Aging and central vision loss: Relationship between the cortical macro-structure and micro-structure

Aging and central vision loss are associated with cortical atrophies, but little is known about the relationship between cortical thinning and the underlying cellular structure. We compared the macro- and micro-structure of the cortical gray and superficial white matter of 38 patients with juvenile (JMD) or age-related (AMD) macular degeneration and 38 healthy humans (19-84 years) by multimodal MRI including diffusion-tensor imaging (DTI). A factor analysis showed that cortical thickness, tissue-dependent measures, and DTI-based measures were sensitive to distinct components of brain structure. Age-related cortical thinning and increased diffusion were observed across most of the cortex, but increased T1-weighted intensities (frontal), reduced T2-weighted intensities (occipital), and reduced anisotropy (medial) were limited to confined cortical regions. Vision loss was associated with cortical thinning and enhanced diffusion in the gray matter (less in the white matter) of the occipital central visual field representation. Moreover, AMD (but not JMD) patients showed enhanced diffusion in lateral occipito-temporal cortex and cortical thinning in the posterior cingulum. These findings demonstrate that changes in brain structure are best quantified by multimodal imaging. They further suggest that age-related brain atrophies (cortical thinning) reflect diverse micro-structural etiologies. Moreover, juvenile and age-related macular degeneration are associated with distinct patterns of micro-structural alterations

Evidence of target enhancement and distractor suppression in early visual areas

Although the mechanisms of target enhancement and distractor suppression have been investigated along the visual processing hierarchy, there remains some unknown as to the role of perceptual load on the competition between different task-related information as attention deployment is manipulated. We present an fMRI spatial cueing paradigm, in which 32 participants had to attend to either a left or a right hemifield location and to indicate the orientation of the target Gabor that was presented simultaneously to a noise patch distractor. Critically, the target could appear at either the cued, valid location or at the uncued, invalid location; in the latter, the noise patch distractor appeared at the cued location. Perceptual load was manipulated by the presence or absence of high-contrast Gabor patches close to the fixation cross, which acted as lateral masks. Behavioural results indicated that participants performed more efficiently in validly cued trials compared to invalidly cued trials and under low compared to high load. Enhancement effects for targets and suppression effects for noise patches were greater in early visual areas at high load, that is in the presence of lateral masks. These results are in line with the hypothesis that attention results in both target enhancement and distractor suppression, and that these effects are most marked under high perceptual load. Theoretical implications of these results for different models of attention are discussed

Information content and aerosol property retrieval potential for different types of in situ polar nephelometer data

Polar nephelometers are in situ instruments used to measure the angular distribution of light scattered by aerosol particles. These types of measurements contain substantial information about the properties of the aerosol being probed (e.g. concentrations, sizes, refractive indices, shape parameters), which can be retrieved through inversion algorithms. The aerosol property retrieval potential (i.e. information content) of a given set of measurements depends on the spectral, polarimetric, and angular characteristics of the polar nephelometer that was used to acquire the measurements. To explore this issue quantitatively, we applied Bayesian information content analysis and calculated the metric degrees of freedom for signal (DOFS) for a range of simulated polar nephelometer instrument configurations, aerosol models and test cases, and assumed levels of prior knowledge about the variances of specific aerosol properties. Assuming a low level of prior knowledge consistent with an unconstrained ambient/field measurement setting, we demonstrate that even very basic polar nephelometers (single wavelength, no polarization capability) will provide informative measurements with a very high retrieval potential for the size distribution and refractive index state parameters describing simple unimodal, spherical test aerosols. As expected, assuming a higher level of prior knowledge consistent with well-constrained laboratory applications leads to a reduction in potential for information gain via performing the polarimetric measurement. Nevertheless, we show that in this situation polar nephelometers can still provide informative measurements: e.g. it can be possible to retrieve the imaginary part of the refractive index with high accuracy if the laboratory setting makes it possible to keep the probed aerosol sample simple. The analysis based on a high level of prior knowledge also allows us to better assess the impact of different polar nephelometer instrument design features in a consistent manner for retrieved aerosol parameters. The results indicate that the addition of multi-wavelength and/or polarimetric measurement capabilities always leads to an increase in information content, although in some cases the increase is negligible, e.g. when adding a fourth, near-IR measurement wavelength for the retrieval of unimodal size distribution parameters or if the added polarization component has high measurement uncertainty. By considering a more complex bimodal, non-spherical-aerosol model, we demonstrate that performing more comprehensive spectral and/or polarimetric measurements leads to very large benefits in terms of the achieved information content. We also investigated the impact of angular truncation (i.e. the loss of measurement information at certain scattering angles) on information content. Truncation at extreme angles (i.e. in the near-forward or near-backward directions) results in substantial decreases in information content for coarse-aerosol test cases. However for fine-aerosol test cases, the sensitivity of DOFS to extreme-angle truncation is noticeably smaller and can be further reduced by performing more comprehensive measurements. Side angle truncation has very little effect on information content for both the fine and coarse test cases. Furthermore, we demonstrate that increasing the number of angular measurements generally increases the information content. However, above a certain number of angular measurements (∼20–40) the observed increases in DOFS plateau out. Finally, we demonstrate that the specific placement of angular measurements within a nephelometer can have a large impact on information content. As a proof of concept, we show that a reductive greedy algorithm based on the DOFS metric can be used to find optimal angular configurations for given target aerosols and applications.</p

Information content and aerosol property retrieval potential for different types of in situ polar nephelometer data

Polar nephelometers are in situ instruments used to measure the angular distribution of light scattered by aerosol particles. These type of measurements contain substantial information about the properties of the aerosol being probed (e.g. concentrations, sizes, refractive indices, shape parameters), which can be retrieved through inversion algorithms. The aerosol property retrieval potential (i.e., information content) of a given set of measurements depends on the spectral, polarimetric and angular characteristics of the polar nephelometer that was used to acquire it. To explore this issue quantitatively, we applied Bayesian information content analysis and calculated the metric Degrees of Freedom for Signal (DOFS) for a range of simulated polar nephelometer instrument configurations, aerosol models and test cases, and assumed levels of prior knowledge about the variances of specific aerosol properties. Assuming a low level of prior knowledge consistent with an unconstrained ambient/field measurement setting, we demonstrate that even very basic polar nephelometers (single wavelength, no polarization capability) will provide informative measurements with very high retrieval potential for the size distribution and refractive index state parameters describing simple unimodal, spherical test aerosols. As expected, assuming a higher level of prior knowledge consistent with well constrained laboratory applications leads to a reduction in potential for information gain via performing the polarimetric measurement. This analysis allows us to better assess the impact of different polar nephelometer instrument design features in a consistent manner for retrieved aerosol parameters. The results indicate that the addition of multi-wavelength and/or polarimetric measurement capabilities always leads to an increase in information content, although in some cases the increase is negligible: e.g. when adding a fourth, near-IR measurement wavelength for the retrieval of unimodal size distribution parameters, or if the added polarization component has high measurement uncertainty. By considering a more complex bimodal, non-spherical aerosol model, we demonstrate that performing the more comprehensive spectral and/or polarimetric measurements leads to very large benefits in terms of the achieved information content. We also investigated the impact of angular truncation (i.e., the loss of measurement information at certain scattering angles) on information content. Truncation at extreme angles (i.e., in the near-forward or &ndash;backward directions) results in substantial decreases in information content for coarse aerosol test cases. However for fine aerosol test cases, the sensitivity of DOFS to extreme angle truncation is noticeably smaller and can be further reduced by performing more comprehensive measurements. Side-angle truncation has very little effect on information content for both the fine and coarse test cases. Furthermore, we demonstrate that increasing the number of angular measurements generally increases the information content. However, above a certain number of angular measurements (~20&ndash;40) the observed increases in DOFS plateau out. Finally, we demonstrate that the specific placement of angular measurements within a nephelometer can have a large impact on information content. As a proof-of-concept, we show that a reductive greedy algorithm based on the DOFS metric can be used to find optimal angular configurations for given target aerosols and applications.</p

Dynamic modulation of the processing of unpredicted technical errors by the posterior cingulate and the default mode network

The pervasive use of information technologies (IT) has tremendously benefited our daily lives. However, unpredicted technical breakdowns and errors can lead to the experience of stress, which has been termed technostress. It remains poorly understood how people dynamically respond to unpredicted system runtime errors occurring while interacting with the IT systems on a behavioral and neuronal level. To elucidate the mechanisms underlying such processes, we conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study in which 15 young adults solved arithmetic problems of three difficulty levels (easy, medium and hard) while two types of system runtime errors (problem errors and feedback errors) occurred in an unexpected manner. The problem error condition consisted of apparently defective displays of the arithmetic problem and the feedback error condition involved erroneous feedback. We found that the problem errors positively influenced participants’ problem-solving performance at the high difficulty level (i.e., hard tasks) at the initial stage of the session, while feedback errors disturbed their performance. These dynamic behavioral changes are mainly associated with brain activation changes in the posterior cingulate and the default mode network, including the posterior cingulate cortex, the mPFC, the retrosplenial cortex and the parahippocampal gyrus. Our study illustrates the regulatory role of the posterior cingulate in coping with unpredicted errors as well as with dynamic changes in the environment

Cortical Thickness Related to Compensatory Viewing Strategies in Patients With Macular Degeneration

Retinal diseases like age-related macular degeneration (AMD) or hereditary juvenile macular dystrophies (JMD) lead to a loss of central vision. Many patients compensate for this loss with a pseudo fovea in the intact peripheral retina, the so-called “preferred retinal locus” (PRL). How extensive eccentric viewing associated with central vision loss (CVL) affects brain structures responsible for visual perception and visually guided eye movements remains unknown. CVL results in a reduction of cortical gray matter in the “lesion projection zone” (LPZ) in early visual cortex, but the thickness of primary visual cortex appears to be largely preserved for eccentric-field representations. Here we explore how eccentric viewing strategies are related to cortical thickness (CT) measures in early visual cortex and in brain areas involved in the control of eye movements (frontal eye fields, FEF, supplementary eye fields, SEF, and premotor eye fields, PEF). We determined the projection zones (regions of interest, ROIs) of the PRL and of an equally peripheral area in the opposite hemifield (OppPRL) in early visual cortex (V1 and V2) in 32 patients with MD and 32 age-matched controls (19–84 years) by functional magnetic resonance imaging. Subsequently, we calculated the CT in these ROIs and compared it between PRL and OppPRL as well as between groups. Additionally, we examined the CT of FEF, SEF, and PEF and correlated it with behavioral measures like reading speed and eccentric fixation stability at the PRL. We found a significant difference between PRL and OppPRL projection zones in V1 with increased CT at the PRL, that was more pronounced in the patients, but also visible in the controls. Although the mean CT of the eye fields did not differ significantly between patients and controls, we found a trend to a positive correlation between CT in the right FEF and SEF and fixation stability in the whole patient group and between CT in the right PEF and reading speed in the JMD subgroup. The results indicate a possible association between the compensatory strategies used by patients with CVL and structural brain properties in early visual cortex and cortical eye fields

The Newcomb-Benford Law in Its Relation to Some Common Distributions

An often reported, but nevertheless persistently striking observation, formalized as the Newcomb-Benford law (NBL), is that the frequencies with which the leading digits of numbers occur in a large variety of data are far away from being uniform. Most spectacular seems to be the fact that in many data the leading digit 1 occurs in nearly one third of all cases. Explanations for this uneven distribution of the leading digits were, among others, scale- and base-invariance. Little attention, however, found the interrelation between the distribution of the significant digits and the distribution of the observed variable. It is shown here by simulation that long right-tailed distributions of a random variable are compatible with the NBL, and that for distributions of the ratio of two random variables the fit generally improves. Distributions not putting most mass on small values of the random variable (e.g. symmetric distributions) fail to fit. Hence, the validity of the NBL needs the predominance of small values and, when thinking of real-world data, a majority of small entities. Analyses of data on stock prices, the areas and numbers of inhabitants of countries, and the starting page numbers of papers from a bibliography sustain this conclusion. In all, these findings may help to understand the mechanisms behind the NBL and the conditions needed for its validity. That this law is not only of scientific interest per se, but that, in addition, it has also substantial implications can be seen from those fields where it was suggested to be put into practice. These fields reach from the detection of irregularities in data (e.g. economic fraud) to optimizing the architecture of computers regarding number representation, storage, and round-off errors

A Motion Illusion Reveals Mechanisms of Perceptual Stabilization

Visual illusions are valuable tools for the scientific examination of the mechanisms underlying perception. In the peripheral drift illusion special drift patterns appear to move although they are static. During fixation small involuntary eye movements generate retinal image slips which need to be suppressed for stable perception. Here we show that the peripheral drift illusion reveals the mechanisms of perceptual stabilization associated with these micromovements. In a series of experiments we found that illusory motion was only observed in the peripheral visual field. The strength of illusory motion varied with the degree of micromovements. However, drift patterns presented in the central (but not the peripheral) visual field modulated the strength of illusory peripheral motion. Moreover, although central drift patterns were not perceived as moving, they elicited illusory motion of neutral peripheral patterns. Central drift patterns modulated illusory peripheral motion even when micromovements remained constant. Interestingly, perceptual stabilization was only affected by static drift patterns, but not by real motion signals. Our findings suggest that perceptual instabilities caused by fixational eye movements are corrected by a mechanism that relies on visual rather than extraretinal (proprioceptive or motor) signals, and that drift patterns systematically bias this compensatory mechanism. These mechanisms may be revealed by utilizing static visual patterns that give rise to the peripheral drift illusion, but remain undetected with other patterns. Accordingly, the peripheral drift illusion is of unique value for examining processes of perceptual stabilization

Direct search for light gluinos

We present the results for a direct search for light gluinos through the appearance of $\eta\rightarrow 3\pi^{0}$ with high transverse momentum in the vacuum tank of the NA48 experiment at CERN. We find one event within a lifetime range of $10^{-9}-10^{-3}$s and another one between $10^{-10}-10^{-9}$s. Both events are consistent with the expected background from neutrons in the beam, produced by 450 GeV protons impinging on the Be targets, which interact with the residual air in the tank. From these data we give limits on the production of the hypothetical $g\widetilde{g}$ bound state, the $R^0$ hadron, and its $R^0\rightarrow\eta\widetilde{\gamma}$ decay in the $R^0$ mass range between 1 and 5~GeV