338 research outputs found
Quantitative Characterization of Smooth Pursuit Eye Movements in School-Age Children Using a Child-Friendly Setup
Purpose: It could be argued that current studies investigating smooth pursuit development in children do not provide an optimal measure of smooth pursuit characteristics, given that a significant number have failed to adjust their setup and procedures to the child population. This study aimed to characterize smooth pursuit in children using child-friendly stimuli and procedures. Methods: Eye movements were recorded in 169 children (4–11 years) and 10 adults, while a customized, animated stimulus was presented moving horizontally and vertically at 6°/s and 12°/s. Eye movement recordings from 43 children with delayed reading, two with nystagmus, two with strabismus, and two with unsuccessful calibration were excluded from the analysis. Velocity gain, proportion of smooth pursuit, and the number and amplitude of saccades during smooth pursuit were calculated for the remaining participants. Median and quartiles were calculated for each age group and pursuit condition. ANOVA was used to investigate the effect of age on smooth pursuit parameters. Results: Differences across ages were found in velocity gain (6°/s P 0.05). Conclusions: Using child-friendly methods, children over the age of 7 to 8 years demonstrated adultlike smooth pursuit. Translational Relevance: Child-friendly procedures are critical for appropriately characterizing smooth pursuit eye movements in children
Effect of Stimulus Type and Motion on Smooth Pursuit in Adults and Children
PURPOSE: This study presents a two-degree customized animated stimulus developed to evaluate smooth pursuit in children and investigates the effect of its predetermined characteristics (stimulus type and size) in an adult population. Then, the animated stimulus is used to evaluate the impact of different pursuit motion paradigms in children. METHODS: To study the effect of animating a stimulus, eye movement recordings were obtained from 20 young adults while the customized animated stimulus and a standard dot stimulus were presented moving horizontally at a constant velocity. To study the effect of using a larger stimulus size, eye movement recordings were obtained from 10 young adults while presenting a standard dot stimulus of different size (1° and 2°) moving horizontally at a constant velocity. Finally, eye movement recordings were obtained from 12 children while the 2° customized animated stimulus was presented after three different smooth pursuit motion paradigms. Performance parameters, including gains and number of saccades, were calculated for each stimulus condition. RESULTS: The animated stimulus produced in young adults significantly higher velocity gain (mean: 0.93; 95% CI: 0.90-0.96; P = .014), position gain (0.93; 0.85-1; P = .025), proportion of smooth pursuit (0.94; 0.91-0.96, P = .002), and fewer saccades (5.30; 3.64-6.96, P = .008) than a standard dot (velocity gain: 0.87; 0.82-0.92; position gain: 0.82; 0.72-0.92; proportion smooth pursuit: 0.87; 0.83-0.90; number of saccades: 7.75; 5.30-10.46). In contrast, changing the size of a standard dot stimulus from 1° to 2° did not have an effect on smooth pursuit in young adults (P > .05). Finally, smooth pursuit performance did not significantly differ in children for the different motion paradigms when using the animated stimulus (P > .05). CONCLUSIONS: Attention-grabbing and more dynamic stimuli, such as the developed animated stimulus, might potentially be useful for eye movement research. Finally, with such stimuli, children perform equally well irrespective of the motion paradigm used
Retrieval behavior and thermodynamic properties of symmetrically diluted Q-Ising neural networks
The retrieval behavior and thermodynamic properties of symmetrically diluted
Q-Ising neural networks are derived and studied in replica-symmetric mean-field
theory generalizing earlier works on either the fully connected or the
symmetrical extremely diluted network. Capacity-gain parameter phase diagrams
are obtained for the Q=3, Q=4 and state networks with uniformly
distributed patterns of low activity in order to search for the effects of a
gradual dilution of the synapses. It is shown that enlarged regions of
continuous changeover into a region of optimal performance are obtained for
finite stochastic noise and small but finite connectivity. The de
Almeida-Thouless lines of stability are obtained for arbitrary connectivity,
and the resulting phase diagrams are used to draw conclusions on the behavior
of symmetrically diluted networks with other pattern distributions of either
high or low activity.Comment: 21 pages, revte
A canonical ensemble approach to graded-response perceptrons
Perceptrons with graded input-output relations and a limited output precision
are studied within the Gardner-Derrida canonical ensemble approach. Soft non-
negative error measures are introduced allowing for extended retrieval
properties. In particular, the performance of these systems for a linear and
quadratic error measure, corresponding to the perceptron respectively the
adaline learning algorithm, is compared with the performance for a rigid error
measure, simply counting the number of errors. Replica-symmetry-breaking
effects are evaluated.Comment: 26 pages, 10 ps figure
Pupillary light reflex circuits in the macaque monkey: the preganglionic Edinger-Westphal nucleus
The motor outfow for the pupillary light refex originates in the preganglionic motoneuron subdivision of the Edinger–
Westphal nucleus (EWpg), which also mediates lens accommodation. Despite their importance for vision, the morphology,
ultrastructure and luminance-related inputs of these motoneurons have not been fully described in primates. In macaque
monkeys, we labeled EWpg motoneurons from ciliary ganglion and orbital injections. Both approaches indicated preganglionic motoneurons occupy an EWpg organized as a unitary, ipsilateral cell column. When tracers were placed in the pretectal complex, labeled terminals targeted the ipsilateral EWpg and reached contralateral EWpg by crossing both above and
below the cerebral aqueduct. They also terminated in the lateral visceral column, a ventrolateral periaqueductal gray region
containing neurons projecting to the contralateral pretectum. Combining olivary pretectal and ciliary ganglion injections
to determine whether a direct pupillary light refex projection is present revealed a labeled motoneuron subpopulation that
displayed close associations with labeled pretectal terminal boutons. Ultrastructurally, this subpopulation received synaptic
contacts from labeled pretectal terminals that contained numerous clear spherical vesicles, suggesting excitation, and scattered dense-core vesicles, suggesting peptidergic co-transmitters. A variety of axon terminal classes, some of which may
serve the near response, synapsed on preganglionic motoneurons. Quantitative analysis indicated that pupillary motoneurons
receive more inhibitory inputs than lens motoneurons. To summarize, the pupillary light refex circuit utilizes a monosynaptic,
excitatory, bilateral pretectal projection to a distinct subpopulation of EWpg motoneurons. Furthermore, the interconnections
between the lateral visceral column and olivary pretectal nucleus may provide pretectal cells with bilateral retinal felds
Parisi Phase in a Neuron
Pattern storage by a single neuron is revisited. Generalizing Parisi's
framework for spin glasses we obtain a variational free energy functional for
the neuron. The solution is demonstrated at high temperature and large relative
number of examples, where several phases are identified by thermodynamical
stability analysis, two of them exhibiting spontaneous full replica symmetry
breaking. We give analytically the curved segments of the order parameter
function and in representative cases compute the free energy, the storage
error, and the entropy.Comment: 4 pages in prl twocolumn format + 3 Postscript figures. Submitted to
Physical Review Letter
Iron Status and Analysis of Efficacy and Safety of Ferric Carboxymaltose Treatment in Patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease
Background and Aims:We analyzed iron deficiency and the therapeutic response following intravenous ferric carboxymaltose in a large single-center inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) cohort. Methods: 250 IBD patients were retrospectively analyzed for iron deficiency and iron deficiency anemia. A subgroup was analyzed regarding efficacy and side effects of iron supplementation with ferric carboxymaltose. Results: In the cohort (n = 250), 54.4% of the patients had serum iron levels 60 mu g/dl, 61.6% had ferritin >100 ng/ml, and 90.7% reached Hb >12/13 g/dl at follow-up (p < 0.0001 for all parameters vs. pretreatment values). The most frequent adverse event was a transient increase of liver enzymes with male gender as risk factor (p = 0.008, OR 8.62, 95% CI 1.74-41.66). Conclusions: Iron deficiency and anemia are frequent in IBD patients. Treatment with ferric carboxymaltose is efficious, safe and well tolerated in iron-deficient IBD patients. Copyright (C) 2011 S. Karger AG, Base
Optimally adapted multi-state neural networks trained with noise
The principle of adaptation in a noisy retrieval environment is extended here
to a diluted attractor neural network of Q-state neurons trained with noisy
data. The network is adapted to an appropriate noisy training overlap and
training activity which are determined self-consistently by the optimized
retrieval attractor overlap and activity. The optimized storage capacity and
the corresponding retriever overlap are considerably enhanced by an adequate
threshold in the states. Explicit results for improved optimal performance and
new retriever phase diagrams are obtained for Q=3 and Q=4, with coexisting
phases over a wide range of thresholds. Most of the interesting results are
stable to replica-symmetry-breaking fluctuations.Comment: 22 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in PR
Chaotic Interaction of Langmuir Solitons and Long Wavelength Radiation
In this work we analyze the interaction of isolated solitary structures and
ion-acoustic radiation. If the radiation amplitude is small solitary structures
persists, but when the amplitude grows energy transfer towards small spatial
scales occurs. We show that transfer is particularly fast when a fixed point of
a low dimensional model is destroyed.Comment: LaTex + 4 eps file
Storage capacity of a constructive learning algorithm
Upper and lower bounds for the typical storage capacity of a constructive
algorithm, the Tilinglike Learning Algorithm for the Parity Machine [M. Biehl
and M. Opper, Phys. Rev. A {\bf 44} 6888 (1991)], are determined in the
asymptotic limit of large training set sizes. The properties of a perceptron
with threshold, learning a training set of patterns having a biased
distribution of targets, needed as an intermediate step in the capacity
calculation, are determined analytically. The lower bound for the capacity,
determined with a cavity method, is proportional to the number of hidden units.
The upper bound, obtained with the hypothesis of replica symmetry, is close to
the one predicted by Mitchinson and Durbin [Biol. Cyber. {\bf 60} 345 (1989)].Comment: 13 pages, 1 figur
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