DeepContext: Context-Encoding Neural Pathways for 3D Holistic Scene Understanding

While deep neural networks have led to human-level performance on computer vision tasks, they have yet to demonstrate similar gains for holistic scene understanding. In particular, 3D context has been shown to be an extremely important cue for scene understanding - yet very little research has been done on integrating context information with deep models. This paper presents an approach to embed 3D context into the topology of a neural network trained to perform holistic scene understanding. Given a depth image depicting a 3D scene, our network aligns the observed scene with a predefined 3D scene template, and then reasons about the existence and location of each object within the scene template. In doing so, our model recognizes multiple objects in a single forward pass of a 3D convolutional neural network, capturing both global scene and local object information simultaneously. To create training data for this 3D network, we generate partly hallucinated depth images which are rendered by replacing real objects with a repository of CAD models of the same object category. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithm compared to the state-of-the-arts. Source code and data are available at http://deepcontext.cs.princeton.edu.Comment: Accepted by ICCV201

Oriented tensor reconstruction: tracing neural pathways from diffusion tensor MRI

In this paper we develop a new technique for tracing anatomical fibers from 3D tensor fields. The technique extracts salient tensor features using a local regularization technique that allows the algorithm to cross noisy regions and bridge gaps in the data. We applied the method to human brain DT-MRI data and recovered identifiable anatomical structures that correspond to the white matter brain-fiber pathways. The images in this paper are derived from a dataset having 121x88x60 resolution. We were able to recover fibers with less than the voxel size resolution by applying the regularization technique, i.e., using a priori assumptions about fiber smoothness. The regularization procedure is done through a moving least squares filter directly incorporated in the tracing algorithm

Understanding Neural Pathways in Zebrafish through Deep Learning and High Resolution Electron Microscope Data

The tracing of neural pathways through large volumes of image data is an incredibly tedious and time-consuming process that significantly encumbers progress in neuroscience. We are exploring deep learning's potential to automate segmentation of high-resolution scanning electron microscope (SEM) image data to remove that barrier. We have started with neural pathway tracing through 5.1GB of whole-brain serial-section slices from larval zebrafish collected by the Center for Brain Science at Harvard University. This kind of manual image segmentation requires years of careful work to properly trace the neural pathways in an organism as small as a zebrafish larva (approximately 5mm in total body length). In automating this process, we would vastly improve productivity, leading to faster data analysis and breakthroughs in understanding the complexity of the brain. We will build upon prior attempts to employ deep learning for automatic image segmentation extending methods for unconventional deep learning data.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures (1a to 5c), PEARC '18: Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing, July 22--26, 2018, Pittsburgh, PA, US

Neurorhetoric, Race, and the Law: Toxic Neural Pathways and Healing Alternatives

Neurorhetoric is the study of how rhetoric shapes the human brain. At the forefront of science and communication studies, neurorhetoric challenges many preconceptions about how humans respond to persuasive stimuli. Neurorhetoric can be applied to a multiplicity of relevant legal issues, including the topic of this Maryland Law Review Symposium Issue: race and advocacy. After detailing the neuroscientific and cognitive theories that underlie neurorhetoric, this Essay theorizes ways in which neurorhetoric intersects with the law, advocacy, and race. This Essay explores how toxic racial stereotypes and categories become embedded in the human brain and what can be done about it

Art meets science – empowering stroke patients to regain muscular control through creative graphics technology, psycho-physiology and neuroplasticity.

Treating patients with a cerebrovascular accident or stroke is complicated by severity and site of brain lesion. Muscular control is lost when neural pathways are interrupted or damaged due to embolus, thrombosis or ruptured aneurysm. Return of movement is further hindered by sustained spasticity of muscle groups or inflammation or severance to functionally important neural pathways. Neuro-feedback mechanisms have been explored in the past with some success. A new, improved and innovative method is presented that makes use of psycho-physiology techniques providing immediate visual, auditory and neurological feedback via a fast switching device that relays neuro-muscular movement during rehabilitative tasks and exercises. Visual and auditory signals enable the patient to make use of neurological activity in a purposeful manner, re-directing it to particular tasks. Concentrating on a series of tones elicited via a computer console and by vigilance of changing visual graphics displays allows the patient to accurately control unwanted activity and enables the body to re-learn previously damaged neural circuits. Patients gaining the ability to re-direct and re-route neural pathways have made significant gains in returning function to their leg muscles, particularly to the quadriceps group. These are very often the first groups of muscles to be affected during stroke and make the patient wheelchairbound and often permanently disabled. Occupational and social functioning is affected and quality of life is altered. Patients who are able to re-gain posture and re-learn to walk are empowered and have a better chance of returning to social and occupational settings. Trials in the United Kingdom have shown significant benefits for patients using neuro-feedback. Significant success by these patients has provided researchers with the potential benefits of using neuro-feedback in rehabilitation and increases our scientific and clinical knowledge of neuro-plasticity in even the large muscle groups of the damaged human body. This technology bridges creative artistic graphics technology with thorough evidencebased science

Neural Pathways of Sexual Arousal

Recent research in neuroscience and psychology has suggested significant differences in sexual arousal between genders. In this review, the neuroscience evidence for gender differences in sexual arousal is investigated and current psychological theories of human sexuality are compared to current experimental results. Modern research demonstrates females have greater variation in sexual desires and behaviors than males, so new directions are needed in research to fully assess and understand the neural pathways of human sexual arousal

Neural pathways of movement fractionation

PhD THesis PhD ThesisStroke is a common neurological event which often results in motor deficits of the hand and arm. The reticulospinal tract (RST) may partly underlie residual hand and arm movement ability after a stroke but remains poorly characterised. A greater understanding of the RST could inform work to improve motor recovery. Additionally, the development of non-invasive methods of probing the RST in humans should allow comparison of the characteristics of the RST across species. It has been suggested that the RST is involved in mediating muscle responses to auditory startle, experimentally known as the StartReact paradigm. However, it was not clear how this pathway was involved. A human experiment presented here suggests that the RST comprises the final pathway in the StartReact effect, confirming it as a technique to probe the RST in humans. Other factors such as habituation and the validity of a marker of the StartReact effect were also further explored; these findings may inform future use of the technique. The output divergence, co-activation patterns, level of fractionation and synergies produced by the RST were further characterised in macaques and baboons; these factors had previously been mostly unexplored. In macaques, two subdivisions of primary motor cortex (M1) were also characterised in order to compare to the RST. These subdivisions are based upon the presence of corticomotoneuronal (CM) cells, and consist of ‘old’ (CM cells absent) and ‘new’ (CM cells present) M1. Stimulation of new M1 produced a higher level of fractionation of movement than stimulation of old M1 and the reticular formation (RF). The RF is suggested to produce slightly more fractionated behaviour than old M1, though the baboon RF responses may be less fractionated than those from macaque old M1. Output divergence of the RF as well as old and new M1 was also explored. However, methodological limitations may have biased the results towards muscles with more excitable motoneurons, or monosynaptic connections. Abstract ii In baboons, threshold stimulation elicited responses in upper limb and axial muscles only, with higher stimulation intensities or trains of pulses required to activate leg muscles. In contrast to long-held beliefs about RST output, distal upper limb muscles were more commonly activated than proximal ones. Previously reported attempts to record natural electromyography (EMG) data from macaques were limited to controlled experimental settings, and hence may have differed from EMG observed during truly natural behaviours. Here, EMG was recorded from 18 muscles in one macaque over several hours of natural, untrained activity in her home cage. Two matrix decomposition algorithms extracted three to four dominant synergies from the data. This number is comparable to that previously described for ‘natural’ behaviour in more controlled conditions, suggesting that it accurately reflects the dominant synergies used across both conditions. Future work should aim to delineate the respective contributions of the RST and corticospinal tract to natural movement and to develop approaches to manipulate RST projections in humans to improve post-stroke motor outcomes

Neural Pathways in Allergic Inflammation

Allergy is on the rise worldwide. Asthma, food allergy, dermatitis, and systemic anaphylaxis are amongst the most common allergic diseases. The association between allergy and altered behavior patterns has long been recognized. The molecular and cellular pathways in the bidirectional interactions of nervous and immune systems are now starting to be elucidated. In this paper, we outline the consequences of allergic diseases, especially food allergy and asthma, on behavior and neural activity and on the neural modulation of allergic responses

Neural pathways for visual speech perception

This paper examines the questions, what levels of speech can be perceived visually, and how is visual speech represented by the brain? Review of the literature leads to the conclusions that every level of psycholinguistic speech structure (i.e., phonetic features, phonemes, syllables, words, and prosody) can be perceived visually, although individuals differ in their abilities to do so; and that there are visual modality-specific representations of speech qua speech in higher-level vision brain areas. That is, the visual system represents the modal patterns of visual speech. The suggestion that the auditory speech pathway receives and represents visual speech is examined in light of neuroimaging evidence on the auditory speech pathways. We outline the generally agreed-upon organization of the visual ventral and dorsal pathways and examine several types of visual processing that might be related to speech through those pathways, specifically, face and body, orthography, and sign language processing. In this context, we examine the visual speech processing literature, which reveals widespread diverse patterns activity in posterior temporal cortices in response to visual speech stimuli. We outline a model of the visual and auditory speech pathways and make several suggestions: (1) The visual perception of speech relies on visual pathway representations of speech qua speech. (2) A proposed site of these representations, the temporal visual speech area (TVSA) has been demonstrated in posterior temporal cortex, ventral and posterior to multisensory posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS). (3) Given that visual speech has dynamic and configural features, its representations in feedforward visual pathways are expected to integrate these features, possibly in TVSA