Patches with links: a unified system for processing faces in the macaque temporal lobe

The brain processes objects through a series of regions along the ventral visual pathway, but the circuitry subserving the analysis of specific complex forms remains unknown. One complex form category, faces, selectively activates six patches of cortex in the macaque ventral pathway. To identify the connectivity of these face patches, we used electrical microstimulation combined with simultaneous functional magnetic resonance imaging. Stimulation of each of four targeted face patches produced strong activation, specifically within a subset of the other face patches. Stimulation outside the face patches produced an activation pattern that spared the face patches. These results suggest that the face patches form a strongly and specifically interconnected hierarchical network.     

Cells in temporal cortex of conscious sheep can respond preferentially to the sight of faces

To investigate whether the temporal cortex of a nonprimate species contains cells responsive to the sight of faces, a study was made in conscious sheep of the responses of neurons in this brain region to the sight of faces. Of 561 cells from which responses were recorded, 40 responded preferentially to faces. Different categories of these cells were influenced by dominance (presumably indicated by the presence and size of horns), breed and familiarity, and threatening faces such as those of humans and dogs. These results demonstrate that cells that respond preferentially to faces are present in the temporal cortex of a nonprimate species, and that the responses of these cells are influenced by factors relevant to social interaction.     

Category-specific cortical activity precedes retrieval during memory search

Here we describe a functional magnetic resonance imaging study of humans engaged in memory search during a free recall task. Patterns of cortical activity associated with the study of three categories of pictures (faces, locations, and objects) were identified by a pattern-classification algorithm. The algorithm was used to track the reappearance of these activity patterns during the recall period. The reappearance of a given category's activity pattern correlates with verbal recalls made from that category and precedes the recall event by several seconds. This result is consistent with the hypothesis that category-specific activity is cueing the memory system to retrieve studied items.     

Ventral posterior thalamic neurons differentially responsive to noxious stimulation of the awake monkey

Of 76 cutaneously activated neurons recorded from the ventral posterior thalamus of awake, behaving monkeys, nine were weakly excited by innocuous skin stimulation and responded maximally only when noxious mechanical cutaneous stimuli were delivered within small, contralateral receptive fields. These results show that neurons capable of encoding the spatial and temporal features of noxious stimuli are located in the ventral posterior thalamus of the awake primate.     

Visual receptive fields sensitive to absolute and relative motion during tracking

Some neurons in the visual cortex of awake monkeys visually tracking a moving target showed receptive fields that were excited only by stimulus motion relative to a background, while other neurons responded to any kind of stimulus motion. This result was found with two methods, one in which tracking eye movements were identical in both relative-motion and absolute-motion conditions, and another in which stimulus motions on the retina were identical in both conditions. This response pattern can differentiate translation of the retinal image during eye movement from motion of objects in the world.     

Inhibited and uninhibited infants "grown up": adult amygdalar response to novelty

Infants with an inhibited temperament tend to develop into children who avoid people, objects, and situations that are novel or unfamiliar, whereas uninhibited children spontaneously approach novel persons, objects, and situations. Behavioral and physiological features of these two temperamental categories are moderately stable from infancy into early adolescence and have been hypothesized to be due, in part, to variation in amygdalar responses to novelty. We found that adults who had been categorized in the second year of life as inhibited, compared with those previously categorized as uninhibited, showed greater functional MRI signal response within the amygdala to novel versus familiar faces.     

A cortical area selective for visual processing of the human body

Despite extensive evidence for regions of human visual cortex that respond selectively to faces, few studies have considered the cortical representation of the appearance of the rest of the human body. We present a series of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies revealing substantial evidence for a distinct cortical region in humans that responds selectively to images of the human body, as compared with a wide range of control stimuli. This region was found in the lateral occipitotemporal cortex in all subjects tested and apparently reflects a specialized neural system for the visual perception of the human body.     

Predictive codes for forthcoming perception in the frontal cortex

Incoming sensory information is often ambiguous, and the brain has to make decisions during perception. "Predictive coding" proposes that the brain resolves perceptual ambiguity by anticipating the forthcoming sensory environment, generating a template against which to match observed sensory evidence. We observed a neural representation of predicted perception in the medial frontal cortex, while human subjects decided whether visual objects were faces or not. Moreover, perceptual decisions about faces were associated with an increase in top-down connectivity from the frontal cortex to face-sensitive visual areas, consistent with the matching of predicted and observed evidence for the presence of faces.     

Functional neuroanatomical differences between adults and school-age children in the processing of single words

A critical issue in developmental cognitive neuroscience is the extent to which the functional neuroanatomy underlying task performance differs in adults and children. Direct comparisons of brain activation in the left frontal and extrastriate cortex were made in adults and children (aged 7 to 10 years) performing single-word processing tasks with visual presentation; differences were found in circumscribed frontal and extrastriate regions. Conceivably, these differences could be attributable exclusively to performance discrepancies; alternatively, maturational differences in functional neuroanatomy could exist despite similar performance. Some of the brain regions examined showed differences attributable to age independent of performance, suggesting that maturation of the pattern of regional activations for these tasks is incomplete at age 10.     

农产品电子商务发展水平评价及制约因素分析

农产品电子商务对于乡村振兴战略的顺利推进具有重要作用.通过文献归纳法构建了农产品电子商务发展水平评价指标体系,以2018年中国大陆22个省份、5个直辖市和4个自治区为研究对象,利用基于熵值法的Topsis(Technique for order preference by similarity to ideal sol...     

Contributions of the visual ventral pathway to long-range apparent motion

Objects displaced intermittently across the visual field will nonetheless give an illusion of continuous motion [called apparent motion (AM)] under many common conditions. It is believed that form perception is of minor importance in determining AM, and that AM is mediated by motion-sensitive areas in the "where" pathway of the cortex. However, form and motion typically interact in specific ways when natural objects move through the environment. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure cortical activation to long-range AM, compared to short-range AM and flicker, while we varied stability of structural differences between forms. Long-range AM activated the anterior-temporal lobe in the visual ventral pathway, and the response varied according to the form stability. The results suggest that long-range AM is associated with neural systems for form perception.     

电刺激与化学刺激大鼠腹内侧前额叶对胃运动的影响

[目的]探究大鼠腹内侧前额叶与胃功能活动（主要指胃运动）之间是否存在功能上的联系。[方法]采用胃内放置水囊法记录大鼠胃运动曲线,分别电刺激和化学刺激大鼠左侧腹内侧前额叶皮层（PL和IL）,观察胃运动的频率、平均时程、平均幅度和胃运动指数在刺激前后的变化。[结果]分别电刺激PL和IL两个区域,在刺激持续的5 m in内,大鼠胃运动各项指标与刺激前相比虽有变化但无统计学意义;向PL和IL两个区域内分别注射0.1 mol/L L-G lu 200 nl后,大鼠胃运动各项指标与注射前相比也没有显著性差异。[结论]正常生理状态下,大鼠腹内侧前额叶不参与对胃运动的调节,推测和胃的机能活动之间应该不存在直接的功能联系。     

A cortical region consisting entirely of face-selective cells

Face perception is a skill crucial to primates. In both humans and macaque monkeys, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) reveals a system of cortical regions that show increased blood flow when the subject views images of faces, compared with images of objects. However, the stimulus selectivity of single neurons within these fMRI-identified regions has not been studied. We used fMRI to identify and target the largest face-selective region in two macaques for single-unit recording. Almost all (97%) of the visually responsive neurons in this region were strongly face selective, indicating that a dedicated cortical area exists to support face processing in the macaque.     

Categorical representation of visual stimuli in the primate prefrontal cortex

The ability to group stimuli into meaningful categories is a fundamental cognitive process. To explore its neural basis, we trained monkeys to categorize computer-generated stimuli as "cats" and "dogs." A morphing system was used to systematically vary stimulus shape and precisely define the category boundary. Neural activity in the lateral prefrontal cortex reflected the category of visual stimuli, even when a monkey was retrained with the stimuli assigned to new categories.     

Neural mechanisms of visual attention: how top-down feedback highlights relevant locations

Attention helps us process potentially important objects by selectively increasing the activity of sensory neurons that represent the relevant locations and features of our environment. This selection process requires top-down feedback about what is important in our environment. We investigated how parietal cortical output influences neural activity in early sensory areas. Neural recordings were made simultaneously from the posterior parietal cortex and an earlier area in the visual pathway, the medial temporal area, of macaques performing a visual matching task. When the monkey selectively attended to a location, the timing of activities in the two regions became synchronized, with the parietal cortex leading the medial temporal area. Parietal neurons may thus selectively increase activity in earlier sensory areas to enable focused spatial attention.     

Functional MRI of macaque monkeys performing a cognitive set-shifting task

Functional brain organization of macaque monkeys and humans was directly compared by functional magnetic resonance imaging. Subjects of both species performed a modified Wisconsin Card Sorting Test that required behavioral flexibility in the form of cognitive set shifting. Equivalent visual stimuli and task sequence were used for the two species. We found transient activation related to cognitive set shifting in focal regions of prefrontal cortex in both monkeys and humans. These functional homologs were located in cytoarchitectonically equivalent regions in the posterior part of ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. This comparative imaging provides insights into the evolution of cognition in primates.     

Auditory cortex of squirrel monkey: response patterns of single cells to species-specific vocalizations

Most of the neurons tested in the superior temporal cortex of awake squirrel monkeys responded to recorded species-specific vocalizations. Some cells responded with temporally complex patterns to many vocalizations. Other cells responded with simpler patterns to only one call. Most cells lay between these two extremes. On-line deletion of parts of a vocalization revealed the role of temporal interactions in determining the nature of some responses.     

Functional specialization in rhesus monkey auditory cortex

Neurons in the lateral belt areas of rhesus monkey auditory cortex prefer complex sounds to pure tones, but functional specializations of these multiple maps in the superior temporal region have not been determined. We tested the specificity of neurons in the lateral belt with species-specific communication calls presented at different azimuth positions. We found that neurons in the anterior belt are more selective for the type of call, whereas neurons in the caudal belt consistently show the greatest spatial selectivity. These results suggest that cortical processing of auditory spatial and pattern information is performed in specialized streams rather than one homogeneously distributed system.     

乌鲁木齐市公园和广场道路铺装现状调查与研究

公园和广场道路的铺装作为与人的视线相接触最为频繁的界面,在景观设计中占有重要的地位。以乌鲁木齐市有代表性的公园和广场道路为研究对象,就道路铺装材料种类、颜色、图案及使用频率等内容进行调查和研究,结果表明:乌鲁木齐市公园和广场道路铺装已使用铺装材料共15大类,花岗岩使用频率占52.3%,居第一位,现浇混凝土居第二位,占10.8%,彩色透气透水砖居第三位,占8.5%;铺装颜色共有7大类,其中灰色类使用频率最高,为48.0%,其次是红色类,为43.0%,其它几类使用频率明显减少;铺装中有图案的占35.8%,几何形图案占总图案90%,而文字图案、动物图案并列第二,分别占4%,宗教类图案占2%,仅为几何类图案的1/45。同时,针对调查内容进行探讨,并提出相关建设建议。     

Fast readout of object identity from macaque inferior temporal cortex

Understanding the brain computations leading to object recognition requires quantitative characterization of the information represented in inferior temporal (IT) cortex. We used a biologically plausible, classifier-based readout technique to investigate the neural coding of selectivity and invariance at the IT population level. The activity of small neuronal populations (approximately 100 randomly selected cells) over very short time intervals (as small as 12.5 milliseconds) contained unexpectedly accurate and robust information about both object "identity" and "category." This information generalized over a range of object positions and scales, even for novel objects. Coarse information about position and scale could also be read out from the same population.