Functional Connectome of the Human Brain with Total Correlation

Recent studies proposed the use of Total Correlation to describe functional connectivity among brain regions as a multivariate alternative to conventional pairwise measures such as correlation or mutual information. In this work, we build on this idea to infer a large-scale (whole-brain) connectivity network based on Total Correlation and show the possibility of using this kind of network as biomarkers of brain alterations. In particular, this work uses Correlation Explanation (CorEx) to estimate Total Correlation. First, we prove that CorEx estimates of Total Correlation and clustering results are trustable compared to ground truth values. Second, the inferred large-scale connectivity network extracted from the more extensive open fMRI datasets is consistent with existing neuroscience studies, but, interestingly, can estimate additional relations beyond pairwise regions. And finally, we show how the connectivity graphs based on Total Correlation can also be an effective tool to aid in the discovery of brain diseases.     

子宫病变组织的拉曼光谱研究

拉曼光谱方法可以从分子水平反映组织、细胞在化学成分及分子结构上的差异,现已在细胞、组织的结构、功能及病变等方面的研究工作中取得了重大进展.文章首次利用光纤拉曼光谱仪研究了子宫肌瘤、子宫内膜癌、子宫腺肌症等子宫病变组织的拉曼光谱,并与对应正常组织的拉曼光谱进行了比较.结果表明:子宫肌瘤组织中甲硫氨酸C-S键振动引起的拉曼峰分裂成为双峰,包括一个由色氨酸振动引起的峰,并出现了一个胡萝卜素引起拉曼峰,这在正常肌层组织中没有体现出来,子宫内膜癌组织在1 447 cm-1处对应着CH2-CH3的变形振动,表现出组织癌变的特征峰;子宫腺肌症组织在骨架α螺旋C-C键的伸缩振动引起的拉曼峰强度明显弱于正常组织,其由C-O键弯曲振动引起的拉曼峰由正常组织的1 160 cm-1移至1 173 cm-1.以上结果进一步证实了拉曼光谱技术能在分子水平有效鉴别不同的子宫病变,这不仅有助于子宫病变的早期诊断,同时,对子宫疾病的基础研究也是至关重要的.而基于光纤的拉曼光谱技术将有望发展成一种高灵敏的诊断技术.     

Effect of cerebrovascular changes on brain DTI quantitation: a hypercapnia study

Quantitative diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) offers a valuable tool to probe the microstructural changes in neural tissues in vivo, where absolute quantitation accuracy and reproducibility are essential. It has been long recognized that measurement of apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) using DTI could be influenced by the presence of water molecules in cerebrovasculature. However, little is known about to what extent such blood signal affects DTI quantitation. In this study, we quantitatively examined the effect of cerebral hemodynamic change on DTI indices by using a standard multislice echo planar imaging (EPI) spin echo (SE) DTI acquisition protocol and a rat model of hypercapnia. In response to 5% CO(2) challenge, mean, radial and axial diffusivities measured with diffusion factor (b-value) of b=1.0 ms/μm(2) were found to increase in whole brain (1.52%±0.22%, 1.66%±0.16% and 1.35%±0.37%, respectively), gray matter (1.56%±0.23%, 1.63%±0.14% and 1.47%±0.45%, respectively) and white matter regions (1.45%±0.28%, 1.88%±0.33% and 1.10%±0.26%, respectively). Fractional anisotropy (FA) was found to decrease by 1.67%±0.38%, 1.91%±0.59% and 1.46%±0.30% in whole brain, gray matter and white matter regions, respectively. In addition, these diffusivity increases and FA decreases became more pronounced at a lower b-value (b=0.3 ms/μm(2)). The results indicated that in vivo DTI quantitation in brain can be contaminated by vascular factors on the order of few percentages. Consequently, alterations in cerebrovasculature and hemodynamics can affect the DTI quantitation and its efficacy in characterizing the neural tissue microstructures in normal and diseased states. Caution should be taken in designing and interpreting quantitative DTI studies as all DTI indices can be potentially confounded by physiologic conditions and by cerebrovascular and hemodynamic characteristics.     

基于脑部磁共振图像三维局部模式变换特征提取进行阿尔茨海默病病程预测分类

本文提出一种三维局部模式变换提取进行纹理特征并与常规特征相融合的方法,基于脑部磁共振图像,对认知功能正常的健康人体（CN）、轻度认知障碍（MCI）患者和阿尔茨海默病（AD）患者进行预测分类.首先对46例CN对照组、61例MCI患者和25例AD患者的脑部磁共振图像提取感兴趣区域,然后提取双侧海马体组织、灰质和白质的三维局部模式变换纹理特征和常规特征,并将两类特征融合,使用支持向量机分类算法进行分类.结果显示利用本方法,基于双侧海马体组织对AD组和CN组进行分类的准确率为88.73%、敏感度为78.00%、特异度为95.7%、受试者工作特征（ROC）曲线下面积（AUC）为0.886 5;基于灰质的准确率为85.92%、敏感度为80.00%、特异度为86.6%、AUC为0.854 3.这证明基于海马体磁共振图像,利用本文提出的改进三维局部模式变换提取的纹理特征进行阿尔茨海默病病程分类效果较好,融合常规特征后更可提高分类预测的精度.     

Moderating registration misalignment in voxelwise comparisons of DTI data: a performance evaluation of skeleton projection

An evaluative methodology and five accompanying performance measures were developed to quantitatively assess the performance of the skeleton projection algorithm constituting the heart of tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS). The performance measures were designed to quantify the accuracy of skeleton projection in its indented task of alleviating any residual misalignment that may remain after image registration. A ground truth fractional anisotropy (FA) image was slightly warped using a realistic warp field that served to model post-registration residual misalignment of varying magnitudes. Skeleton projection was then used to register the warped FA image to the ground truth. Performing skeleton projection was found to yield up to 50% better correspondence between the values of FA compared to smoothing, despite the fact that less than 10% of post-registration misalignment was corrected. The align-max-with-max strategy underlying TBSS was posited as a potential explanation for this high correspondence in the values of FA, at the expense of lesser alignment between anatomically concordant voxels.     

Action Observation Training to Improve Activities of Daily Living and Manipulation Skills in Children with Acquired Brain Injury Secondary to an Oncologic Process: A Prospective Case Series Clinical Study

Objective: Among solid tumours, medulloblastoma is the most common of the posterior fossa neoplasms, given that it represents 15%-20% of childhood brain tumours. The main aim of the present study was to assess the effects of action observation training on the activities of daily living (ADL) and the manipulation skills of children with acquired brain injury secondary to an oncological process. Methods: We recruited a consecutive convenience sample of 5 patients diagnosed with acquired brain injury secondary to an oncological process. ADL and manipulation skills were assessed using the ABILHAND-Kids and Jebsen-Taylor Hand Function Test, respectively. After conducting the initial evaluation, we planned the intervention, which lasted 10 weeks and consisted of 40 sessions for each participant, 10 in the occupational therapy department and 30 at home. After completing the intervention, we re-evaluated the main variables. Results: Overall, the results of the postintervention ABILHAND-Kids questionnaire showed a 5-point improvement, with a statistically significant difference and a large effect size. Eighty per cent of the sample showed better results in the total score, with differences between 4 and 8 points. In relation to manual dexterity, as measured by the Jebsen-Taylor Hand Function Test, there were no significant changes, except in one of the participants. Conclusion: It appears that action observation training can elicit positive changes with respect to the development of ADL, but the influence on manual dexterity was almost nonexistent.     

Sleeping of a Complex Brain Networks with Hierarchical Organization

The dynamical behavior in the cortical brain network of macaque is studied by modeling each cortical area with a subnetwork of interacting excitable neurons. We characterize the system by studying how to perform the transition, which is now topology-dependent, from the active state to that with no activity. This could be a naive model for the wakening and sleeping of a brain-like system, i.e., a multi-component system with two different dynamical behavior.     

Monte Carlo Investigation of Adsorption Stage of O on Ru（0001）：a Study of a Lattice Model

The adsorption of O on Ru(0001) is studied by means of Monte Carlo simulation of lattice gas model on a triangular lattice. A recent STM study shows that at low coverage the p(2×2) structure grows via island formation but the p(2×1) structure is abruptly formed at a critical coverage. Moreover, it also shows that there is a coexistence of the p(2×2) and p(2×1) structures. The above results seem not to coincide with the former studies of the system by both the LEED and Monte Carlo simulation. We therefore carried out the Monte Carlo study for the system again in the present paper and found that our simulation almost agrees with the results of the STM.     

混合泵浦两段级联掺铒光纤放大器实验研究

基于内插隔离－耦合环两段级联新结构，采用９８０ｎｍ与１４８０ｎｍ激光二极管混合泵浦方式，研制出在１．５５μｍ波段兼具高增益，大功率，低噪声九特性的掺铒光纤放大器。     

竞争性自适应重加权算法和相关系数法提取特征波长检测番茄叶片真菌病害

基于竞争性自适应重加权算法(CARS)和相关系数法(CA)特征波长选择方法,提出了利用可见-近红外高光谱成像技术检测番茄叶片灰霉病的方法。首先获取380～1 023 nm波段范围内80个染病和80个健康番茄叶片的高光谱图像,然后提取染病和健康叶片感兴趣区域(ROI)的光谱反射率值,作为番茄叶片灰霉病鉴别模型的输入来建立支持向量机(SVM)鉴别模型,训练集和验证集的鉴别率都是100%。研究进一步通过CARS和CA提取特征波长,分别得到5个(554, 694, 696, 738和880 nm)和4个(527, 555, 571和633 nm)特征波长,然后分别建立CARS-SVM和CA-SVM鉴别模型。结果显示,CARS-SVM模型中训练集和验证集的鉴别率都是100%,CA-SVM模型中训练集和验证集的鉴别率分别是91.59%和92.45%。以上结果说明了从可见-近红外高光谱图像中提取的光谱反射率值用于检测番茄叶片的灰霉病是可行的。     

Correction strategy for diffusion-weighted images corrupted with motion: application to the DTI evaluation of infants' white matter

Objective

Diffusion imaging techniques such as DTI and HARDI are difficult to implement in infants because of their sensitivity to subject motion. A short acquisition time is generally preferred, at the expense of spatial resolution and signal-to-noise ratio. Before estimating the local diffusion model, most pre-processing techniques only register diffusion-weighted volumes, without correcting for intra-slice artifacts due to motion or technical problems. Here, we propose a fully automated strategy, which takes advantage of a high orientation number and is based on spherical-harmonics decomposition of the diffusion signal.

Material and methods

The correction strategy is based on two successive steps: 1) automated detection and resampling of corrupted slices; 2) correction for eddy current distortions and realignment of misregistered volumes. It was tested on DTI data from adults and non-sedated healthy infants.

Results

The methodology was validated through simulated motions applied to an uncorrupted dataset and through comparisons with an unmoved reference. Second, we showed that the correction applied to an infant group enabled to improve DTI maps and to increase the reliability of DTI quantification in the immature cortico-spinal tract.

Conclusion

This automated strategy performed reliably on DTI datasets and can be applied to spherical single- and multiple-shell diffusion imaging.     

Correlation functions of a time-continuous dissipative system with a strange attractor

We determine the exact decay of time correlation functions of a continuous-time chaotic system. In contrast to discrete-time chaotic systems where these correlations decay as a rule exponentially fast we find in our continuous-time system long-time tails well known from many-particle systems.     

Stage III-recovery of cold worked high-purity aluminium determined with a low-temperature calorimeter

Using a low-temperature calorimeter annealing effects were investigated in high-purity aluminium of varying grades of purity (Al 99.99, Al 99.999 and Al 99.9999) which had been subjected to deformation by torsion at liquid nitrogen. For the purpose of comparison, some residual resistivity measurements were performed on deformed and quenched Al 99.999.The calorimetric signals comprises two consecutive peaks (low-temperature peak and high-temperature peak) for each degree of deformation and purity. The low-temperature peak, with a maximum at 200 K-210 K, lies in the temperature range stage III, well-known from isochronous resistivity measurements. The effective activation energy of the annealing defects in this peak has the valueQ _m=0.62 eV/atom averaged over all degrees of deformation and purity, and is thus close to the known values of the activation energy of vacancy migration. Throughout the high-temperature peak, the position of which on the temperature scale depends strongly on the degree of deformation and purity, the processes of primaty recrystallization and dislocation recovery take place in the material. The coincidence of this peak with the changes of mechanical and electrical properties are in accordance with this interpretation. Thus to the usual nomenclature for isochronous resistance measurements, one may designate this peak a stage V reaction peak.In this paper the particular results of the low-temperature peak (stage III peak) are analysed and discussed. Then the experimental data are compared with the literature data derived from other measuring procedures.     

Correlation properties of anisotropic XY model with a sudden quench

Starting from a general Hamiltonian which may undergo a quantum phase transition (QPT) with the change of a controllable parameter, we obtain a general conclusion that in a sudden quench system, when the final Hamiltonian is fixed, the behavior of the time-averaged expectation of any observable has close relationship with the gapless excitation of the initial Hamiltonian. To clarify our conclusion, we investigate the two-spin correlation of a XY chain in a transverse field under a sudden quench at zero temperature. The critical property of the derivative of quench two-spin correlation and the long-range correlation of the quench system are analyzed.