11,458 research outputs found
The Laminar Organization of Visual Cortex: A Unified View of Development, Learning, and Grouping
Why are all sensory and cognitive neocortex organized into layered circuits? How do these layers organize circuits that form functional columns in cortical maps? How do bottom-up, top-down, and horizontal interactions within the cortical layers generate adaptive behaviors. This chapter summarizes an evolving neural model which suggests how these interactions help the visual cortex to realize: (1) the binding process whereby cortex groups distributed data into coherent object representations; (2) the attentional process whereby cortex selectively processes important events; and (3) the developmental and learning processes whereby cortex shapes its circuits to match environmental constraints. It is suggested that the mechanisms which achieve property (3) imply properties of (I) and (2). New computational ideas about feedback systems suggest how neocortex develops and learns in a stable way, and why top-down attention requires converging bottom-up inputs to fully activate cortical cells, whereas perceptual groupings do not.Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Office of Naval Research (N00014-95-1-0409); National Science Foundation (IRI-97-20333); Office of Naval Research (N00014-95-1-0657
How does the Cerebral Cortex Work? Learning, Attention, and Grouping by the Laminar Circuits of Visual Cortex
The organization of neocortex into layers is one of its most salient anatomical features. These layers include circuits that form functional columns in cortical maps. A major unsolved problem concerns how bottom-up, top-down, and horizontal interactions are organized within cortical layers to generate adaptive behaviors. This article models how these interactions help visual co1tex to realize: (I) the binding process whereby cortex groups distributed data into coherent object representations; (2) the attentional process whereby cortex selectively processes important events; and (3) the developmental and learning processes whereby cortex shapes its circuits to match environmental constraints. New computational ideas about feedback systems suggest how neocortex develops and learns in a stable way, and why top-down attention requires converging bottom-up inputs to fully activate cortical cells, whereas perceptual groupings do not.Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; National Science Foundation (IRI-97-20333); Office of Naval Research (N00014-95-1-0409, N00014-95-1-0657
Proceedings of the third French-Ukrainian workshop on the instrumentation developments for HEP
The reports collected in these proceedings have been presented in the third
French-Ukrainian workshop on the instrumentation developments for high-energy
physics held at LAL, Orsay on October 15-16. The workshop was conducted in the
scope of the IDEATE International Associated Laboratory (LIA). Joint
developments between French and Ukrainian laboratories and universities as well
as new proposals have been discussed. The main topics of the papers presented
in the Proceedings are developments for accelerator and beam monitoring,
detector developments, joint developments for large-scale high-energy and
astroparticle physics projects, medical applications.Comment: 3rd French-Ukrainian workshop on the instrumentation developments for
High Energy Physics, October 15-16, 2015, LAL, Orsay, France, 94 page
Hanbury Brown and Twiss Interferometry with Twisted Light
The rich physics exhibited by random optical wave fields permitted Hanbury
Brown and Twiss to unveil fundamental aspects of light. Furthermore, it has
been recognized that optical vortices are ubiquitous in random light and that
the phase distribution around these optical singularities inprints a spectrum
of orbital angular momentum onto a light field. We demonstrate that random
fluctuations of light give rise to the formation of correlations in the orbital
angular momentum components and angular positions of pseudothermal light. The
presence of these correlations is manisfested through distinct interference
structures in the orbital angular momentum-mode distribution of random light.
These novel forms of interference correspond to the azimuthal analog of the
Hanbury Brown and Twiss effect. This family of effects can be of fundamental
importance in applications where entanglement is not required and where
correlations in angular position and orbital angular momentum suffice. We also
suggest that the azimuthal Hanbury Brown and Twiss effect can be useful in the
exploration of novel phenomena in other branches of physics and astrophysics.Comment: Science Advance
In vivo characterization of hippocampal electrophysiological processes in the heterozygous Pten knockout model of autism
While cognitive deficits have been described in the heterozygous Pten (+/-) KO mouse model of autism, little work has been done to demonstrate how corresponding in vitro physiological alterations in this model may underpin these cognitive deficits in vivo. As Pten KO (+/-) is known to alter electrophysiological characteristics of neurons in vitro, this study measures the in vivo electrophysiological characteristics of CA1 interneurons, pyramidal cells, and place cells which may underlie the spatial cognitive deficits seen in the model. Four transgenic conditional heterozygous Pten+/loxPloxP;Gfap-cre mice (HetPten) and four homozygous Pten littermate control mice were used in this study. This transgene drives cre expression and excision of the Pten gene in hippocampal granule cells of the dentate gyrus, and neurons in CA2 and CA1, but not astrocytes. In vivo local field potentials and single cell recordings were made in CA1 of each mouse during an open field foraging task in two distinct arenas. HetPten mice were found to have increased interneuron and pyramidal cell firing rates. In addition, place cells demonstrated abnormal properties including increased out-of-field firing rates, an increased number of fields, and trends towards larger field sizes that were less stable in comparison to controls. HetPten mice had slower CA1 fast gamma oscillations and more variable speed/theta oscillation correlations. Behaviorally, there were weak trends towards decreased motor output compared to controls. These data suggest that the electrophysiological alterations due to Pten KO (+/-) in mouse hippocampal neurons lead to hyperactivation of CA1 interneurons, pyramidal cells, and place cells
Response of an Excitatory-Inhibitory Neural Network to External Stimulation: An Application to Image Segmentation
Neural network models comprising elements which have exclusively excitatory
or inhibitory synapses are capable of a wide range of dynamic behavior,
including chaos. In this paper, a simple excitatory-inhibitory neural pair,
which forms the building block of larger networks, is subjected to external
stimulation. The response shows transition between various types of dynamics,
depending upon the magnitude of the stimulus. Coupling such pairs over a local
neighborhood in a two-dimensional plane, the resultant network can achieve a
satisfactory segmentation of an image into ``object'' and ``background''.
Results for synthetic and and ``real-life'' images are given.Comment: 8 pages, latex, 5 figure
Physics Potential of Very Intense Conventional Neutrino Beams
The physics potential of high intensity conventional beams is explored. We
consider a low energy super beam which could be produced by a proposed new
accelerator at CERN, the Super Proton Linac. Water Cherenkov and liquid oil
scintillator detectors are studied as possible candidates for a neutrino
oscillation experiment which could improve our current knowledge of the
atmospheric parameters and measure or severely constrain the parameter
connecting the atmospheric and solar realms. It is also shown that a very large
water detector could eventually observe leptonic CP violation. The reach of
such an experiment to the neutrino mixing parameters would lie in-between the
next generation of neutrino experiments (MINOS, OPERA, etc) and a future
neutrino factory.Comment: Talk given at the Venice Conference on Neutrino Telescopes, Venice,
March, 200
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