scholarly journals Lamina-specific neuronal properties promote robust, stable signal propagation in feedforward networks

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dongqi Han ◽  
Erik De Schutter ◽  
Sungho Hong

AbstractFeedforward networks (FFN) are ubiquitous structures in neural systems and have been studied to understand mechanisms of reliable signal and information transmission. In many FFNs, neurons in one layer have intrinsic properties that are distinct from those in their pre-/postsynaptic layers, but how this affects network-level information processing remains unexplored. Here we show that layer-to-layer heterogeneity arising from lamina-specific cellular properties facilitates signal and information transmission in FFNs. Specifically, we found that signal transformations, made by neighboring layers of neurons on an input-driven spike signal, are complementary to each other. This mechanism boosts information transfer carried by a propagating spike signal, and thereby supports reliable spike signal and information transmission in a deep FFN. Our study suggests that distinct cell types in neural circuits have complementary computational functions and facilitate information processing on the whole.Significance StatementNeural systems have many cell types that differ in properties such as size, shape, cellular mechanisms, etc. Furthermore, neurons often propagate signals to other neurons that have properties very different from their own. We investigated what this phenomenon implies in neural information processing by using computational network models, inspired by a recent experimental study on the olfactory neural pathway of fruit flies. We found that different types of neurons can perform complementary functions in a network, which boosts information transfer on the whole and supports robust, stable signal propagation in a “deep” network with many layers. Our study demonstrates that diverse cell types with different intrinsic properties are crucial for optimal signal and information transfer in neural networks.

2014 ◽  
Vol 111 (10) ◽  
pp. 1949-1959 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan D. Dorval ◽  
Warren M. Grill

Pathophysiological activity of basal ganglia neurons accompanies the motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease. High-frequency (>90 Hz) deep brain stimulation (DBS) reduces parkinsonian symptoms, but the mechanisms remain unclear. We hypothesize that parkinsonism-associated electrophysiological changes constitute an increase in neuronal firing pattern disorder and a concomitant decrease in information transmission through the ventral basal ganglia, and that effective DBS alleviates symptoms by decreasing neuronal disorder while simultaneously increasing information transfer through the same regions. We tested these hypotheses in the freely behaving, 6-hydroxydopamine-lesioned rat model of hemiparkinsonism. Following the onset of parkinsonism, mean neuronal firing rates were unchanged, despite a significant increase in firing pattern disorder (i.e., neuronal entropy), in both the globus pallidus and substantia nigra pars reticulata. This increase in neuronal entropy was reversed by symptom-alleviating DBS. Whereas increases in signal entropy are most commonly indicative of similar increases in information transmission, directed information through both regions was substantially reduced (>70%) following the onset of parkinsonism. Again, this decrease in information transmission was partially reversed by DBS. Together, these results suggest that the parkinsonian basal ganglia are rife with entropic activity and incapable of functional information transmission. Furthermore, they indicate that symptom-alleviating DBS works by lowering the entropic noise floor, enabling more information-rich signal propagation. In this view, the symptoms of parkinsonism may be more a default mode, normally overridden by healthy basal ganglia information. When that information is abolished by parkinsonian pathophysiology, hypokinetic symptoms emerge.


Blood ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 108 (11) ◽  
pp. 646-646
Author(s):  
Yatin M. Vyas ◽  
Jerome Parness ◽  
David Rodeberg ◽  
Winifred Huang

Abstract The Notch pathway regulates adaptive immune responses, yet the temporal development of a specific molecular anatomy underlying the directionality of Notch signaling, central to cell-fate decisions, remains unknown. Using the development of the functional immune synapse (IS) of the human physiological T-helper lymphocyte (Th): Dendritic cell (DC) interaction as our model, we followed the temporal accumulation of Notch signaling components, unprocessed and processed, in the developing ThIS and the apposed DCIS of these cells by 2D and 3D immunofluorescense microscopy. Downstream Notch targets in both cell types were followed, as well. We demonstrate that Th-Notch1 receptor and DC-Notch ligands (Delta-like1, Jagged-1) cluster in their apposed central-supramolecular-activation-clusters (cSMAC), whereas DC-Notch1 receptor and Th-Notch ligands cluster in their apposed peripheral-SMAC in an anti-parallel arrangement to that seen in the cSMAC. The resultant accumulation in both cell types of processed nuclear Notch receptor, its ligands, as well as HES-1 and phosphorylated-STAT3, supports antiparallel, reciprocal Notch signal propagation in the DC-to-Th direction via the cSMAC and Th-to-DC direction via the pSMAC. The imposed asymmetric recruitment of the components of Notch pathway, therefore, provides a novel bi-directional route by which the partnered ThIS and DCIS regulate Notch-mediated immune responses. Our data indicate that terminally differentiated immune cells communicate bidirectionally using unidirectional Notch signaling platforms that are spatially segregated into reciprocally signaling microdomains. Significantly, our observations of bidirectional Notch signaling indicate that the heterologous Th:DC interaction is cooperative, requiring reciprocal information transfer across both cell types to mount an appropriate immune response.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ezekiel Williams ◽  
Alexandre Payeur ◽  
Albert Gidon ◽  
Richard Naud

AbstractThe burst coding hypothesis posits that the occurrence of sudden high-frequency patterns of action potentials constitutes a salient syllable of the neural code. Many neurons, however, do not produce clearly demarcated bursts, an observation invoked to rule out the pervasiveness of this coding scheme across brain areas and cell types. Here we ask how detrimental ambiguous spike patterns, those that are neither clearly bursts nor isolated spikes, are for neuronal information transfer. We addressed this question using information theory and computational simulations. By quantifying how information transmission depends on firing statistics, we found that the information transmitted is not strongly influenced by the presence of clearly demarcated modes in the interspike interval distribution, a feature often used to identify the presence of burst coding. Instead, we found that neurons having unimodal interval distributions were still able to ascribe different meanings to bursts and isolated spikes. In this regime, information transmission depends on dynamical properties of the synapses as well as the length and relative frequency of bursts. Furthermore, we found that common metrics used to quantify burstiness were unable to predict the degree with which bursts could be used to carry information. Our results provide guiding principles for the implementation of coding strategies based on spike-timing patterns, and show that even unimodal firing statistics can be consistent with a bivariate neural code.


2019 ◽  
pp. 90-95
Author(s):  
V. A. Minaev ◽  
I. D. Korolev ◽  
O. A. Kulish ◽  
A. V. Mazin

The existing methods of information delivery to the strategic and tactical management of many government agencies are expensive, not always reliable and efficient. Therefore, quantum cryptographic systems (QCS) have been actively developed in recent years. However, there are problems with the use of the QCS associated with the reliability of information transfer. First, the existing fiber-optic communication channels (FOCC) are not designed to transmit single-photon signals, which leads to the complexity of their cryptographic protection. The second is insufficiently methodically developed calculation of energy losses and errors in the evaluation of the characteristics of information transfer in FOCC QCS. In article the analysis of the energy loss factors in the classical fiber-optic channel is carried out and the additive loss formula is discussed in detail. Then we consider the fiber-optic channel of quantum information transmission with the use of integrated optical devices. The additive formula of optical losses in such a channel is discussed. The features of losses in integrated optical devices are shown. The features of quantum cryptographic system of information transmission are considered. As a result, the model of FOCC QCS taking into account energy losses is presented, which allows competently in theoretical terms and visualize the passage of information through modern quantum cryptographically secure telecommunications while providing control in government structures.


Cancers ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 1627 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anita Thyagarajan ◽  
Mamdouh Salman A. Alshehri ◽  
Kelly L.R. Miller ◽  
Catherine M. Sherwin ◽  
Jeffrey B. Travers ◽  
...  

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) remains a devastating human malignancy with poor prognosis and low survival rates. Several cellular mechanisms have been linked with pancreatic carcinogenesis and also implicated in inducing tumor resistance to known therapeutic regimens. Of various factors, immune evasion mechanisms play critical roles in tumor progression and impeding the efficacy of cancer therapies including PDAC. Among immunosuppressive cell types, myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) have been extensively studied and demonstrated to not only support PDAC development but also hamper the anti-tumor immune responses elicited by therapeutic agents. Notably, recent efforts have been directed in devising novel approaches to target MDSCs to limit their effects. Multiple strategies including immune-based approaches have been explored either alone or in combination with therapeutic agents to target MDSCs in preclinical and clinical settings of PDAC. The current review highlights the roles and mechanisms of MDSCs as well as the implications of this immunomodulatory cell type as a potential target to improve the efficacy of therapeutic regimens for PDAC.


2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 767-781
Author(s):  
Vanessa Pinatto Gaspar ◽  
Anelise Cardoso Ramos ◽  
Philippe Cloutier ◽  
José Renato Pattaro Junior ◽  
Francisco Ferreira Duarte Junior ◽  
...  

KIN (Kin17) protein is overexpressed in a number of cancerous cell lines, and is therefore considered a possible cancer biomarker. It is a well-conserved protein across eukaryotes and is ubiquitously expressed in all cell types studied, suggesting an important role in the maintenance of basic cellular function which is yet to be well determined. Early studies on KIN suggested that this nuclear protein plays a role in cellular mechanisms such as DNA replication and/or repair; however, its association with chromatin depends on its methylation state. In order to provide a better understanding of the cellular role of this protein, we investigated its interactome by proximity-dependent biotin identification coupled to mass spectrometry (BioID-MS), used for identification of protein–protein interactions. Our analyses detected interaction with a novel set of proteins and reinforced previous observations linking KIN to factors involved in RNA processing, notably pre-mRNA splicing and ribosome biogenesis. However, little evidence supports that this protein is directly coupled to DNA replication and/or repair processes, as previously suggested. Furthermore, a novel interaction was observed with PRMT7 (protein arginine methyltransferase 7) and we demonstrated that KIN is modified by this enzyme. This interactome analysis indicates that KIN is associated with several cell metabolism functions, and shows for the first time an association with ribosome biogenesis, suggesting that KIN is likely a moonlight protein.


Entropy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 228
Author(s):  
Sze-Ying Lam ◽  
Alexandre Zénon

Previous investigations concluded that the human brain’s information processing rate remains fundamentally constant, irrespective of task demands. However, their conclusion rested in analyses of simple discrete-choice tasks. The present contribution recasts the question of human information rate within the context of visuomotor tasks, which provides a more ecologically relevant arena, albeit a more complex one. We argue that, while predictable aspects of inputs can be encoded virtually free of charge, real-time information transfer should be identified with the processing of surprises. We formalise this intuition by deriving from first principles a decomposition of the total information shared by inputs and outputs into a feedforward, predictive component and a feedback, error-correcting component. We find that the information measured by the feedback component, a proxy for the brain’s information processing rate, scales with the difficulty of the task at hand, in agreement with cost-benefit models of cognitive effort.


2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 382-397 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anastasia Klimovich-Gray ◽  
Mirjana Bozic ◽  
William D. Marslen-Wilson

The processing of words containing inflectional affixes triggers morphophonological parsing and affix-related grammatical information processing. Increased perceptual complexity related to stem-affix parsing is hypothesized to create predominantly domain-general processing demands, whereas grammatical processing primarily implicates domain-specific linguistic demands. Exploiting the properties of Russian morphology and syntax, we designed an fMRI experiment to separate out the neural systems supporting these two demand types, contrasting inflectional complexity, syntactic (phrasal) complexity, and derivational complexity in three comparisons: (a) increase in parsing demands while controlling for grammatical complexity (inflections vs. phrases), (b) increase in grammatical processing demands, and (c) combined demands of morphophonological parsing and grammatical processing (inflections and phrases vs. derivations). Left inferior frontal and bilateral temporal areas are most active when the two demand types are combined, with inflectional and phrasal complexity contrasting strongly with derivational complexity (which generated only bilateral temporal activity). Increased stem-affix parsing demands alone did not produce unique activations, whereas grammatical structure processing activated bilateral superior and middle temporal areas. Selective left frontotemporal language system engagement for short phrases and inflections seems to be driven by simultaneous and interdependent domain-general and domain-specific processing demands.


2005 ◽  
Vol 17 (10) ◽  
pp. 2139-2175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naoki Masuda ◽  
Brent Doiron ◽  
André Longtin ◽  
Kazuyuki Aihara

Oscillatory and synchronized neural activities are commonly found in the brain, and evidence suggests that many of them are caused by global feedback. Their mechanisms and roles in information processing have been discussed often using purely feedforward networks or recurrent networks with constant inputs. On the other hand, real recurrent neural networks are abundant and continually receive information-rich inputs from the outside environment or other parts of the brain. We examine how feedforward networks of spiking neurons with delayed global feedback process information about temporally changing inputs. We show that the network behavior is more synchronous as well as more correlated with and phase-locked to the stimulus when the stimulus frequency is resonant with the inherent frequency of the neuron or that of the network oscillation generated by the feedback architecture. The two eigenmodes have distinct dynamical characteristics, which are supported by numerical simulations and by analytical arguments based on frequency response and bifurcation theory. This distinction is similar to the class I versus class II classification of single neurons according to the bifurcation from quiescence to periodic firing, and the two modes depend differently on system parameters. These two mechanisms may be associated with different types of information processing.


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