Computational neuroanatomy and co-expression of genes in the adult mouse brain, analysis tools for the Allen Brain Atlas

We review quantitative methods and software developed to analyze genome-scale, brain-wide spatially-mapped gene-expression data. We expose new methods based on the underlying high-dimensional geometry of voxel space and gene space, and on simulations of the distribution of co-expression networks of a given size. We apply them to the Allen Atlas of the adult mouse brain, and to the co-expression network of a set of genes related to nicotine addiction retrieved from the NicSNP database. The computational methods are implemented in {\ttfamily{BrainGeneExpressionAnalysis}}, a Matlab toolbox available for download.Comment: 25 pages, 8 figures, accepted in Quantitative Biology (2012) 000

Taylor-Lagrange renormalization scheme. Application to light-front dynamics

The recently proposed renormalization scheme based on the definition of field operators as operator valued distributions acting on specific test functions is shown to be very convenient in explicit calculations of physical observables within the framework of light-front dynamics. We first recall the main properties of this procedure based on identities relating the test functions to their Taylor remainder of any order expressed in terms of Lagrange's formulae, hence the name given to this scheme. We thus show how it naturally applies to the calculation of state vectors of physical systems in the covariant formulation of light-front dynamics. As an example, we consider the case of the Yukawa model in the simple two-body Fock state truncation.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures, introduction changed, corrected typos, to be published in Physical Review