect firing thresholds and contribute to circuit reconfiguration to generate two distinct motor patterns, swimming and struggling. Firing thresholds of excitatory interneurons [i.e., descending interneurons (dINs)] in the swimming central pattern generator are raised by depolarization due to the inactivation of Na+ currents. In contrast, the thresholds of other types of neurons active in swimming or struggling are raised by hyperpolarization from the activation of fast transient K+ currents. The firing thresholds are then compared with the excitatory synaptic drives, which are revealed by blocking action potentials intracellularly using QX314 during swimming and struggling. During swimming, transient K+ currents lower neuronal excitability and gate out neurons with weak excitation, whereas their inactivation by strong excitation in other neurons increases excitability and enables fast synaptic potentials to drive reliable firing. During struggling, continuous sensory inputs lead to high levels of network excitation. This allows the inactivation of Na+ currents and suppression of dIN activity while inactivating transient K+ currents, recruiting neurons that are not active in swimming. Therefore, differential expression of these currents between neuron types can explain why synaptic strength does not predict firing reliability/intensity during swimming and struggling. These data show that intrinsic properties can override fast synaptic potentials, mediate circuit reconfiguration, and contribute to motor–pattern switching.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe
Disproportionate Frequency Representation in the Inferior Colliculus of Doppler-Compensating Greater Horseshoe Bats. Evidence for an Acoustic Fovea
1. The inferior colliculus of 8 Greater Horseshoe bats (Rhinolophus ferrumequinun) was systematically sampled with electrode penetrations covering the entire volume of the nucleus. The best frequencies and intensity thresholds for pure tones (Fig. 2) were determined for 591 neurons. The locations of the electrode penetrations within the inferior colliculus were histologically verified.
2. About 50% of all neurons encountered had best frequencies (BF) in the frequency range between 78 and 88 kHz (Table 1, Fig. 1A). Within this frequency range the BFs between 83.0 and 84.5 kHz were overrepresented with 16.3% of the total population of neurons (Fig. 1B). The frequencies of the constant frequency components of the echoes fall into this frequency range.
3. The representation of BFs expressed as number of neurons per octave shows a striking correspondence to the nonuniform innervation density in the afferent innervation of the basilar membrane (Bruns and Schmieszek, in press). The high innervation density of the basilar membrane in the frequency band between 83 and 84.5 kHz coincides with the maximum of the distribution of number of neurons per octave across frequency in the inferior colliculus (Fig. 1 C).
4. The disproportionate representation of frequencies in the auditory system of the greater horseshoe bat is described as an acoustical fovea functioning in analogy to the fovea in the visual system. The functional importance of the Doppler-shift compensation for such a foveal mechanism in the auditory system of horseshoe bats is related to that of tracking eye movements in the visual system
Laboratory validation of the dual-zone phase mask coronagraph in broadband light at the high-contrast imaging THD-testbed
Specific high contrast imaging instruments are mandatory to characterize
circumstellar disks and exoplanets around nearby stars. Coronagraphs are
commonly used in these facilities to reject the diffracted light of an observed
star and enable the direct imaging and spectroscopy of its circumstellar
environment. One important property of the coronagraph is to be able to work in
broadband light.
Among several proposed coronagraphs, the dual-zone phase mask coronagraph is
a promising solution for starlight rejection in broadband light. In this paper,
we perform the first validation of this concept in laboratory.
First, we recall the principle of the dual-zone phase mask coronagraph. Then,
we describe the high-contrast imaging THD testbed, the manufacturing of the
components and the quality-control procedures. Finally, we study the
sensitivity of our coronagraph to low-order aberrations (inner working angle
and defocus) and estimate its contrast performance. Our experimental broadband
light results are compared with numerical simulations to check agreement with
the performance predictions.
With the manufactured prototype and using a dark hole technique based on the
self-coherent camera, we obtain contrast levels down to between 5
and 17 in monochromatic light (640 nm). We also reach contrast
levels of between 7 and 17 in broadband
( nm, nm and %), which demonstrates the excellent chromatic performance of the dual-zone
phase mask coronagraph.
The performance reached by the dual-zone phase mask coronagraph is promising
for future high-contrast imaging instruments that aim at detecting and
spectrally characterizing old or light gaseous planets.Comment: 9 pages, 16 figure
Statistical Mechanics of Surjective Cellular Automata
Reversible cellular automata are seen as microscopic physical models, and
their states of macroscopic equilibrium are described using invariant
probability measures. We establish a connection between the invariance of Gibbs
measures and the conservation of additive quantities in surjective cellular
automata. Namely, we show that the simplex of shift-invariant Gibbs measures
associated to a Hamiltonian is invariant under a surjective cellular automaton
if and only if the cellular automaton conserves the Hamiltonian. A special case
is the (well-known) invariance of the uniform Bernoulli measure under
surjective cellular automata, which corresponds to the conservation of the
trivial Hamiltonian. As an application, we obtain results indicating the lack
of (non-trivial) Gibbs or Markov invariant measures for "sufficiently chaotic"
cellular automata. We discuss the relevance of the randomization property of
algebraic cellular automata to the problem of approach to macroscopic
equilibrium, and pose several open questions.
As an aside, a shift-invariant pre-image of a Gibbs measure under a
pre-injective factor map between shifts of finite type turns out to be always a
Gibbs measure. We provide a sufficient condition under which the image of a
Gibbs measure under a pre-injective factor map is not a Gibbs measure. We point
out a potential application of pre-injective factor maps as a tool in the study
of phase transitions in statistical mechanical models.Comment: 50 pages, 7 figure
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