Pain Control by Co-adaptive Learning in a Brain-Machine Interface.

Innovation in the field of brain-machine interfacing offers a new approach to managing human pain. In principle, it should be possible to use brain activity to directly control a therapeutic intervention in an interactive, closed-loop manner. But this raises the question as to whether the brain activity changes as a function of this interaction. Here, we used real-time decoded functional MRI responses from the insula cortex as input into a closed-loop control system aimed at reducing pain and looked for co-adaptive neural and behavioral changes. As subjects engaged in active cognitive strategies orientated toward the control system, such as trying to enhance their brain activity, pain encoding in the insula was paradoxically degraded. From a mechanistic perspective, we found that cognitive engagement was accompanied by activation of the endogenous pain modulation system, manifested by the attentional modulation of pain ratings and enhanced pain responses in pregenual anterior cingulate cortex and periaqueductal gray. Further behavioral evidence of endogenous modulation was confirmed in a second experiment using an EEG-based closed-loop system. Overall, the results show that implementing brain-machine control systems for pain induces a parallel set of co-adaptive changes in the brain, and this can interfere with the brain signals and behavior under control. More generally, this illustrates a fundamental challenge of brain decoding applications-that the brain inherently adapts to being decoded, especially as a result of cognitive processes related to learning and cooperation. Understanding the nature of these co-adaptive processes informs strategies to mitigate or exploit them

Phase transition in the one-dimensional Kondo lattice model with attractive electron-electron interaction

The one-dimensional Kondo lattice model with attractive interaction among the conduction electrons is analyzed in the case of half-filling. It is shown that there are three distinct phases depending on the coupling constants of the model. Two phases have a spin and charge gap. While one shows a clear separation of the spin and charge excitation spectrum the other phase may be characterized as a band insulator type where both excitations are due to two-particle states. The third phase is gapless in both channels and has quasi long-range order in the spin and charge density wave correlation. In this phase the spin and charge excitations have again a clearly separated spectrum. For the analysis we discuss first two limiting cases. Then a density matrix renormalization group calculation on finite systems is applied to determine the phase diagram and the correlation functions in the gapped and gapless phase for general couplding constants.Comment: 9 pages, 7 Postscript figures, REVTe

Spin and charge gaps in the one-dimensional Kondo-lattice model with Coulomb interaction between conduction electrons

The density-matrix renormalization-group method is applied to the one-dimensional Kondo-lattice model with the Coulomb interaction between the conduction electrons. The spin and charge gaps are calculated as a function of the exchange constant $J$ and the Coulomb interaction $U_c$. It is shown that both the spin and charge gaps increase with increasing $J$ and $U_c$. The spin gap vanishes in the limit of $J \rightarrow 0$ for any $U_c$ with an exponential form, $\Delta_s\propto \exp{[-1/\alpha (U_c) J \rho]}$. The exponent, $\alpha (U_c)$, is determined as a function of $U_c$. The charge gap is generally much larger than the spin gap. In the limit of $J \rightarrow 0$, the charge gap vanishes as $\Delta_c=\frac{1}{2}J$ for $U_c=0$ but for a finite $U_c$ it tends to a finite value, which is the charge gap of the Hubbard model.Comment: RevTeX, 4 pages, 3 Postscript figure

Charged and spin-excitation gaps in half-filled strongly correlated electron systems: A rigorous result

By exploiting the particle-hole symmetries of the Hubbard model, the periodic Anderson model and the Kondo lattice model at half-filling and applying a generalized version of Lieb's spin-reflection positivity method, we show that the charged gaps of these models are always larger than their spin excitation gaps. This theorem confirms the previous results derived by either the variational approach or the density renormalization group approach.Comment: 20 pages, no figur

Anisotropic Optical Conductivity of Nd2-xCexCuO4 Thin Films

Opticcal conductivity spectra $\sigma_1(\omega)$ of Nd2-xCexCuO4 thin films, measured by the reflectance-transmittance method (R-T method) which has been proposed to investigate far-infrared spectroscopy, are investigated based on the anisotropic pairing model. Precise measurements of the frequency-dependent conductivity enable us to examine quantitatively the nature of the superconducting gap through infrared properties in the electron-doped high-Tc superconductors. We show that the behavior of optical conductivity $\sigma_1$ is consistent with the anisotropic superconducting gap and is well explained by the formula for d-wave pairing in the low-energy regime of the far-infrared region. Our results suggest that the electron-doped cuprate superconductors Nd2-xCexCuO4 have nodes in the superconducting gap.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Magnetism in the dilute Kondo lattice model

The one dimensional dilute Kondo lattice model is investigated by means of bosonization for different dilution patterns of the array of impurity spins. The physical picture is very different if a commensurate or incommensurate doping of the impurity spins is considered. For the commensurate case, the obtained phase diagram is verified using a non-Abelian density-matrix renormalization-group algorithm. The paramagnetic phase widens at the expense of the ferromagnetic phase as the $f$-spins are diluted. For the incommensurate case, antiferromagnetism is found at low doping, which distinguishes the dilute Kondo lattice model from the standard Kondo lattice model.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figure

Search for Supernova Relic Neutrinos at Super-Kamiokande

A search for the relic neutrinos from all past core-collapse supernovae was conducted using 1496 days of data from the Super-Kamiokande detector. This analysis looked for electron-type anti-neutrinos that had produced a positron with an energy greater than 18 MeV. In the absence of a signal, 90% C.L. upper limits on the total flux were set for several theoretical models; these limits ranged from 20 to 130 nu_e bar cm^-2 s^-1. Additionally, an upper bound of 1.2 nu_e bar cm^-2 s^-1 was set for the supernova relic neutrino flux in the energy region E_nu > 19.3 MeV.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. Submitted to Physical Review Letters. New version includes corrections to Figure 1. Also, text has been shortened to conform with the space limitations of PR

Search for Dark Matter WIMPs using Upward Through-going Muons in Super-Kamiokande

We present the results of indirect searches for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) with 1679.6 live days of data from the Super-Kamiokande detector using neutrino-induced upward through-going muons. The search is performed by looking for an excess of high energy muon neutrinos from WIMP annihilations in the Sun, the core of the Earth, and the Galactic Center, as compared to the number expected from the atmospheric neutrino background. No statistically significant excess was seen. We calculate flux limits in various angular cones around each of the above celestial objects. We obtain conservative model-independent upper limits on WIMP-nucleon cross-section as a function of WIMP mass and compare these results with the corresponding results from direct dark matter detection experiments.Comment: 10 pages, 14 figures, Submitted to Phys. Rev.

A search for periodic modulations of the solar neutrino flux in Super-Kamiokande-I

A search for periodic modulations of the solar neutrino flux was performed using the Super-Kamiokande-I data taken from May 31st, 1996 to July 15th, 2001. The detector's capability of measuring the exact time of events, combined with a relatively high yield of solar neutrino events, allows a search for short-time variations in the observed flux. We employed the Lomb test to look for periodic modulations of the observed solar neutrino flux. The obtained periodogram is consistent with statistical fluctuation and no significant periodicity was found

Constraints on Neutrino Oscillations Using 1258 Days of Super-Kamiokande Solar Neutrino Data

We report the result of a search for neutrino oscillations using precise measurements of the recoil electron energy spectrum and zenith angle variations of the solar neutrino flux from 1258 days of neutrino-electron scattering data in Super-Kamiokande. The absence of significant zenith angle variation and spectrum distortion places strong constraints on neutrino mixing and mass difference in a flux-independent way. Using the Super-Kamiokande flux measurement in addition, two allowed regions at large mixing are found.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, submitted to PR