New pixelized Micromegas detector with low discharge rate for the COMPASS experiment

New Micromegas (Micro-mesh gaseous detectors) are being developed in view of the future physics projects planned by the COMPASS collaboration at CERN. Several major upgrades compared to present detectors are being studied: detectors standing five times higher luminosity with hadron beams, detection of beam particles (flux up to a few hundred of kHz/mm^{2}, 10 times larger than for the present Micromegas detectors) with pixelized read-out in the central part, light and integrated electronics, and improved robustness. Two solutions of reduction of discharge impact have been studied, with Micromegas detectors using resistive layers and using an additional GEM foil. Performance of such detectors has also been measured. A large size prototypes with nominal active area and pixelized read-out has been produced and installed at COMPASS in 2010. In 2011 prototypes featuring an additional GEM foil, as well as an resistive prototype, are installed at COMPASS and preliminary results from those detectors presented very good performance. We present here the project and report on its status, in particular the performance of large size prototypes with an additional GEM foil.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, proceedings to the Micro-Pattern Gaseous Detectors conference (MPGD2011), 29-31 August 2011, Kobe, Japa

Changes in electrophysiological static and dynamic human brain functional architecture from childhood to late adulthood

Published: 04 November 2020This magnetoencephalography study aimed at characterizing age-related changes in resting-state functional brain organization from mid-childhood to late adulthood. We investigated neuromagnetic brain activity at rest in 105 participants divided into three age groups: children (6–9 years), young adults (18–34 years) and healthy elders (53–78 years). The effects of age on static resting-state functional brain integration were assessed using band-limited power envelope correlation, whereas those on transient functional brain dynamics were disclosed using hidden Markov modeling of power envelope activity. Brain development from childhood to adulthood came with (1) a strengthening of functional integration within and between resting-state networks and (2) an increased temporal stability of transient (100–300 ms lifetime) and recurrent states of network activation or deactivation mainly encompassing lateral or medial associative neocortical areas. Healthy aging was characterized by decreased static resting-state functional integration and dynamic stability within the primary visual network. These results based on electrophysiological measurements free of neurovascular biases suggest that functional brain integration mainly evolves during brain development, with limited changes in healthy aging. These novel electrophysiological insights into human brain functional architecture across the lifespan pave the way for future clinical studies investigating how brain disorders affect brain development or healthy aging.This study was supported by the Action de Recherche Concertée Consolidation (ARCC, “Characterizing the spatio-temporal dynamics and the electrophysiological bases of resting state networks”, ULB, Brussels, Belgium), the Fonds Erasme (Research Convention “Les Voies du Savoir”,Brussels, Belgium) and the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (Research Convention: T.0109.13, FRS-FNRS, Brussels, Belgium). Nicolas Coquelet has been supported by the ARCC, by the Fonds Erasme (Research Convention “Les Voies du Savoir”, Brussels, Belgium) and is supported by the FRS-FNRS (Research Convention: Excellence of Science EOS “MEMODYN”). Alison Mary is Postdoctoral Researcher at the FRS-FNRS. Maxime Niesen and Marc Vander Ghinst have been supported by the Fonds Erasme. Mariagrazia Ranzini is supported by the Marie Sklodowska-Curie European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Research Grant: 839394). Mathieu Bourguignon is supported by the program Attract of Innoviris (Research Grant 2015-BB2B-10, Brussels, Belgium), the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Action of the European Commission (Research Grant: 743562) and by the Spanish Ministery of Economy and Competitiveness (Research Grant: PSI2016-77175-P). Xavier De Tiège is Postdoctorate Clinical Master Specialist at the FRS-FNRS. The MEG project at the CUB Hôpital Erasme is financially supported by the Fonds Erasme

Multichannel time-frequency complexity measures for the analysis of age-related changes in neuromagnetic resting-state activity

We propose new multichannel time-frequency complexity measures to evaluate differences on magnetoencephalograpy (MEG) recordings between healthy young and old subjects at rest at different spatial scales. After reviewing the Renyi and singular value decomposition entropies based on time-frequency representations, we introduce multichannel generalizations, using multilinear singular value decomposition for one of them. We test these quantities on synthetic data, illustrating how the introduced complexity measures focus on number of components, nonstationarity and similarity across channels. Friedman tests are used to confirm the differences between young and old groups, and heterogeneity within groups. Experimental results show a consistent increase in complexity measures for the old group. When analyzing the topographical distribution of complexity values, we found clusters in the frontal sensors. The complexity measures here introduced seem to be a better indicator of the neurophysiologic changes of aging than power envelope connectivity. Here we applied new multichannel time-frequency complexity measures to resting-state MEG recordings from healthy young and old subjects. We showed that these features are able to reveal regional clusters. The multichannel time-frequency complexities can be used to monitor the aging of subjects. They also allow a mutual information approach, and could be applied to a wider range of problems

The electrophysiological connectome is maintained in healthy elders: a power envelope correlation MEG study

Abstract Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies report age-related changes in resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC), suggesting altered or reorganized connectivity patterns with age. However, age-related changes in neurovascular coupling might also partially account for altered connectivity patterns. Here, we used resting-state magnetoencephalography (MEG) and a connectome approach in carefully selected healthy young adults and elders. The MEG connectome was estimated as rsFC matrices involving forty nodes from six major  resting-state networks. Source-level rsFC maps were computed in relevant frequency bands using leakage-corrected envelope correlations. Group differences were statistically assessed using non-parametric permutation tests. Our results failed to evidence significant age-related differences after correction for multiple comparisons in the α and the β bands both for static and dynamic rsFC, suggesting that the electrophysiological connectome is maintained in healthy ageing. Further studies should compare the evolution of the human brain connectome as estimated using fMRI and MEG in same healthy young and elder adults, as well as in ageing conditions associated with cognitive decline. At present, our results are in agreement with the brain maintenance theory for successful aging as they suggest that preserved intrinsic functional brain integration contributes to preserved cognitive functioning in healthy elders

Microstates and power envelope hidden Markov modeling probe bursting brain activity at different timescales

State modeling of whole-brain electroencephalography (EEG) or magnetoencephalography (MEG) allows to investigate transient, recurring neurodynamical events. Two widely-used techniques are the microstate analysis of EEG signals and hidden Markov modeling (HMM) of MEG power envelopes. Both reportedly lead to similar state lifetimes on the 100 ms timescale, suggesting a common neural basis. To investigate whether microstates and power envelope HMM states describe the same neural dynamics, we used simultaneous MEG/EEG recordings at rest and compared the spatial signature and temporal activation dynamics of microstates and power envelope HMM states obtained separately from EEG and MEG. Results showed that microstates and power envelope HMM states differ both spatially and temporally. Microstates reflect sharp events of neural synchronization, whereas power envelope HMM states disclose network-level activity with 100–200 ms lifetimes. Further, MEG microstates do not correspond to the canonical EEG microstates but are better interpreted as split HMM states. On the other hand, both MEG and EEG HMM states involve the (de)activation of similar functional networks. Microstate analysis and power envelope HMM thus appear sensitive to neural events occurring over different spatial and temporal scales. As such, they represent complementary approaches to explore the fast, sub-second scale bursting electrophysiological dynamics in spontaneous human brain activity

Putative genes of a variant-specific antigen gene transcription unit in Trypanosoma brucei.

In a 7-kilobase (kb) sequence upstream from the 5' barren region, the Trypanosoma brucei AnTat 1.3A expression site carries two putative genes, named ESAG 2 and ESAG 3 for expression site-associated genes, as well as a copy of ESAG 1 (D.F. Cully, H.S. Ip, and G.A.M. Cross, Cell 42:173-182, 1985). At least 3 kb of this expression site exhibits a high degree of homology with the silent telomere carrying the AnTat 1.3A basic copy, whose ESAG 1 is interrupted by stop codons. Like the antigen gene, the region containing the ESAGs is transcribed only in the bloodstream forms, although transcription of 5' barren- and ESAG 2-related sequences also occurs in cultured procyclics. Analysis of steady-state and nascent transcripts suggests a continuous transcription of the whole expression site by an RNA polymerase resistant to alpha-amanitin, possibly initiating at a polymerase I-like promoter located about 17 kb upstream from the antigen gene. This polymerase seems prone to becoming inactivated upon incubation of the trypanosomes at low temperature. The putative protein encoded by ESAG 3 may carry a hydrophobic signal peptide, suggesting interaction with a membrane

Comparing MEG and high-density EEG for intrinsic functional connectivity mapping

Available online 20 January 2020.Magnetoencephalography (MEG) has been used in conjunction with resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) based on band-limited power envelope correlation to study the intrinsic human brain network organization into resting-state networks (RSNs). However, the limited availability of current MEG systems hampers the clinical applications of electrophysiological rsFC. Here, we directly compared well-known RSNs as well as the whole-brain rsFC connectome together with its state dynamics, obtained from simultaneously-recorded MEG and high-density scalp electroencephalography (EEG) resting-state data. We also examined the impact of head model precision on EEG rsFC estimation, by comparing results obtained with boundary and finite element head models. Results showed that most RSN topographies obtained with MEG and EEG are similar, except for the fronto-parietal network. At the connectome level, sensitivity was lower to frontal rsFC and higher to parieto-occipital rsFC with MEG compared to EEG. This was mostly due to inhomogeneity of MEG sensor locations relative to the scalp and significant MEG-EEG differences disappeared when taking relative MEG-EEG sensor locations into account. The default-mode network was the only RSN requiring advanced head modeling in EEG, in which gray and white matter are distinguished. Importantly, comparison of rsFC state dynamics evidenced a poor correspondence between MEG and scalp EEG, suggesting sensitivity to different components of transient neural functional integration. This study therefore shows that the investigation of static rsFC based on the human brain connectome can be performed with scalp EEG in a similar way than with MEG, opening the avenue to widespread clinical applications of rsFC analyses.This study was supported by the Action de Recherche Concert ee Consolidation (ARCC, “Characterizing the spatio-temporal dynamics and the electrophysiological bases of resting state networks”, ULB, Brussels, Belgium), the Fonds Erasme (Research Convention “Les Voies du Savoir”, Brussels, Belgium) and the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (Research Convention: T.0109.13, F.R.S. - FNRS, Brussels, Belgium). Nicolas Coquelet has been supported by the ARCC and is supported by the Fonds Erasme (Research Convention “Les Voies du Savoir”, Brussels, Belgium). Xavier De Ti ege is Postdoctorate Clinical Master Specialist at the FRSFNRS. Florian Destoky and Mathieu Bourguignon are supported by the program Attract of Innoviris (Research Grant 2015-BB2B-10, Brussels, Belgium). Mathieu Bourguignon is also supported by the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Action of the European Commission (Research Grant: 743562) and by the Spanish Ministery of Economy and Competitiveness (Research Grant: PSI2016-77175-P). Lillia Roshchupkina is F.R.S. - FNRS Research Fellow and was previously supported by a ULB Mini-ARC grant. The MEG project at the CUB H^opital Erasme is financially supported by the Fonds Erasme (Research Convention “Les Voies du Savoir”, Brussels, Belgium). The high-density EEG project at the CUB H^opital Erasme has been financially supported by the CUB H^opital Erasme (Medical Council Research Grant) and by the F.R.S. - FNRS. The authors would like to thank Maribel Pulgarin Montoya for her help in part of the simultaneous MEG and high-density EEG recordings

Trypanosoma brucei repeated element with unusual structural and transcriptional properties.

The genome of Trypanosoma brucei contains up to 400 copies of a conserved sequence (TRS, trypanosome repeated sequence). The majority of TRS copies (TRS1) are 5.2 X 10(3) base-pairs (kb) and are flanked by different separate halves of the previously described transposable element RIME (ribosomal mobile element), although a variant copy (TRS2) contains only the central 1.45 kb portion and lacks RIME. TRS1 elements can probably undergo transposition, since they are dispersed in all chromosome size classes and are bordered by direct repeats of about four base-pairs. Some TRS1 elements may contain an open reading frame over almost their entire length (1651 codons), encoding a protein showing homology with reverse transcriptase. TRS probes detect poly(A)+ transcripts of 5 to 9 kb, generated by a polymerase moderately sensitive to alpha-amanitin. Transcription is developmentally regulated. Both TRS and RIME sense transcripts are preferentially synthesized compared to anti-sense transcripts, and are much more abundant in bloodstream forms than in cultured procyclics.Journal ArticleResearch Support, Non-U.S. Gov'tinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe