Functional Properties of Grasping-Related Neurons in the Ventral Premotor Area F5 of the Macaque Monkey

2006 ◽  
Vol 95 (2) ◽  
pp. 709-729 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vassilis Raos ◽  
Maria-Alessandra Umiltá ◽  
Akira Murata ◽  
Leonardo Fogassi ◽  
Vittorio Gallese

We investigated the motor and visual properties of F5 grasping neurons, using a controlled paradigm that allows the study of the neuronal discharge during both observation and grasping of many different three-dimensional objects with and without visual guidance. All neurons displayed a preference for grasping of an object or a set of objects. The same preference was maintained when grasping was performed in the dark without visual feedback. In addition to the motor-related discharge, about half of the neurons also responded to the presentation of an object or a set of objects, even when a grasping movement was not required. Often the object evoking the strongest activity during grasping also evoked optimal activity during its visual presentation. Hierarchical cluster analysis indicated that the selectivity of both the motor and the visual discharge of the F5 neurons is determined not by the object shape but by the grip posture used to grasp the object. Because the same paradigm has been used to study the properties of hand-grasping neurons in the dorsal premotor area F2, and in the anterior intraparietal area (AIP), a comparison of the functional properties of grasping-related neurons in the three cortical areas (F5, F2, AIP) is addressed for the first time.

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan A. Barceló ◽  
Oriol Vicente

<p>For years, artists have collaborated with archaeologists in order to “reconstruct” all those ancient things not preserved in the archaeological record, and they have provided archaeologists with artistic depictions of the past. Regrettably, modern “computer visualizations” do not modify this attitude. There are thousands of “computer reconstructions” of ancient monuments and prehistoric objects available today, but most of them are absolutely useless. Alternatively, we propose a different approach where computer visualization is defined as the automatic logical deduction of visual properties of three-dimensional objects instrumentally acquired. A general framework inspired in modern artificial intelligence is here proponed.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anastasia Alekseevna Shagalova ◽  
Tatyana Nikolaevna Tomchinskaya

This article analyzes the problems of the development of spatial thinking of students in the development of the discipline "Descriptive geometry", solving projection problems and proposes their solution using the technology of augmented reality. The concept and technology of augmented reality, tracking technologies are considered. The substantiation of the relevance and timeliness of its use to support educational processes is given. The article explores the use of augmented reality technologies in teaching students' spatial thinking, which saves time on the transfer and assimilation of information received by students within the framework of this discipline. The analysis of existing research in the field of application of augmented reality technology in teaching the discipline "Descriptive geometry" is carried out. The possibility of using augmented reality technology in education for the purpose of visual presentation of educational material is shown. A project for the development of a mobile AR application for visualizing the tasks of a textbook on descriptive geometry based on the Vuforia platform is considered. The proposed software product is implemented on a mobile platform with the Android operating system. When developing software, the C # programming language is used to write scripts to implement the required functionality, in particular, interactive interaction with three-dimensional objects.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhaochong Cai ◽  
Liang Zhu ◽  
Mengqi Wang ◽  
Anna Wang Roe ◽  
Wang Xi ◽  
...  

AbstractVasculature architecture in the brain can provide revealing information about mental and neurological function and disease. Fluorescence imaging in the second near-infrared (NIR-II) regime with less light scattering is a more promising method for detecting cortical vessels than traditional visible and NIR-I modes. Here, for the first time, we developed, NIR-II fluorescence microscopy capabilities for imaging brain vasculature in macaque monkey. The first is a wide-field microscope with high temporal resolution (25 frames/second) for measuring blood flow velocity and cardiac impulse period, and the second is a high spatial resolution (<10 μm) confocal microscope producing three-dimensional maps of the cortical microvascular network (∼500 μm deep). Both were designed with flexibility to image various cortical locations on the head. Use of a clinically approved dye provided high brightness in NIR-II region. This comprises an important advance towards studies of neurovascular coupling, stroke, and other diseases relevant to neurovascular health in humans.


Algorithms ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 72
Author(s):  
Luca Tonti ◽  
Alessandro Patti

Collision between rigid three-dimensional objects is a very common modelling problem in a wide spectrum of scientific disciplines, including Computer Science and Physics. It spans from realistic animation of polyhedral shapes for computer vision to the description of thermodynamic and dynamic properties in simple and complex fluids. For instance, colloidal particles of especially exotic shapes are commonly modelled as hard-core objects, whose collision test is key to correctly determine their phase and aggregation behaviour. In this work, we propose the Oriented Cuboid Sphere Intersection (OCSI) algorithm to detect collisions between prolate or oblate cuboids and spheres. We investigate OCSI’s performance by bench-marking it against a number of algorithms commonly employed in computer graphics and colloidal science: Quick Rejection First (QRI), Quick Rejection Intertwined (QRF) and a vectorized version of the OBB-sphere collision detection algorithm that explicitly uses SIMD Streaming Extension (SSE) intrinsics, here referred to as SSE-intr. We observed that QRI and QRF significantly depend on the specific cuboid anisotropy and sphere radius, while SSE-intr and OCSI maintain their speed independently of the objects’ geometry. While OCSI and SSE-intr, both based on SIMD parallelization, show excellent and very similar performance, the former provides a more accessible coding and user-friendly implementation as it exploits OpenMP directives for automatic vectorization.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Luo ◽  
Yuma Nakamura ◽  
Jinseon Park ◽  
Mina Yoon

AbstractRecent experiments identified Co3Sn2S2 as the first magnetic Weyl semimetal (MWSM). Using first-principles calculation with a global optimization approach, we explore the structural stabilities and topological electronic properties of cobalt (Co)-based shandite and alloys, Co3MM’X2 (M/M’ = Ge, Sn, Pb, X = S, Se, Te), and identify stable structures with different Weyl phases. Using a tight-binding model, for the first time, we reveal that the physical origin of the nodal lines of a Co-based shandite structure is the interlayer coupling between Co atoms in different Kagome layers, while the number of Weyl points and their types are mainly governed by the interaction between Co and the metal atoms, Sn, Ge, and Pb. The Co3SnPbS2 alloy exhibits two distinguished topological phases, depending on the relative positions of the Sn and Pb atoms: a three-dimensional quantum anomalous Hall metal, and a MWSM phase with anomalous Hall conductivity (~1290 Ω−1 cm−1) that is larger than that of Co2Sn2S2. Our work reveals the physical mechanism of the origination of Weyl fermions in Co-based shandite structures and proposes topological quantum states with high thermal stability.


2020 ◽  
Vol 501 (1) ◽  
pp. L71-L75
Author(s):  
Cornelius Rampf ◽  
Oliver Hahn

ABSTRACT Perturbation theory is an indispensable tool for studying the cosmic large-scale structure, and establishing its limits is therefore of utmost importance. One crucial limitation of perturbation theory is shell-crossing, which is the instance when cold-dark-matter trajectories intersect for the first time. We investigate Lagrangian perturbation theory (LPT) at very high orders in the vicinity of the first shell-crossing for random initial data in a realistic three-dimensional Universe. For this, we have numerically implemented the all-order recursion relations for the matter trajectories, from which the convergence of the LPT series at shell-crossing is established. Convergence studies performed at large orders reveal the nature of the convergence-limiting singularities. These singularities are not the well-known density singularities at shell-crossing but occur at later times when LPT already ceased to provide physically meaningful results.


i-Perception ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 204166952098231
Author(s):  
Masakazu Ohara ◽  
Juno Kim ◽  
Kowa Koida

Perceiving the shape of three-dimensional objects is essential for interacting with them in daily life. If objects are constructed from different materials, can the human visual system accurately estimate their three-dimensional shape? We varied the thickness, motion, opacity, and specularity of globally convex objects rendered in a photorealistic environment. These objects were presented under either dynamic or static viewing condition. Observers rated the overall convexity of these objects along the depth axis. Our results show that observers perceived solid transparent objects as flatter than the same objects rendered with opaque reflectance properties. Regional variation in local root-mean-square image contrast was shown to provide information that is predictive of perceived surface convexity.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 1670
Author(s):  
Tetsuya Mimura ◽  
Shinpei Okawa ◽  
Hiroshi Kawaguchi ◽  
Yukari Tanikawa ◽  
Yoko Hoshi

Thyroid cancer is usually diagnosed by ultrasound imaging and fine-needle aspiration biopsy. However, diagnosis of follicular thyroid carcinomas (FTC) is difficult because FTC lacks nuclear atypia and a consensus on histological interpretation. Diffuse optical tomography (DOT) offers the potential to diagnose FTC because it can measure tumor hypoxia, while image reconstruction of the thyroid is still challenging mainly due to the complex anatomical features of the neck. In this study, we attempted to solve this issue by creating a finite element model of the human neck excluding the trachea (a void region). By reconstruction of the absorption coefficients at three wavelengths, 3D tissue oxygen saturation maps of the human thyroid are obtained for the first time by DOT.


2021 ◽  
Vol 87 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Kim ◽  
R. Jorge ◽  
W. Dorland

A simplified analytical form of the on-axis magnetic well and Mercier's criterion for interchange instabilities for arbitrary three-dimensional magnetic field geometries is derived. For this purpose, a near-axis expansion based on a direct coordinate approach is used by expressing the toroidal magnetic flux in terms of powers of the radial distance to the magnetic axis. For the first time, the magnetic well and Mercier's criterion are then written as a one-dimensional integral with respect to the axis arclength. When compared with the original work of Mercier, the derivation here is presented using modern notation and in a more streamlined manner that highlights essential steps. Finally, these expressions are verified numerically using several quasisymmetric and non-quasisymmetric stellarator configurations including Wendelstein 7-X.


1998 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 570-570
Author(s):  
Johan Holmberg ◽  
Lennart Lindegren ◽  
Chris Flynn

We use the Hipparcos survey to derive an improved model of the local galactic structure. The availability of parallaxes for all the stars permits direct determination of stellar distributions, eliminating the basic indeterminacy of classical methods based on star counts. Hipparcos gives for the first time a truly three-dimensional view of the solar vicinity, and a complete, homogeneous and highly accurate set of magnitudes and colours. This means that new techniques can be applied in the treatment of the data which place strong constraints on a model that tries to describe the local Galactic structure. Here we investigate how well a static model of low complexitycan describe the Hipparcos observations. The interpretation of the Hipparcos data is complicated by various observational errors and selection effects that are hard to treat correctly. We do not try to correct the data, but instead use a model and subject this model to the same observational errors and selection effects. A model catalogue is created that can be compared with the observed catalogue directly in the observational domain, thereby eliminating the effects from various biases. Many features in the HR diagram are for the first time seen in field stars thanks to Hipparcos, such as the slanted red giant clump, previously seen in rich old open clusters such as Berkeley 18. This and other features ofthe observed HR diagram are well reproduced by the model thanks to the rather detailed modelling of the joint Mv/B — V distribution. Actually, separate distributions were derived for the three different components, disk, thick disk and halo, using the kinematic characteristics of the components to discriminate between them.


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