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From pupil to the brain : new insights for studying cortical plasticity through pupillometry
Full text linkPupil size variations have been associated with changes in brain activity patterns related with specific cognitive factors, such as arousal, attention, and mental effort. The locus coeruleus (LC), a key hub in the noradrenergic system of the brain, is considered to be a key regulator of cognitive control on pupil size, with changes in pupil diameter corresponding to the release of norepinephrine (NE). Advances in eye-tracking technology and open-source software have facilitated accurate pupil size measurement in various experimental settings, leading to increased interest in using pupillometry to track the nervous system activation state and as a potential biomarker for brain disorders. This review explores pupillometry as a non-invasive and fully translational tool for studying cortical plasticity starting from recent literature suggesting that pupillometry could be a promising technique for estimating the degree of residual plasticity in human subjects. Given that NE is known to be a critical mediator of cortical plasticity and arousal, the review includes data revealing the importance of the LC-NE system in modulating brain plasticity and pupil size. Finally, we will review data suggesting that pupillometry could provide a quantitative and complementary measure of cortical plasticity also in preclinical studies
3D printable device for automated operant conditioning in the mouse
Full text linkOperant conditioning is a classical paradigm and a standard technique used in experimental psychology in which animals learn to perform an action in order to achieve a reward. By using this paradigm, it is possible to extract learning curves and measure accurately reaction times. Both these measurements are proxy of cognitive capabilities and can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of therapeutic interventions in mouse models of disease. Here we describe a fully 3D printable device that is able to perform operant conditioning on freely moving mice, while performing real-time tracking of the animal position. We successfully trained 6 mice, showing stereotyped learning curves that are highly reproducible across mice and reaching more than 70% of accuracy after two days of conditioning. Different products for operant conditioning are commercially available, though most of them do not provide customizable features and are relatively expensive. This data demonstrate that this system is a valuable alternative to available state-of-the-art commercial devices, representing a good balance between performance, cost, and versatility in its use.Significance Statement 3D printing is a revolutionary technology that combines cost-effectiveness with an optimal trade off between standardization and customization. Here we show a device that performs operant conditioning in mice using largely 3D printed parts. This tool can be employed to test learning and memory in models of disease. We expect that the open design of the chamber will be useful for scientific teaching and research as well as for further improvements from the open hardware community
Focal Stroke in the Developing Rat Motor Cortex Induces Age- and Experience-Dependent Maladaptive Plasticity of Corticospinal System
Full text linkMotor system development is characterized by an activity-dependent competition between ipsilateral and contralateral corticospinal tracts (CST). Clinical evidence suggests that age is crucial for developmental stroke outcome, with early lesions inducing a "maladaptive" strengthening of ipsilateral projections from the healthy hemisphere and worse motor impairment. Here, we investigated in developing rats the relation between lesion timing, motor outcome and CST remodeling pattern. We induced a focal ischemia into forelimb motor cortex (fM1) at two distinct pre-weaning ages: P14 and P21. We compared long-term motor outcome with changes in axonal sprouting of contralesional CST at red nucleus and spinal cord level using anterograde tracing. We found that P14 stroke caused a more severe long-term motor impairment than at P21, and induced a strong and aberrant contralesional CST sprouting onto denervated spinal cord and red nucleus. The mistargeted sprouting of CST, and the worse motor outcome of the P14 stroke rats were reversed by an early skilled motor training, underscoring the potential of early activity-dependent plasticity in modulating lesion outcome. Thus, changes in the mechanisms controlling CST plasticity occurring during the third postnatal week are associated with age-dependent regulation of the motor outcome after stroke
Predicting visual stimuli from cortical response recorded with widefield imaging in a mouse
No full textOptic nerve stimulation holds great potential for visual prostheses. Its effectiveness depends on the stimulation protocol, which can be optimized to achieve cortical activation similar to that evoked in response to visual stimuli. To identify a target cortical activation, it is necessary to characterize the cortical response. We here propose a convolutional neural network (CNN) to do it exploiting widefield calcium brain images, which allow large-scale visualization of cortical activity with high signal-to-noise ratio. A mouse was presented with 10 different visual stimuli, and the activity from its primary visual cortex (V1) was recorded. The CNN was trained to predict the visual stimulus, with an accuracy of 78.46%+/- 3.31% on the test set, showing it is possible to automatically detect what is present in the visual field of the animal
Convolutional neural network classifies visual stimuli from cortical response recorded with wide-field imaging in mice
Full text link: ObjectiveThe optic nerve is a good location for a visual neuroprosthesis. It can be targeted when a subject cannot receive a retinal prosthesis and it is less invasive than a cortical implant. The effectiveness of an electrical neuroprosthesis depends on the combination of the stimulation parameters which must be optimized, and an optimization strategy might be performing closed-loop stimulation using the evoked cortical response as feedback. However, it is necessary to identify target cortical activation patterns and to associate the cortical activity with the visual stimuli present in the visual field of the subjects. Visual stimuli decoding should be performed on large areas of the visual cortex, and with a method as translational as possible to shift the study to human subjects in the future. The aim of this work is to develop an algorithm that meets these requirements and can be leveraged to automatically associate a cortical activation pattern with the visual stimulus that generated it.ApproachThree mice were presented with 10 different visual stimuli, and their primary visual cortex response was recorded using wide-field calcium imaging. Our decoding algorithm relies on a convolutional neural network (CNN), trained to classify the visual stimuli from the correspondent wide-field images. Several experiments were performed to identify the best training strategy and investigate the possibility of generalization.Main resultsThe best classification accuracy was 75.38%±4.77%, obtained pre-training the CNN on the MNIST digits dataset and fine-tuning it on our dataset. Generalization was possible pre-training the CNN to classify Mouse 1 dataset and fine-tuning it on Mouse 2 and Mouse 3, with accuracies of 64.14%±10.81% and 51.53%±6.48% respectively.SignificanceThe combination of wide-field calcium imaging and CNNs can be used to classify the cortical responses to simple visual stimuli and might be a viable alternative to existing decoding methodologies. It also allows us to consider the cortical activation as reliable feedback in future optic nerve stimulation experiments
Tha amplitude of fNIRS hemodynamic response in the visual cortex unmasks autistic traits in typically developing children
No full textPredicting Visual Stimuli From Cortical Response Recorded With Wide-Field Imaging in a Mouse
No full textNeural decoding of the visual system is a subject of research interest, both to understand how the visual system works and to be able to use this knowledge in areas, such as computer vision or brain-computer interfaces. Spike-based decoding is often used, but it is difficult to record data from the whole visual cortex, and it requires proper preprocessing. We here propose a decoding method that combines wide-field calcium brain imaging, which allows us to obtain large-scale visualization of cortical activity with a high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and convolutional neural networks (CNNs). A mouse was presented with ten different visual stimuli, and the activity from its primary visual cortex (V1) was recorded. A CNN we designed was then compared with other existing commonly used CNNs, that were trained to classify the visual stimuli from wide-field calcium imaging images, obtaining a weighted F1 score of more than 0.70 on the test set, showing it is possible to automatically detect what is present in the visual field of the animal.TN
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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