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Showing posts from December, 2014

Metastability and Eye Movements: A Dynamical‑Systems Interpretation

  1. Why metastability is a natural language for gaze behavior The idea that perception, attention, and neural activity evolve through transiently stable states has deep roots in cognitive science and neuroscience. Concepts such as attractors , basins , noise‑induced transitions , and escape times appear in work on perceptual switching, decision‑making, and neural population dynamics (Kelso, 1995; Rabinovich et al., 2008; Deco & Jirsa, 2012). Eye movements, especially the alternation between fixations and saccades ,   fit remarkably well into this metastable picture. The Freidlin–Wentzell theory of rare events (Freidlin & Wentzell, 2012) provides a rigorous mathematical language for these intuitions. 2. Fixations as metastable states  Consider the gaze position X t as the state of a stochastic dynamical system. During a fixation the  gaze remains confined to a small region, microsaccades and noise generate small fluctuations, and the gaze tends to return...

INVOLVEMENT OF THE INFERIOR FRONTAL CORTEX IN THE LEVODOPA-INDUCED DYSKINESIAS

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is one of the most prevailing neurodegenerative disorders affecting populations all over the world.  Almost from 4.1 to 4.6 million patients suffering from PD are counted across the  fifteen most crowded countries where  live the two thirds of the world population. The average age of the PD onset is 55. The incidence grows along with the age: from 20/100000 cases in the overall population to 120/100000 in the elder population above 70 years old.   This number is expected to reach 8.7 / 9.3 million in 2030. China is expected to increase from two million to five million by 2030. (E. R. Dorsey, et al.; Neurology 2007) Gender difference  in the rate of incidence of PD was reported in many epidemiological studies:  from 1.5 to 2 times higher in men than in women. In Japan, however, there is a higher incidence in women. Environmental factors are critical in determining the incidence rate of the disease. Some studies repo...

Multiple Sclerosis: Understanding the roles of B cells

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An informative video of the Roche on the roles of B cells in Multiple Sclerosis .

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