Building Korean Sign Language Augmentation (KoSLA) Corpus with Data Augmentation Technique

We present an efficient framework of corpus for sign language translation. Aided with a simple but dramatic data augmentation technique, our method converts text into annotated forms with minimum information loss. Sign languages are composed of manual signals, non-manual signals, and iconic features. According to professional sign language interpreters, non-manual signals such as facial expressions and gestures play an important role in conveying exact meaning. By considering the linguistic features of sign language, our proposed framework is a first and unique attempt to build a multimodal sign language augmentation corpus (hereinafter referred to as the KoSLA corpus) containing both manual and non-manual modalities. The corpus we built demonstrates confident results in the hospital context, showing improved performance with augmented datasets. To overcome data scarcity, we resorted to data augmentation techniques such as synonym replacement to boost the efficiency of our translation model and available data, while maintaining grammatical and semantic structures of sign language. For the experimental support, we verify the effectiveness of data augmentation technique and usefulness of our corpus by performing a translation task between normal sentences and sign language annotations on two tokenizers. The result was convincing, proving that the BLEU scores with the KoSLA corpus were significant

Pulse-train stimulation of primary somatosensory cortex blocks pain perception in tail clip test

Human studies of brain stimulation have demonstrated modulatory effects on the perception of pain. However, whether the primary somatosensory cortical activity is associated with antinociceptive responses remains unknown. Therefore, we examined the antinociceptive effects of neuronal activity evoked by optogenetic stimulation of primary somatosensory cortex. Optogenetic transgenic mice were subjected to continuous or pulse-train optogenetic stimulation of the primary somatosensory cortex at frequencies of 15, 30, and 40 Hz, during a tail clip test. Reaction time was measured using a digital high-speed video camera. Pulse-train optogenetic stimulation of primary somatosensory cortex showed a delayed pain response with respect to a tail clip, whereas no significant change in reaction time was observed with continuous stimulation. In response to the pulse-train stimulation, video monitoring and local field potential recording revealed associated paw movement and sensorimotor rhythms, respectively. Our results show that optogenetic stimulation of primary somatosensory cortex at beta and gamma frequencies blocks transmission of pain signals in tail clip test. © 2017 Experimental Neurobiology1331sciescopuskc

A compartment model with variable ion channel density on the propagation of action potentials along a nonuniform axon

The transmission of a signal through an axon is studied using a compartment model of a nonuniform axon. We find that the transmission efficiency in these axons has nonlinear mode-locking structure that depends on the relative ion channel density. The refractory period of the soma is found to be longer than that of its axon and this structure appears by it. Our study suggets that non-uniform axons can actively participate in information processing.X1120sciescopu

Noise-induced organized slow fluctuations in networks of neural areas with interarea feed-forward excitation and inhibition

Slow coherent spontaneous fluctuations (< 0.1 Hz) in functional magnetic resonance imaging blood-oxygen-level-dependent signals have been observed for a resting state of the human brain. In this paper, considering feed-forward inhibition in addition to excitation between brain areas, which we assume to be in up (active) or down (quiescent) states, we propose a model for the generation and organization of the slow fluctuations. Connectivity with feed-forward excitation and inhibition between the areas makes the system have multiple stable states and organized slow fluctuations manifest as noise-induced slow transitions between the states. With various connectivities, we observe slow fluctuations and various organizations, including anticorrelated clusters, through numerical simulations.open110sciescopu

Core-periphery disparity in fractal behavior of complex networks

We show that there is a disparity in fractal scaling behavior of the core and peripheral parts of empirical small-world scale-free networks. We decompose the network into a core and a periphery and measure the fractal dimension of each part separately using the box-counting method. We find that the core of small-world scale-free networks has a nonfractal structure, whereas the periphery exhibits either fractal or nonfractal scaling. The fractal dimension of the periphery is found to coincide with one for the whole network.X1112sciescopu