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Neuroscience and Neurobiology Commons™
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Articles 1 - 7 of 7
Full-Text Articles in Neuroscience and Neurobiology
Elucidating And Leveraging Dynamics-Function Relationships In Neural Circuits Through Modeling And Optimal Control, Sruti Mallik
Elucidating And Leveraging Dynamics-Function Relationships In Neural Circuits Through Modeling And Optimal Control, Sruti Mallik
McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations
A fundamental research question in neuroscience pertains to understanding how neural networks through their activity encode and decode information. In this research, we build on methods from theoretical domains such as control theory, dynamical systems analysis and reinforcement learning to investigate such questions. Our objective is two-fold: first, to use methods from engineering to identify specific objectives that neural circuits might be optimizing through their spatiotemporal activity patterns, and second, to draw motivation from neuroscience to formulate new engineering principles such as synthesis of dynamical networks for decentralized control applications. We specifically take a top-down, optimization driven approach in our …
Long-Term Neural Activity Recorders Using Energy-Based Sensing, Compressive Computation And Data Logging, Darshit Mehta
Long-Term Neural Activity Recorders Using Energy-Based Sensing, Compressive Computation And Data Logging, Darshit Mehta
McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations
Insects are ideal candidates for developing bio-robotic systems owing to their ability to thrive in almost any environment. For example, neurons in their exquisite olfactory sensory systems can be tapped to create a sensing platform for standoff chemical monitoring. However, for enabling such cyborg systems, it is vital that the neural activity of a freely behaving organism can be measured for long periods of time. The current state-of-the-art neural recording techniques are power-intensive and they either need batteries, which make them too bulky for insects, or they have to maintain a continuous telemetry link to an external power source which …
Towards The Discovery Of Prognostic Biomarkers For Glioblastoma Using Resting-State Functional Connectivity, Andy G. S. Daniel
Towards The Discovery Of Prognostic Biomarkers For Glioblastoma Using Resting-State Functional Connectivity, Andy G. S. Daniel
McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations
Gliomas are highly diffusive, primary brain tumors. The most malignant form, glioblastoma, has a dismal survival rate: 14-17 months following the current standard of care, which consists of surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. Insights into the molecular, cellular, and microenvironmental components of glioblastoma have revealed a vast array of factors utilized to support its proliferation, infiltration, and resistance to treatment. Recent advancements have also identified diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers that are now being used to guide treatment planning. However, survival has improved only marginally, thus emphasizing the continued need for novel biomarkers and treatment strategies. Given its delicate location in the …
Cortical Organization In Humans And Nonhuman Primates: The Evolution Of Cognitive Areas And Circuits, Chad Joseph Donahue
Cortical Organization In Humans And Nonhuman Primates: The Evolution Of Cognitive Areas And Circuits, Chad Joseph Donahue
McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations
Similarities in organization of cerebral cortex in humans and nonhuman primates offer the promise of leveraging data from invasive animal studies to better understand the complexities of the human brain, particularly those related to higher cognitive function (e.g. attention, working memory, language). Such comparisons necessitate the identification of convincing cortical homologues (areas or regions presumed to have derived from a common ancestor), requiring an accurate interspecies mapping of cortical areas and features. To this end, I describe (i) a survey of connectivity and its measures across primate species, particularly retrograde tracing and diffusion tractography, (ii) a morphometric analysis of cognitive …
Constructing And Analyzing Neural Network Dynamics For Information Objectives And Working Memory, Elham Ghazizadeh Ahsaei
Constructing And Analyzing Neural Network Dynamics For Information Objectives And Working Memory, Elham Ghazizadeh Ahsaei
McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations
Creation of quantitative models of neural functions and discovery of underlying principles of how neural circuits learn and compute are long-standing challenges in the field of neuroscience. In this work, we blend ideas from computational neuroscience, information and control theories with machine learning to shed light on how certain key functions are encoded through the dynamics of neural circuits. In this regard, we pursue the ‘top-down’ modeling approach of engineering neuroscience to relate brain functions to basic generative dynamical mechanisms. Our approach encapsulates two distinct paradigms in which ‘function’ is understood. In the first part of this research, we explore …
Neural Coding And Organization Principles In The Drosophila Olfactory System, Haoyang Rong
Neural Coding And Organization Principles In The Drosophila Olfactory System, Haoyang Rong
McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations
Sensory systems receive and process external stimuli to allow an organism to perceive and react to the environment. How is sensory information subsequently represented, transformed, and interpreted in the neural system? In this dissertation, I have investigated this fundamental question using the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) olfactory system.Chemical cues are transduced into neural signals in the insect antenna by the olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs). The ORNs send their axons to the antennal lobe (AL), with each ORN type innervating a specific neuropil (glomerulus), where they synapse onto excitatory and inhibitory projection neurons (ePNs and iPNs). The ePNs project their axons …
Neural Dynamics, Adaptive Computations, And Sensory Invariance In An Olfactory System, Srinath Nizampatnam
Neural Dynamics, Adaptive Computations, And Sensory Invariance In An Olfactory System, Srinath Nizampatnam
McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations
Sensory stimuli evoke spiking activities that are patterned across neurons and time in the early processing stages of olfactory systems. What features of these spatiotemporal neural response patterns encode stimulus-specific information (i.e. ‘neural code’), and how they are translated to generate behavioral output are fundamental questions in systems neuroscience. The objective of this dissertation is to examine this issue in the locust olfactory system. In the locust antennal lobe (analogous to the vertebrate olfactory bulb), a neural circuit directly downstream to the olfactory sensory neurons, even simple stimuli evoke neural responses that are complex and dynamic. We found each odorant …