Upper limits of auditory rotational motion perception

Three experiments are reported, which investigated the auditory velocity thresholds beyond which listeners are no longer able to perceptually resolve a smooth circular trajectory. These thresholds were measured for band-limited noises, white noise, and harmonic sounds (HS), and in different acoustical environments. Experiments 1 and 2 were conducted in an acoustically dry laboratory. Observed thresholds varied as a function of stimulus type and spectral content. Thresholds for band-limited noises were unaffected by center frequency and equal to that of white noise. For HS, however, thresholds decreased as the fundamental frequency of the stimulus increased. The third experiment was a replication of the second in a reverberant concert hall, which produced qualitatively similar results except that thresholds were significantly higher than in the acoustically dry laboratory.     

A model of illusory motion perception in still figures

A potential model to explain the phenomenon of illusory motion perception in still figures is proposed. By considering the isotropic spatial filtering process with time varying factor and visual reset, almost all of the features of this illusion can be simulated successfully as a physical system. It is considered that the system composed of an isotropic spatial filter and the visual reset is physiologically plausible and a similar mechanism is expected in the human visual system; the proposed model can provide new insights that can contribute to revealing the mechanism of the illusion and to elucidating the human visual system.     

Ventral and dorsal streams processing visual motion perception (FDG-PET study)

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Earlier functional imaging studies on visually induced self-motion perception (vection) disclosed a bilateral network of activations within primary and secondary visual cortex areas which was combined with signal decreases, i.e., deactivations, in multisensory vestibular cortex areas. This finding led to the concept of a reciprocal inhibitory interaction between the visual and vestibular systems. In order to define areas involved in special aspects of selfmotion perception such as intensity and duration of the perceived circular vection (CV) or the amount of head tilt, correlation analyses of the regional cerebral glucose metabolism, rCGM (measured by fluorodeoxyglucose positron-emission tomography, FDG-PET) and these perceptual covariates were performed in 14 healthy volunteers. For analyses of the visualvestibular interaction, the CV data were compared to a random dot motion stimulation condition (not inducing vection) and a control group at rest (no stimulation at all). RESULTS: Group subtraction analyses showed that the visual-vestibular interaction was modified during CV, i.e., the activations within the cerebellar vermis and parieto-occipital areas were enhanced. The correlation analysis between the rCGM and the intensity of visually induced vection, experienced as body tilt, showed a relationship for areas of the multisensory vestibular cortical network (inferior parietal lobule bilaterally, anterior cingulate gyrus), the medial parieto-occipital cortex, the frontal eye fields and the cerebellar vermis. The "earlier" multisensory vestibular areas like the parieto-insular vestibular cortex and the superior temporal gyrus did not appear in the latter analysis. The duration of perceived vection after stimulus stop was positively correlated with rCGM in medial temporal lobe areas bilaterally, which included the (para-)hippocampus, known to be involved in various aspects of memory processing. The amount of head tilt was found to be positively correlated with the rCGM of bilateral basal ganglia regions responsible for the control of motor function of the head. CONCLUSIONS: Our data gave further insights into subfunctions within the complex cortical network involved in the processing of visual-vestibular interaction during CV. Specific areas of this cortical network could be attributed to the ventral stream ("what" pathway) responsible for the duration after stimulus stop and to the dorsal stream ("where/how" pathway) responsible for intensity aspects.     

Ventral and dorsal streams processing visual motion perception (FDG-PET study)

Background

Cullin ubiquitin ligases are activated via the covalent modification of Cullins by the small ubiquitin-like protein nedd8 in a process called neddylation. Genetic mutations of cullin-4b (cul4b) cause a prevalent type of X-linked intellectual disability (XLID) in males, but the physiological function of Cul4B in neuronal cells remains unclear.

Results

There are three major isoforms of Cul4B (1, 2, and 3) in human and rodent tissues. By examining the endogenous Cul4B isoforms in the brain, this study demonstrates that Cul4B-1 and Cul4B-2 isoforms are unneddylated and more abundant in the brain whereas the lesser species Cul4B-3 that misses the N-terminus present in the other two isoforms is neddylated. The data suggest that the N-terminus of Cul4B inhibits neddylation in the larger isoforms. Immunostaining of human NT-2 cells also shows that most Cul4B is unneddylated, especially when it is localized in the process in G0-synchronized cells. This study demonstrates that Cul4B accumulates during mitosis and downregulation of Cul4B arrests NPCs and NT-2 cells in the G2/M phase of the cell cycle. In both human and rodent brain tissues, Cul4B-positive cells accumulate ??-catenin in the dentate subgranular zone and the subventricular zone. These Cul4B-positive cells also co-express the MPM-2 mitotic epitope, suggesting that Cul4B is also necessary for mitosis progression in vivo.

Conclusions

This study provides first evidence that unneddylated Cul4B isoforms exist in the brain and are necessary for mitosis progression in NPCs. The data suggest that unneddylated Cul4B isoforms specifically inhibits ??-catenin degradation during mitosis. Furthermore, unneddylated Cul4B may play a role in addition to cell cycle since it is exclusively localized to the processes in starved NT-2 cells. Further analyses of the different isoforms of Cul4B will help understand the cognitive deficits in Cul4B-linked XLID and give insights into drug and biomarker discoveries.     

With occlusion by proximal surfaces,even without self-occlusion,continuously appearing and disappearing parts bring volume perception from motion

Volume perception, that is, perception of a partially enclosed space filled with a medium, can be assessed not only from binocular viewing but also from motion. It was demonstrated that appearing and disappearing parts, which were generated by self-occlusion, play an essential role in volume perception from motion. In this study, we investigated volume perception in partially visible cylindrical and polyhedral objects occluded by proximal surfaces, and found that the ADPs bring volume perception not only in the cylindrical object but also in the polyhedral object, which appears to correspond to BURs for volume perception in binocular viewing.     

Collective motion from various aspects

Three methods to describe collective motion, the Random Phase Approximation (RPA), Wigner Function Moments (WFM), and Green’s Function (GF) methods, are compared in detail and their physical content analyzed in the example of a simple model, a harmonic oscillator with quadrupole-quadrupole residual interaction. It is shown that they give identical formulae for eigenfrequencies and transition probabilities of all collective excitations of the model. The exact relation between the RPA and WFM variables and the respective dynamical equations is established. The transformation of the RPA spectrum into one of WFM is explained. The very close connection of the WFM method with the GF method is demonstrated. A differential equation describing the current lines of RPA modes is established and the current lines of the scissors mode are analyzed as a superposition of rotational and irrotational components. The orthogonality of the spurious state to all physical states is proved rigorously. The text was submitted by the author in English.     

Activation of area V5 by visual perception of motion demonstrated with echoplanar MR imaging

Cortical activation in visual association areas known to be responsible for the perception of motion was investigated in two volunteers who viewed a projected animated cartoon periodically “run” and “frozen” during collection of echoplanar MR images. Ten axial, contiguous, 5 mm thick, T₂-weighted, gradient-echo images (TE 40 ms, TR 3000 ms) depicting BOLD contrast were acquired through the occipital lobe using a GE Signa 1.5 T system with an advanced NMR operating console. Images were analysed by time series regression modelling estimating power in the MR signal at the ON-OFF frequency of motion. Highly significant activation in response to motion perception was identified in both subjects bilaterally in area V5.     

Speech perception from monaural and binaural information

Two experiments explored the concept of the binaural spectrogram [Culling and Colburn, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 107, 517-527 (2000)] and its relationship to monaurally derived information. In each experiment, speech was added to noise at an adverse signal-to-noise ratio in the NoS pi binaural configuration. The resulting monaural and binaural cues were analyzed within an array of spectro-temporal bins and then these cues were resynthesized by modulating the intensity and/or interaural correlation of freshly generated noise. Experiment 1 measured the intelligibility of the resynthesized stimuli and compared them with the original NoSo and NoS pi stimuli at a fixed signal-to-noise ratio. While NoS pi stimuli were approximately equal to 50% intelligible, each cue in isolation produced similar (very low) intelligibility to the NoSo condition. The resynthesized combination produced approximately equal to 25% intelligibility. Modulation of interaural correlation below 1.2 kHz and of amplitude above 1.2 kHz was not as effective as their combination across all frequencies. Experiment 2 measured three-point psychometric functions in which the signal-to-noise ratio of the original NoS pi stimulus was increased in 3-dB steps from the level used in experiment 1. Modulation of interaural correlation alone proved to have a flat psychometric function. The functions for NoS pi and for combined monaural and binaural cues appeared similar in slope, but shifted horizontally. The results indicate that for sentence materials, neither fluctuations in interaural correlation nor in monaural intensity are sufficient to support speech recognition at signal-to-noise ratios where 50% intelligibility is achieved in the NoS pi configuration; listeners appear to synergistically combine monaural and binaural information in this task, to some extent within the same frequency region.     

运动界面上反射超声散斑空间运动的研究

在Kirchhoff 衍射理论的基础上，应用随机信号相关原理，推导了作刚体运动的界面上反射超声散斑在空间运动时，保持其复振幅相关的必要条件.由此得到超声散斑的空间运动公式.界面、超声散斑和超声接收探头之间的相对运动，导致界面孔径的改变.分析表明，在保持界面孔径相关的条件下，界面所允许的最大平移量和转角值，与声源位置、接收用聚焦探头的数值孔径、超声入射角以及观察角有关.应用数字相关技术和三维扫描信号采集系统，根据散斑场子集相关系数的单峰性质，对超声散斑空间运动公式进行了实验验证.实验结果表明，理论分析所得的 关键词： 超声散斑 相关原理 空间运动     

Inequivalent lagrangians from constants of the motion

It is shown that for any appropriate newtonian equation of motion in one spatial dimension the knowledge of two independent constants of the motion suffices to construct a non-denumerable set of explicit inequivalent lagrangians (up to a quadrature). Thereby a number of results by previous authors are simplified, unified and generalized.     

Calculation of entropy from data of motion

We discuss the question of determining the entropy given the phase space trajectory which describes the detailed history of a many-body system over a period of observation. Our viewpoint is that the determination of entropy, as well as all other thermodynamic properties, should require no concepts or information other than those given and defined by the trajectory. The counting of coincidence (or repetition) of states along the trajectory is presented as a way to determine entropy given the trajectory. An illustrative program based on the kinetic Ising model is described in detail.     

面部视频非接触式生理参数感知

为了在非接触条件下检测受试者的各项生理参数,本文设计了一种基于成像式光电容积描记技术,从手机录制的人脸视频中估算生理参数的方法.首先,提出了"小波变换-主成分分析-盲源分离"算法,用于提取出高信噪比的RGB三通道脉搏波信号.然后,分别从频域和时域角度对绿色通道信号进行处理,估算出心率值和呼吸率值;对红蓝通道的脉搏波信号...     

Proper motion of gamma rays from microhalo sources

I discuss the prospects of detecting the smallest dark matter bound structures present in the Milky Way by searching for the proper motion of gamma-ray sources in the upcoming Gamma Ray Large Area Space Telescope all sky map. I show that for dark matter particle candidates that couple to photons the detection of at least one gamma-ray microhalo source with proper motion places a constraint on the couplings and mass of the dark matter particle.     

Sound radiation from point sources in circular motion

The moving-source approach used by Morfey and Tanna for broad-band sound radiation from a point force in circular motion is adopted in this paper to evaluate the sound radiated in the far field due to point sources of random time variation rotating uniformly in a circle at subsonic speed. It is shown that the sound pressure results (overall and spectral density) for the volume velocity source can be easily extracted from the corresponding results for a rotating point force. An expression for the sound field of a point volume displacement source in arbitrary motion is derived and this is applied to the special case of uniform circular motion. The effects of acceleration of the sources due to circular motion on the radiated sound are established. Applications include noise from tip jet rotors, compressors and marine propellers.     

Equations of motion from field equations and a gauge-invariant variational principle for the motion of charged particles

New, gauge-independent, second-order Lagrangian for the motion of classical, charged test particles is proposed. It differs from the standard, gauge-dependent, first-order Lagrangian by boundary terms only. A new method of deriving equations of motion from field equations is developed. When applied to classical electrodynamics, this method enables us to obtain unambiguously the above, second-order Lagrangian from the general energy-momentum conservation principle.     

Exaggeration of facial expressions from facial motion capture data

We propose a method for exaggerating facial expressions derived from exaggeration mappings that transform facial motions into exaggerated motions. The exaggeration mapping of facial motions is defined by non-negative matrix factorization. Three-dimensional facial expressions are simulated using the exag- gerating rate as an input value to convey the degree of variation. Experiments show the validity of the exaggeration mapping and facial expression simulations.     

X-ray emission from betatron motion in a plasma wiggler

The successful utilization of an ion channel in a plasma to wiggle a 28.5-GeV electron beam to obtain broadband x-ray radiation is reported. The ion channel is induced by the electron bunch as it propagates through an underdense 1.4-meter-long lithium plasma. The quadratic density dependence of the spontaneously emitted betatron x-ray radiation and the divergence angle of approximately (1-3)x10(-4) radian of the forward-emitted x-rays as a consequence of betatron motion in the ion channel are in good agreement with theory. The absolute photon yield and the peak spectral brightness at 14.2-keV photon energy are estimated.     

Sound radiation from point acoustic stresses in circular motion

The general result for the sound field of a point acoustic stress in arbitrary motion is applied in this paper to study the effects of (i) uniform straight-line motion, (ii) uniform circular motion and (iii) pure rotation on the overall sound radiation from random point acoustic stresses. The effects of acceleration of the stresses due to steady rotation in a circle are established, using the moving-source approach adopted in two previous papers for the far-field sound radiation from rotating point forces and point sources. Applications include the turbulent sound generation from tip jet rotors and noise from rotating blades with distributed forces.