1,072 research outputs found
A statistical model for brain networks inferred from large-scale electrophysiological signals
Network science has been extensively developed to characterize structural
properties of complex systems, including brain networks inferred from
neuroimaging data. As a result of the inference process, networks estimated
from experimentally obtained biological data, represent one instance of a
larger number of realizations with similar intrinsic topology. A modeling
approach is therefore needed to support statistical inference on the bottom-up
local connectivity mechanisms influencing the formation of the estimated brain
networks. We adopted a statistical model based on exponential random graphs
(ERGM) to reproduce brain networks, or connectomes, estimated by spectral
coherence between high-density electroencephalographic (EEG) signals. We
validated this approach in a dataset of 108 healthy subjects during eyes-open
(EO) and eyes-closed (EC) resting-state conditions. Results showed that the
tendency to form triangles and stars, reflecting clustering and node
centrality, better explained the global properties of the EEG connectomes as
compared to other combinations of graph metrics. Synthetic networks generated
by this model configuration replicated the characteristic differences found in
brain networks, with EO eliciting significantly higher segregation in the alpha
frequency band (8-13 Hz) as compared to EC. Furthermore, the fitted ERGM
parameter values provided complementary information showing that clustering
connections are significantly more represented from EC to EO in the alpha
range, but also in the beta band (14-29 Hz), which is known to play a crucial
role in cortical processing of visual input and externally oriented attention.
These findings support the current view of the brain functional segregation and
integration in terms of modules and hubs, and provide a statistical approach to
extract new information on the (re)organizational mechanisms in healthy and
diseased brains.Comment: Due to the limitation "The abstract field cannot be longer than 1,920
characters", the abstract appearing here is slightly shorter than that in the
PDF fil
Geometrically protected triple-point crossings in an optical lattice
We show how to realize topologically protected crossings of three energy
bands, integer-spin analogs of Weyl fermions, in three-dimensional optical
lattices. Our proposal only involves ultracold atom techniques that have
already been experimentally demonstrated and leads to isolated triple-point
crossings (TPCs) which are required to exist by a novel combination of lattice
symmetries. The symmetries also allow for a new type of topological object, the
type-II, or tilted, TPC. Our Rapid Communication shows that spin-1 Weyl points,
which have not yet been observed in the bandstructure of crystals, are within
reach of ultracold atom experiments.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures + 3 pages, 3 figures supplemental material. Added
appendix on model symmetries, fixed typos and added references. This is the
final, published versio
Graph analysis of functional brain networks: practical issues in translational neuroscience
The brain can be regarded as a network: a connected system where nodes, or
units, represent different specialized regions and links, or connections,
represent communication pathways. From a functional perspective communication
is coded by temporal dependence between the activities of different brain
areas. In the last decade, the abstract representation of the brain as a graph
has allowed to visualize functional brain networks and describe their
non-trivial topological properties in a compact and objective way. Nowadays,
the use of graph analysis in translational neuroscience has become essential to
quantify brain dysfunctions in terms of aberrant reconfiguration of functional
brain networks. Despite its evident impact, graph analysis of functional brain
networks is not a simple toolbox that can be blindly applied to brain signals.
On the one hand, it requires a know-how of all the methodological steps of the
processing pipeline that manipulates the input brain signals and extract the
functional network properties. On the other hand, a knowledge of the neural
phenomenon under study is required to perform physiological-relevant analysis.
The aim of this review is to provide practical indications to make sense of
brain network analysis and contrast counterproductive attitudes
Multicomponent spin mixtures of two-electron fermions
These lecture notes contain an introduction to the physics of quantum
mixtures of ultracold atoms trapped in multiple internal states. I will discuss
the case of fermionic isotopes of alkaline-earth atoms, which feature an
intrinsic SU() interaction symmetry and convenient methods for the optical
manipulation of their nuclear spin. Some research directions will be presented,
with focus on experiments performed in Florence with nuclear-spin mixtures of
Yb atoms in optical lattices.Comment: 33 pages, 13 figures, Lecture notes for the Proceedings of the
International School of Physics "Enrico Fermi" Course 211 "Quantum Mixtures
with Ultra-Cold Atoms" (Varenna, Italy, 2022
Human brain distinctiveness based on EEG spectral coherence connectivity
The use of EEG biometrics, for the purpose of automatic people recognition,
has received increasing attention in the recent years. Most of current analysis
rely on the extraction of features characterizing the activity of single brain
regions, like power-spectrum estimates, thus neglecting possible temporal
dependencies between the generated EEG signals. However, important
physiological information can be extracted from the way different brain regions
are functionally coupled. In this study, we propose a novel approach that fuses
spectral coherencebased connectivity between different brain regions as a
possibly viable biometric feature. The proposed approach is tested on a large
dataset of subjects (N=108) during eyes-closed (EC) and eyes-open (EO) resting
state conditions. The obtained recognition performances show that using brain
connectivity leads to higher distinctiveness with respect to power-spectrum
measurements, in both the experimental conditions. Notably, a 100% recognition
accuracy is obtained in EC and EO when integrating functional connectivity
between regions in the frontal lobe, while a lower 97.41% is obtained in EC
(96.26% in EO) when fusing power spectrum information from centro-parietal
regions. Taken together, these results suggest that functional connectivity
patterns represent effective features for improving EEG-based biometric
systems.Comment: Key words: EEG, Resting state, Biometrics, Spectral coherence, Match
score fusio
Multi-band spectroscopy of inhomogeneous Mott-insulator states of ultracold bosons
In this work, we use inelastic scattering of light to study the response of
inhomogeneous Mott-insulator gases to external excitations. The experimental
setup and procedure to probe the atomic Mott states are presented in detail. We
discuss the link between the energy absorbed by the gases and accessible
experimental parameters as well as the linearity of the response to the
scattering of light. We investigate the excitations of the system in multiple
energy bands and a band-mapping technique allows us to identify band and
momentum of the excited atoms. In addition the momentum distribution in the
Mott states which is spread over the entire first Brillouin zone enables us to
reconstruct the dispersion relation in the high energy bands using a single
Bragg excitation with a fixed momentum transfer.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figure
Non-parametric resampling of random walks for spectral network clustering
Parametric resampling schemes have been recently introduced in complex
network analysis with the aim of assessing the statistical significance of
graph clustering and the robustness of community partitions. We propose here a
method to replicate structural features of complex networks based on the
non-parametric resampling of the transition matrix associated with an unbiased
random walk on the graph. We test this bootstrapping technique on synthetic and
real-world modular networks and we show that the ensemble of replicates
obtained through resampling can be used to improve the performance of standard
spectral algorithms for community detection.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure
Localization of cold atoms in state-dependent optical lattices via a Rabi pulse
We propose a novel realization of Anderson localization in non-equilibrium
states of ultracold atoms trapped in state-dependent optical lattices. The
disorder potential leading to localization is generated with a Rabi pulse
transfering a fraction of the atoms into a different internal state for which
tunneling between lattice sites is suppressed. Atoms with zero tunneling create
a quantum superposition of different random potentials, localizing the mobile
atoms. We investigate the dynamics of the mobile atoms after the Rabi pulse for
non-interacting and weakly interacting bosons, and we show that the evolved
wavefunction attains a quasi-stationary profile with exponentially decaying
tails, characteristic of Anderson localization. The localization length is seen
to increase with increasing disorder and interaction strength, oppositely to
what is expected for equilibrium localization.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Majorana Quasi-Particles Protected by Angular Momentum Conservation
We show how angular momentum conservation can stabilise a symmetry-protected
quasi-topological phase of matter supporting Majorana quasi-particles as edge
modes in one-dimensional cold atom gases. We investigate a number-conserving
four-species Hubbard model in the presence of spin-orbit coupling. The latter
reduces the global spin symmetry to an angular momentum parity symmetry, which
provides an extremely robust protection mechanism that does not rely on any
coupling to additional reservoirs. The emergence of Majorana edge modes is
elucidated using field theory techniques, and corroborated by
density-matrix-renormalization-group simulations. Our results pave the way
toward the observation of Majorana edge modes with alkaline-earth-like fermions
in optical lattices, where all basic ingredients for our recipe - spin-orbit
coupling and strong inter-orbital interactions - have been experimentally
realized over the last two years.Comment: 12 pages (6 + 6 supplementary material
Matter-wave localization in a random potential
By numerical and variational solution of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation, we
studied the localization of a noninteracting and weakly-interacting
Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) in a disordered cold atom lattice and a speckle
potential. In the case of a single BEC fragment, the variational analysis
produced good results. For a weakly disordered potential, the localized BECs
are found to have an exponential tail as in weak Anderson localization. We also
investigated the expansion of a noninteracting BEC in these potential. We find
that the BEC will be locked in an appropriate localized state after an initial
expansion and will execute breathing oscillation around a mean shape when a BEC
at equilibrium in a harmonic trap is suddenly released into a disorder
potential
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