A morphable model for the synthesis of 3D faces

http://www.unicog.org/publications/DehaeneChangeux_ReviewConsciousness_Neuron2011.pdf

Experimental and Theoretical Approaches to Conscious Processing

which is used to describe a third component of thinking processes, particularly preverbal, and it denotes the concept that the world is activated by some generalized "energy" that links together causally all objects and events ; it is presumably revealed by a person's lack of curiosity about causal connections, as though they were self-evident. Aside from the rather frequent use of such key words, having strong connotations for this reviewer far away from what the author is aiming to denote, the book is written in a lucid and stimulating style that makes reading it an invigorating intellectual exercise. It is a book that is likely to have somewhat limited attraction to the full-time clinician, especially one treating adult patients. And child psychiatrists and psychologists, if reasonably well read, will most likely be familiar with the majority of references from which this author has synthesized his material. On the other hand, the scholarly and refreshing con¬ ceptual approaches of the author will appeal to psychologists, philosophers, linguists, and psychiatrists with a research bent and anyone else who wants to be provoked to do some thinking on the problems of language, language development, and the psychology of cognition. Louis A. GOTTSCHALK, M.D. Plans and the Structure of Behavior. By George A Miller, Eugene gALANTER, and Karl H. Pribram. Price, $5.00. Pp. 226. Henry Holt & Co., Inc., New York 17, 1960. This is an important book for psychiatrists and behavioral scientists, since it presents a clear, concise study of the application of cybernetics, information and computer theory to the problem of analyzing behavior. The authors have been actively engaged in behavioral research in different areas\p=m-\Millerin information and communication, Galanter in experimental psychology, and Pribram in neurophysiology. The book resulted from a series of discussions which they engaged in during a year they spent together at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Palo Alto, Calif. Their original intent was to write a diary, as it were, of the development of their ideas and, fortunately, enough of this remains to make the book clear, easy to read, and interesting. It is also fortunate, however, that in the final writing a variety of studies comparing the "behavior" of computing machines with human "cognitive behavior" have been reviewed and summarized. The result is one of the best presentations of the present status of the brain-computer problem. The authors, however, do not discuss certain aspects of this problem, such as the difference between the brain and its vast number of parallel channels, but few operations, and the modern high-speed computer with its few channels and vast numbers of operations. This omission is consistent with their interest, since it would introduce the question of mechanisms rather than the problem of the structure of behavior as it is observed in everyday life in the clinic and in experiments on learning, conditioning, etc. Similarly, they do not discuss the qualitative differences between mechanisms of memory in the computer and those in the brain. In the former, a "memory"\p=m-\ i.e., stored information\p=m-\isidentified, metaphorically speaking, by an address, whereas no such mechanism is known in the brain (personal communication, Dr. Julian Bigelow). With few exceptions, however, the data, concepts, and theories presented are handled with elegant precision, as illustrated by the discussion of Sherrington's concepts of the "Reflex" and the "Synapse," Kurt Lewin's ideas of "tension states," and the numerous references to the work of Newell, Shaw, and Simon on computers and logic. There are, nevertheless, areas with

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1057%2Fjors.1968.86.pdf

Plans and the Structure of Behavior

Objective: The recent obesity epidemic has been accompanied by a parallel growth in chronic sleep deprivation. Physiologic studies suggest sleep deprivation may influence weight through effects on appetite, physical activity, and/or thermoregulation. This work reviews the literature regarding short sleep duration as an independent risk factor for obesity and weight gain.

Short sleep duration and weight gain : a systematic review

Inter-individual variability in perception, thought and action is frequently treated as a source of 'noise' in scientific investigations of the neural mechanisms that underlie these processes, and discarded by averaging data from a group of participants. However, recent MRI studies in the human brain show that inter- individual variability in a wide range of basic and higher cognitive functions — including perception, motor control, memory, aspects of consciousness and the ability to introspect — can be predicted from the local structure of grey and white matter as assessed by voxel-based morphometry or diffusion tensor imaging. We propose that inter-individual differences can be used as a source of information to link human behaviour and cognition to brain anatomy.

/pdf/the-structural-basis-of-inter-individual-differences-in-2fo6a5hcs9.pdf

The structural basis of inter-individual differences in human behaviour and cognition

http://www.sussex.ac.uk/sackler/documents/subjective-discriminability-of-invisibility-a-framework-for-distinguishing-perceptual-and-attentional-failures-of-awareness.pdf

Subjective discriminability of invisibility: a framework for distinguishing perceptual and attentional failures of awareness.

Following the pioneering studies of the receptive field (RF), the RF concept gained further significance for visual perception by the discovery of input effects from beyond the classical RF. These studies demonstrated that neuronal responses could be modulated by stimuli outside their RFs, consistent with the perception of induced brightness, color, orientation, and motion. Lesion scotomata are similarly modulated perceptually from the surround by RFs that have migrated from the interior to the outer edge of the scotoma and in this way provide filling-in of the void. Large RFs are advantageous to this task. In higher visual areas, such as the middle temporal and inferotemporal lobe, RFs increase in size and lose most of their retinotopic organization while encoding increasingly complex features. Whereas lower-level RFs mediate perceptual filling-in, contour integration, and figure-ground segregation, RFs at higher levels serve the perception of grouping by common fate, biological motion, and other biologically relevant stimuli, such as faces. Studies in alert monkeys while freely viewing natural scenes showed that classical and nonclassical RFs cooperate in forming representations of the visual world. Today, our understanding of the mechanisms underlying the RF is undergoing a quantum leap. What had started out as a hierarchical feed-forward concept for simple stimuli, such as spots, lines, and bars, now refers to mechanisms involving ascending, descending, and lateral signal flow. By extension of the bottom-up paradigm, RFs are nowadays understood as adaptive processors, enabling the predictive coding of complex scenes. Top-down effects guiding attention and tuned to task-relevant information complement the bottom-up analysis.

/pdf/beyond-the-classical-receptive-field-the-effect-of-45kw0rm1yq.pdf

Beyond the classical receptive field: The effect of contextual stimuli.

http://www.cogsci.uci.edu/~whipl/staff/sperling/PDFs/Gobell+Tseng+Sperling_spatial_attn_2004.pdf

The spatial distribution of visual attention.

The main objective was to study the impact of a daytime sleep opportunity on working memory and the mechanism behind such impact. This study adopted an experimental design in a sleep research laboratory. Eighty healthy college students (Age:17-23, 36 males) were randomized to either have a polysomnography-monitored daytime sleep opportunity (Nap-group, n=40) or stay awake (Wake-group, n=40) between the two assessment sessions. All participants completed a sleep diary and wore an actigraph-watch for 5 days before and one day after the assessment sessions. They completed the state-measurement of sleepiness and affect, in addition to a psychomotor vigilance test and a working memory task before and after the nap/wake sessions. The two groups did not differ in their sleep characteristics prior to and after the lab visit. The Nap-group had higher accuracy on the working memory task, fewer lapses on the psychomotor vigilance test and lower state-sleepiness than the Wake-group. Within the Nap-group, working memory accuracy was positively correlated with duration of rapid eye movement sleep (REM) and total sleep time during the nap. Our findings suggested that “sleep gain” during a daytime sleep opportunity had significant positive impact on working memory performance, without affecting subsequent nighttime sleep in young adult, and such impact was associated with the duration of REM. While REM abnormality has long been noted in pathological conditions (e.g. depression), which are also presented with cognitive dysfunctions (e.g. working memory deficits), this was the first evidence showing working memory enhancement associated with REM in daytime napping in college students, who likely had habitual short sleep duration but were otherwise generally healthy.

/pdf/rapid-eye-movement-sleep-rem-associated-enhancement-of-1v37y7v2xf.pdf

Rapid-Eye-Movement-Sleep (REM) Associated Enhancement of Working Memory Performance after a Daytime Nap

Insufficient sleep in school-aged children is common in modern society, with homework burden being a potential risk factor. The aim of this article is to explore the effect of sleep hygiene on the association between homework and sleep duration. Children filled out the Chinese version of the Adolescent Sleep Hygiene Scale, and parents filled out a sociodemographic questionnaire. The final sample included 363 boys and 371 girls with a mean age of 10.82 ± 0.38 years. Children with more homework went to bed later and slept less. Better sleep hygiene was associated with earlier bedtimes and longer sleep duration. Findings suggest that homework burden had a larger effect on sleep duration than sleep hygiene. Fifth-grade children in Shanghai have an excessive homework burden, which overwrites the benefit of sleep hygiene on sleep duration.

Chia-huei Tseng

Papers

Subjective discriminability of invisibility: a framework for distinguishing perceptual and attentional failures of awareness.

Beyond the classical receptive field: The effect of contextual stimuli.

The spatial distribution of visual attention.

Rapid-Eye-Movement-Sleep (REM) Associated Enhancement of Working Memory Performance after a Daytime Nap

The relation among sleep duration, homework burden, and sleep hygiene in Chinese School-Aged Children