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No description available.

Paradoxical results on object-recognition delayed nonmatching-to-sample (DNMS) tasks have been found in monkeys and rats that receive either partial, ischemia-induced hippocampal lesions or complete hippocampal ablation. Ischemia results in severe DNMS impairments, which have been attributed to circumscribed CA1 cell loss. However, ablation studies indicate that the hippocampus plays only a minimal role in the performance of the DNMS task. Two hypotheses have been proposed to account for these discrepant findings (Bachevalier & Mishkin, 1989). First, the "hippocampal interference" hypothesis posits that following ischemia, the partially damaged hippocampus may disrupt activity in extrahippocampal structures that are important for object-recognition memory. Second, previously undetected ischemia-induced extrahippocampal damage may be responsible for the DNMS impairments attributed to CA1 cell loss. To test the "hippocampal interference" hypothesis, the effect of partial NMDAinduced lesions of the dorsal hippocampus were investigated on DNMS performance in rats. These lesions damaged much of the same area, the CA1, as did ischemia; but did so without depriving the entire forebrain of oxygen, thereby reducing the possibility of extrahippocampal damage. In Experiment 1, rats were trained on the DNMS task prior to receiving an NMDA-lesion. Postoperatively, these rats reacquired the nonmatching rule at a rate equivalent to controls and were unimpaired in performance at delays up to 300 s. In Experiment 2, naive rats were given NMDA-lesions and then trained on DNMS. These rats acquired the DNMS rule at a rate equivalent to controls and performed normally at delays up to 300 s. These findings suggest that interference from a partially damaged hippocampus cannot account for the ischemia-induced DNMS impairments and that they are more likely produced by extrahippocampal neuropathology. In Experiment 3, rats from the previous study were tested on the Morris water-maze. Compared to sham-lesioned animals, rats with partial lesions of the dorsal hippocampus were impaired in the acquisition of the water-maze task. Thus, subtotal NMDA-lesions of the hippocampus impaired spatial memory while leaving nonspatial memory intact. Mumby et al. (1992b) suggested that the ischemia-induced extrahippocampal damage underlying the DNMS deficits is mediated or produced by the postischemic hippocampus. To test this idea, preoperatively trained rats in Experiment 4 were subject to cerebral ischemia followed within 1hr by hippocampal aspiration lesions. It was hypothesized that ablation soon after ischemia would block the damage putatively produced by the postischemic hippocampus and thereby prevent the development of postoperative DNMS deficits. Unlike "ischemia-only" rats, the rats with the combined lesion were able to reacquire the nonmatching rule at a normal rate and performed normally at delays up to 300 s. Thus, hippocampectomy soon after ischemia eliminated the pathogenic process that lead to ischemia-induced DNMS deficits. Experiment 5 investigated the role of ischemiainduced CA1 cell death as a factor in the production of extrahippocampal neuropathology. Naive rats were given NMDA-lesions of the dorsal hippocampus followed 3 weeks later by cerebral ischemia. If the ischemia-induced CA1 neurotoxicity is responsible for producing extrahippocampal damage then preischemic ablation should attenuate this process and prevent the development of DNMS impairments. This did not occur: Rats with the combined lesion were as impaired as the "ischemia-only" rats in the acquisition of the DNMS task. This suggests that the ischemia-induced pathogenic processes that result in extrahippocampal neuropathology comprise more than CA1 neurotoxicity. The findings presented in this thesis are consistent with the idea that ischemiainduced DNMS deficits in rats are the result of extrahippocampal damage mediated or produced by the postischemic hippocampus. The discussion focuses on three main points: 1) How might the post-ischemic hippocampus be involved in the production of extrahippocampal neuropathology? 2) In what brain region(s) might this damage be occurring? 3) What anatomical, molecular, or functional neuropathology might ischemia produce in extrahippocampal brain regions? The results are also discussed in terms of a specialized role for the hippocampus in mnemonic functions and the recently emphasized importance of the rhinal cortex in object-recognition memory.

The sounds generated by a writing instrument ("pen-chant") provide a rich and under-utilized source of information for pattern recognition. We examine the feasibility of recognition of handwritten cursive text, exclusively through an analysis of acoustic emissions. We design and implement a family of recognizers using a template matching approach, with templates and similarity measures derived variously from: smoothed amplitude signal with fixed resolution, discrete sequence of magnitudes obtained from peaks in the smoothed amplitude signal, and ordered tree obtained from a scale space signal representation. Test results are presented for recognition of isolated lowercase cursive characters and for whole words. We also present qualitative results for recognizing gestures such as circling, scratch-out, check-marks, and hatching. Our first set of results, using samples provided by the author, yield recognition rates of over 70% (alphabet) and 90% (26 words), with a confidence of 8%, based solely on acoustic emissions. Our second set of results uses data gathered from nine writers. These results demonstrate that acoustic emissions are a rich source of information, usable - on their own or in conjunction with image-based features - to solve pattern recognition problems. In future work, this approach can be applied to writer identification, handwriting and gesture-based computer input technology, emotion recognition, and temporal analysis of sketches. / Thesis (Master, Computing) -- Queen's University, 2009-09-27 08:56:53.895

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Stroke or “brain attack” occurs when a blood clot carried by the blood vessels from other part of the body blocks the cerebral artery in the brain or when a blood vessel breaks and interrupts the blood flow to parts of the brain. Depending on which part of the brain is being damaged functional abilities controlled by that region of the brain is lost. By interpreting the patient’s symptoms it is possible to make a coarse estimate of the location of the stroke, e.g. if it is on the left or right hemisphere of the brain. The aim of this study was to evaluate if microwave technology can be used to estimate the location of haemorrhagic stroke. In the first part of the thesis, CT images of the patients for whom the microwave measurement are taken is analysed and are used as a reference to know the location of bleeding in the brain. The X, Y and Z coordinates are calculated from the target slice (where the bleeding is more prominent). Based on the bleeding coordinated the datasets are divided into classes. Under supervised learning method the ISC algorithm is trained to classify stroke in the left and right hemispheres; stroke in the anterior and posterior part of the brain and the stroke in the inferior and superior region of the brain. The second part of the thesis is to analyse the classification result in order to identify the patients that were being misclassified. The classification results to classify the location of bleeding were promising with a high sensitivity and specificity that are indicated by the area under the ROC curve (AUC). AUC of 0.86 was obtained for bleedings in the left and right brain and an AUC of 0.94 was obtained for bleeding in the inferior and superior brain. The main constraint was the small size of the dataset and few availability of dataset with bleeding in the front brain that leads to imbalance between classes. After analysis it was found that bleedings that were close to the skull and few small bleedings that are deep inside the brain are being misclassified. Many factors can be responsible for misclassification like the antenna position, head size, amount of hair etc. The overall results indicate that SDD using ISC algorithm has high potential to distinguish bleedings in different locations. It is expected that the results will be more stable with increased patient dataset for training.

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This thesis presents a new and powerful approach to the development of a general purpose machine vision system. The approach is inspired from anatomical considerations of the primate's vision system. The geometrical arrangement of cones on a primate's retina can be described in terms of a hexagonal grid. The importance of the hexagonal grid is that it possesses special computational features that are pertinent to the vision process. The fundamental thrust of this thesis emanates from the observation that this hexagonal grid can be described in terms of the mathematical object known as a Euclidean ring. The Euclidean ring is employed to generate an algebra of linear transformations which are appropriate for the processing of multidimensional vision data. A parallel autonomous segmentation algorithm for multidimensional vision data is described. The algebra and segmentation algorithm are implemented on a network of transputers. The implementation is discussed in the context of the outline of a general purpose machine vision system's design.