Academic literature on the topic 'Neural border'

The vertebrate nervous system is extremely complex and contains a wide diversity of cell types. The formation of a functional nervous system requires the differential specification of progenitor cells at the right time and place. The generation of many different types of neurons along the rostro-caudal axis of the CNS begins with the initial specification of a few progenitor domains. This initial coarse pattern is refined by so-called secondary organizers arising at boundaries between these domains. The Isthmic Organizer (IsO) is a secondary organizer located at the boundary between the midbrain and the hindbrain. Although the function and maintenance of the IsO are well understood, the processes underlying its initial specification have remained elusive. In the present work we provide evidence that convergent Wnt and FGF signals initiate the specification of the IsO during late gastrulation as part of the neural caudalization process. The initial step in the generation of the nervous system is the division of the embryonic ectoderm into three cell populations: neural cells giving rise to the CNS, neural plate border cells giving rise to the peripheral nervous system, and epidermal cells giving rise to the outer layer of the skin. While the choice between neural and epidermal fate has been well studied, the mechanism by which neural plate border cells are generated is less well understood. At rostral levels of the neuraxis, the neural plate border gives rise to the olfactory and lens placodes, thickenings of the surface ectoderm from which sensory organs are derived. More caudally, the neural plate border generates neural crest cells, a transient population that migrates extensively and contributes to neurons and glia of the peripheral nervous system. How the early patterning of the central and peripheral nervous systems are coordinated has remained poorly understood. Here we show that the generation of neural plate border cells is initiated at the late blastula stage and involves two phases. During the first phase, neural plate border cells are exposed to Wnt signals in the absence of BMP signals. Simultaneous exposure to Wnt and BMP signals at this early stage leads to epidermal induction. Wnt signals induce expression of Bmp4, thereby regulating the sequential exposure of cells to Wnt and BMP signals. During the second phase, at the late gastrula stage, BMP signals play an instructive role to specify neural plate border cells of either placodal or neural crest character depending on the status of Wnt signaling. At this stage, Wnt signals promote caudal character simultaneously in the neural plate border and in the neural ectoderm. Thus, the choice between epidermal and neural plate border specification is mediated by an interplay of Wnt and BMP signals that represents a novel mechanism involving temporal control of BMP activity by Wnt signals. Moreover, the early development of the central and peripheral nervous systems are coordinated by simultaneous caudalization by Wnt signals.

Por ser não-invasiva e de baixo custo, a Ecocardiografia tem se tornado uma técnica de diagnóstico muito utilizada para a determinação dos volumes sistólicos e diastólicos do ventrículo esquerdo a fim de se calcular, indiretamente, o volume de ejeção do ventrículo esquerdo, a razão de contração muscular das cavidades cardíacas, a fração de ejeção regional e global, a espessura do miocárdio e a massa ventricular. Para isso, torna-se necessária a detecção das bordas endocárdicas do ventrículo esquerdo, o que é dificultada pelo fato da imagem de Ecocardiografia possuir ruídos que prejudicam sua definição. Apesar de haver várias técnicas de segmentação de imagem, este trabalho propõe detectar as bordas do ventrículo esquerdo de imagens ecocardiográficas utilizando uma rede neural artificial para reconhecer padrões de bordas. A fim de acelerar o processo e facilitar o processamento, uma área retangular centrada dentro da janela acústica do paciente é determinada pelo operador com o uso do \'mouse\' na qual serão realizadas todas as análises e reconhecimentos de borda pela rede neural. Após a marcação dos pontos reconhecidos pela rede neural como bordas, utilizam-se técnicas de gradientes e contorno móvel para se conectar os pontos de maior probabilidade e traçar a borda do ventrículo esquerdo. Esta técnica mostrou-se eficaz quando comparados com as bordas traçadas pelo especialista, sendo um fator importante a prática do operador ao escolher adequadamente a área a ser analisada. Após treinamento com 50 amostras de padrões de \"borda\" e 10 amostras de padrões de \"não borda\", a técnica foi testada em 108 imagens, alcançando resultados com boa precisão e rapidez quando comparamos os resultados na determinação da área do ventrículo esquerdo com outras técnicas citadas na literatura nacional e internacional.<br>Being non-invasive and having low cost, the echocardiography has been largely applied as diagnostic technique for left ventricle systolic and diastolic volumes determination that indirectly are used to calculate the left ventricle ejection volume, the cardiac cavities muscular contraction, the regional and global ejection fraction, the myocardial thickness, the ventricular mass, etc. For this reason, the detection of the left ventricle endocardial borders become necessary, but hampered by the noise that impairs the echocardiography images definition. In spite of having many image segmentation techniques, this work intend to detect the borders of left ventricle on echocardiography images by using a artificial neural network to recognize border patterns. To accelerate the process and facilitate the procedure, the operator uses the mouse to define a rectangular region inside the acoustic window of the pacient where all analyses and border recognitions will be accomplished. After labeling the recognized points as \'border\', gradient techniques and mobile boundary are used to connect the points of greater probability and delineate the left ventricle border. This technique has proved to be efficient when compared to the borders traced by the specialist. The ability of the operator is important in choosing of the region to be analyzed. After training with 50 samples of \"border\" pattern and 10 samples of \"no-border\" pattern, this technique was tested on 108 images, achieving good results on precision and velocitiy when we compared the calculated left ventricle area with the results of other techniques published on national and international literature.

Thesis (Ph.D. in Neuroscience) -- University of Colorado Denver, 2008.<br>Includes bibliographical references (leaves 112-120). Free to UCD affiliates. Online version available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations;

The size and speed of computer networks continue to expand at a rapid pace, as do the corresponding errors, failures, and faults inherent within such extensive networks. This thesis introduces a novel approach to interface Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) computer networks with neural networks to learn the precursor connectivity patterns that emerge prior to a node failure. Details of the design and construction of a framework that utilizes neural networks to learn and monitor BGP connection states as a means of detecting and predicting BGP peer node failure are presented. Moreover, this framework is used to monitor a BGP network and a suite of tests are conducted to establish that this neural network approach as a viable strategy for predicting BGP peer node failure. For all performed experiments both of the proposed neural network architectures succeed in memorizing and utilizing the network connectivity patterns. Lastly, a discussion of this framework's generic design is presented to acknowledge how other types of networks and alternate machine learning techniques can be accommodated with relative ease.

It has been proposed that as animals explore their environment they build and maintain a cognitive map, an internal representation of their surroundings (Tolman, 1948). We tested this hypothesis using a task designed to assess the ability of rats to make a spatial inference (take a novel shortcut)(Roberts et al., 2007). Our findings suggest that rats are unable to make a spontaneous spatial inference. Furthermore, they bear similarities to experiments which have been similarly unable to replicate or support Tolman’s (1948) findings. An inability to take novel shortcuts suggests that rats do not possess a cognitive map (Bennett, 1996). However, we found evidence of alternative learning strategies, such as latent learning (Tolman & Honzik, 1930b) , which suggest that rats may still be building such a representation, although it does not appear they are able to utilise this information to make complex spatial computations. Neurons found in the hippocampus show remarkable spatial modulation of their firing rate and have been suggested as a possible neural substrate for a cognitive map (O'Keefe & Nadel, 1978). However, the firing of these place cells often appears to be modulated by features of an animal’s behaviour (Ainge, Tamosiunaite, et al., 2007; Wood, Dudchenko, Robitsek, & Eichenbaum, 2000). For instance, previous experiments have demonstrated that the firing rate of place fields in the start box of some mazes are predictive of the animal’s final destination (Ainge, Tamosiunaite, et al., 2007; Ferbinteanu & Shapiro, 2003). We sought to understand whether this prospective firing is in fact related to the goal the rat is planning to navigate to or the route the rat is planning to take. Our results provide strong evidence for the latter, suggesting that rats may not be aware of the location of specific goals and may not be aware of their environment in the form of a contiguous map. However, we also found behavioural evidence that rats are aware of specific goal locations, suggesting that place cells in the hippocampus may not be responsible for this representation and that it may reside elsewhere (Hok, Chah, Save, & Poucet, 2013). Unlike their typical activity in an open field, place cells often have multiple place fields in geometrically similar areas of a multicompartment environment (Derdikman et al., 2009; Spiers et al., 2013). For example, Spiers et al. (2013) found that in an environment composed of four parallel compartments, place cells often fired similarly in multiple compartments, despite the active movement of the rat between them. We were able to replicate this phenomenon, furthermore, we were also able to show that if the compartments are arranged in a radial configuration this repetitive firing does not occur as frequently. We suggest that this place field repetition is driven by inputs from Boundary Vector Cells (BVCs) in neighbouring brain regions which are in turn greatly modulated by inputs from the head direction system. This is supported by a novel BVC model of place cell firing which predicts our observed results accurately. If place cells form the neural basis of a cognitive map one would predict spatial learning to be difficult in an environment where repetitive firing is observed frequently (Spiers et al., 2013). We tested this hypothesis by training animals on an odour discrimination task in the maze environments described above. We found that rats trained in the parallel version of the task were significantly impaired when compared to the radial version. These results support the hypothesis that place cells form the neural basis of a cognitive map; in environments where it is difficult to discriminate compartments based on the firing of place cells, rats find it similarly difficult to discriminate these compartments as shown by their behaviour. The experiments reported here are discussed in terms of a cognitive map, the likelihood that such a construct exists and the possibility that place cells form the neural basis of such a representation. Although the results of our experiments could be interpreted as evidence that animals do not possess a cognitive map, ultimately they suggest that animals do have a cognitive map and that place cells form a more than adequate substrate for this representation.

Le but des recherches du laboratoire de génétique du développement est de mieux comprendre les mécanismes moléculaires qui contrôlent le développement neural des vertébrés. C’est la raison pour la quelle, j’ai identifié deux EST (BC071005 et BC077938) spécifiques de l’expression génique chez le Xenopus laevis. Sur base de la littérature, ces deux gènes présentent des profils d’expression intéressants, caractéristiques des gènes impliqués dans la neurogenèse.<p><p>Le premier clone d’ADNc code pour l’homologue du facteur de transcription Homez, contenant trois homéodomaines et deux motifs leucine zipper et dont la fonction est inconnue. Mes résultats ont montré que chez l’embryon de xénope au stade neurula, Homez est exprimé préférentiellement dans la plaque neurale, l’expression la plus forte étant détectée dans les domaines où les neurones primaires apparaissent. Plus tard, Homez est détecté dans le tube neural dans des cellules neurales postmitotiques en cours de différenciation. En accord avec ce profil d’expression, j’ai observé que Homez est régulé positivement par l’atténuation des signaux BMPs et par le facteur proneural Ngnr1 et négativement par la voie Notch. Bien que le facteur Homez ne soit pas suffisant pour induire une expression ectopique de marqueurs neuronaux dans l’embryon de xénope, j’ai pu montrer, en utilisant une approche de morpholino antisens, que celui-ci est requis en aval du facteur Ngnr1 pour la différenciation des précurseurs neuraux en neurones primaires. <p><p>Le deuxième clone code pour l’homologue du facteur CBFβ qui s’associe avec une famille de protéines CBFα1-3/Aml1-3/Runx1-3 pour former un complexe hétérodimérique liant l’ADN. Alors que chez la souris, les facteurs Runx1 et Runx3 jouent un rôle important dans la neurogenèse dans les ganglions spinaux et que chez le xénope, Runx1 est requis pour la formation des neurones Rohon-Beard, le rôle de CBFβ au cours du développement du système nerveux est actuellement mal connu. Mes résultats ont montré que chez l’embryon de xénope au stade neurula, CBFβ est coexprimé avec les facteurs Runx1-3 en bordure de la plaque neurale, mais de manière plus étendue et plus précoce. Comme attendu pour un marqueur de la bordure de la plaque neurale, j’ai observé que l’expression de CBFβ est régulée par les signaux BMP, Wnt, FGF et Notch. De manière intéressante, son expression est induite par les facteurs proneuraux alors que celle de Runx1 est inhibée. Des expériences de perte de fonction à l’aide de morpholinos antisens bloquant la traduction de CBFβ ont été réalisées. Ces expériences suggèrent que le facteur CBFβ est nécessaire à la mise en place de la CN et à la différenciation des neurones de Rohon-Beard.<br>Doctorat en Sciences<br>info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished