Title: Effect of Balance Training on Balance and Walking in Patients with Multiple Sclerosis Objectives: Main aim of this master thesis is to assess the effect of four-week sensorimotor stimulation therapy and four-week balance training with Homebalance® in Multiple Sclerosis patients with balance disorders. Also to assess how effective these techniques are, if they are performed without any other therapy. And at the end compare them between each other. Methods: The research was conducted with 20 subjects divided in two groups of ten. These two groups differed in their balance programme. First group underwent four- week sensorimotor stimulation therapy twice a week for an hour. Second group trained at home with Homebalance® for four weeks 15-20 minutes a day. Everyone has been measured before and after therapies with Timed 25-foot walk (T25FW), Timed Up-and-Go Test (TUG) and TUG cognitive, Mini-BESTest and Berg Balance Scale, they also filled in short balance questionnaire, 12-Item Multiple Sclerosis Walking Scale (MSWS-12) and Falls Efficacy Scale-International (FES-I). Data analysis was provided by Shapiro-Wilk test, Student t-test, Wilcoxon signed-rank test and Mann-Whitney U test according to data distribution. Results: The average EDSS score in people with Homebalance® therapy was 3,8 (± 1,53)...

Objectives: Our thesis is focused on correlation of lateral (side) preferencies of lower limbs and quality of sensorimotor control. Our aim is to figure out whether there is difference in laterality of sensorimotor control of lower limbs and if so, whether there is correlation with side preferency. Methods: Study is made on 18 volunteers. We tested somatosenzoric system, specifically two-point discrimination, graphesthesia, pallesthesia, statesthesia, kinesthesia. We used a questionnare to determine side preferency of lower limbs. We used paired sample t- tests, with level of importance p=0,05. Results: According to t-tests, there are no differencies in sensorimotor control in lower limbs. According to those results, it is not possible to determine the difference in sensorimotor control due to lower limb preferency. Summary: There is no difference in sides in sensorimotor control of lower limbs.

The fields of biologically inspired artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and psychology have had exciting influences on each other over the past decades. Especially recently, with the increased popularity and success of artificial neural networks (ANNs), ANNs have enjoyed frequent use as models for brain function. However, there are still many disparities between the implementation, algorithms, and learning environment used for deep learning and those employed by the brain, which is reflected in their differing abilities. I first briefly introduce ANNs and survey the differences and similarities between them and the brain. I then make a case for designing the learning environment of ANNs to be more similar to that in which brains learn, namely by allowing them to actively interact with the world and decreasing the amount of external supervision. To implement this sensorimotor learning in an artificial agent, I use deep reinforcement learning, which I will also briefly introduce and compare to learning in the brain. In the research presented in this dissertation, I focus on testing the hypothesis that the learning environment matters and that learning in an embodied way leads to acquiring different representations of the world. We first tested this on human subjects, comparing spatial knowledge acquisition in virtual reality to learning from an interactive map. The corresponding two publications are complemented by a methods paper describing eye tracking in virtual reality as a helpful tool in this type of research. After demonstrating that subjects do indeed learn different spatial knowledge in the two conditions, we test whether this transfers to artificial agents. Two further publications show that an ANN learning through interaction learns significantly different representations of the sensory input than ANNs that learn without interaction. We also demonstrate that through end-to-end sensorimotor learning, an ANN can learn visually-guided motor control and navigation behavior in a complex 3D maze environment without any external supervision using curiosity as an intrinsic reward signal. The learned representations are sparse, encode meaningful, action-oriented information about the environment, and can perform few-shot object recognition despite not knowing any labeled data beforehand. Overall, I make a case for increasing the realism of the computational tasks ANNs need to solve (largely self-supervised, sensorimotor learning) to improve some of their shortcomings and make them better models of the brain.

To characterize corticostriatal projections from rodent sensorimotor cortex, the anterograde tracers biotinylated dextran amine (BDA) and fluororuby (FR) were injected into the whisker representations of the primary motor (MI) and somatosensory (SI) cortices. Reconstructions of labeled terminals and their beaded varicosities in the neostriatum and thalamus were analyzed quantitatively to determine the degree of labeled overlap in both of these subcortical structures. Corticostriatal projections from the vibrissal representation in MI were more extensive than corresponding projections from SI. Both cortical areas sent dense projections to the dorsolateral neostriatum, but the MI vibrissal representation also projected to regions located more rostrally and medially. Despite these differences, both MI and SI projected to overlapping parts of the dorsolateral neostriatum. Tracer injections in both cortical areas also produced dense anterograde and retrograde labeling in the medial sector of the posterior complex of the thalamus (POm). Because POm is somatotopically organized and has reciprocal connections with both SI and MI cortices, the amount of labeled overlap in POm was used to indicate whether the tracers were injected into corresponding whisker representations of MI and SI. We found that the proportion of labeled overlap in the neostriatum was highly correlated with the amount of labeled overlap in POm. These results indicate that the rodent neostriatum receives convergent projections from corresponding regions in MI and SI cortex. Furthermore, the thalamocortical projections of the POm indicate that it may modulate corticostriatal outputs from corresponding representations in MI and SI.

The cognitive processing of a stimulus does not only depend on the physical properties of the stimulus itself but also on the larger context in which it occurs. In this thesis I will present a number of studies that investigate this context-dependency at different levels of cognition. In particular these levels include (1) sensory processing within a modality, (2) sensory integration across modalities and (3) the relation between sensory perception and motor behavior. Accordingly the chapters in this thesis are partitioned into three larger parts, each of which relates to one of these levels. The first study in Part 1 investigates the role of neural oscillations during perceptual grouping. By measuring EEG during contour integration we were not only able to identify the neural sources involved in this process but also to demonstrate local and long-range synchronization of oscillatory activity within frontoparietal networks. This study is then followed by a more general discussion about the properties of oscillatory activity and how they might relate to event-related potentials. The focus of Part 2 will then be on cross-modal interactions and their possible utilization for real-life applications. First we show that simultaneously presented auditory and tactile cues lead to interactions on both a behavioral and neural level. Subsequently we demonstrate how the observed perceptual effects can be used to optimize auditory and tactile localization performance. Finally we propose a setup for utilizing tactile information to enhance the perceptual interpretation of 360° visual scenes. The third and last part of this thesis is dedicated to problems and applications of measuring EEG in the presence of eye movements. Therefore we use eye tracking to investigate and characterize EEG artifacts resulting from ocular activity. Subsequently we develop an algorithm that allows objectively and reliably identifying these artifacts and removing them from the data without affecting the signal from neural sources. Employing this algorithm we then demonstrate that combined EEG and eye tracking can be used for monitoring and shaping both the gaze behavior and the related brain activity in ASD patients. Next to studying cognition with regard to perceptual and behavioral context, this thesis also focuses on the question how the context-relevant signal components can be identified and extracted from the EEG. In the studies presented here we applied a variety of different strategies to approach this problem. These range from resorting to prior knowledge and analyzing only activity from predetermined cortical sources on the one hand, to purely data driven approaches based on logistic regression or eye tracking information on the other hand.

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Escape behavior is the critical output of rapid sensorimotor processing in the brain that allows animals to sense danger and avoid it. The circuit structures and mechanisms that underlie escape are still under investigation. Drosophila larvae are an advantageous system for studying the neuromuscular circuitry of escape behavior. When threatened with harmful mechanical touch, heat, or light, larvae perform C-shaped bending and lateral rolling, followed by rapid forward crawling. The sensory input and neural circuitry that promotes escape in the larva have been extensively characterized, but we do not understand how bending and rolling motor programs are generated by the larval neuromuscular system. This work identifies the movement patterns, muscle activities, and motor circuit features that drive escape behavior. High-speed imaging approaches reveal that larvae select between four distinct, interchangeable patterns of escape rolling, and that each pattern consists of synchronous rotations of every segment as the larva rotates. Investigating electron microscopic reconstructions of premotor and motor neurons elucidates premotor to motor connectivity patterns that could underlie sequential muscle activity that circumnavigates the larva and propels synchronous rotation along the whole body. Volumetric Swept Confocally-Aligned Planar Excitation (SCAPE) microscopy uncovers that, unlike larval crawling, a well-studied form of larval locomotion that is driven by bilaterally symmetric peristaltic waves of muscle activity, the muscle activity during bending and rolling occurs in a circumferential sequence that is synchronous along the larva’s segments. Muscles neighboring the dorsal and ventral midlines of the larva demonstrate left-right symmetric activity during rolling, and ventral muscles appear to drive the propulsion. Shifts in magnitude of left-right symmetric activity in midline muscles allow the larva to transition from initial escape bending into escape rolling. Preliminary computational predictions of PMN activities confirm the likely necessity of strong ventral muscle coactivity for driving escape. Probing specific PMNs during rolling demonstrates robustness of circuits controlling escape and requires further investigation, alongside the role that sensory feedback could play in this behavior. Altogether, these data reveal a new circuit organization and motor activity pattern that underlie the coordination of muscles during an escape sequence. Future work could reveal circuit components necessary for escape, including the mechanistic basis for action selection, behavioral maintenance, and behavioral flexibility.

Данная работа посвящена исследованию особенностей сенсомоторного и когнитивного развития недоношенных младенцев. Недоношенность рассматривается как симптомокомплекс, который реализуется за счет многих разнообразных механизмов. На основе работ отечественных и зарубежных авторов проведен анализ наиболее часто встречающихся форм неинфекционных перинатальных патологий, в частности недоношенности. В эмпирическом исследовании с помощью однофакторного дисперсионного анализа было проведено сравнение показателей уровня развития сенсомоторных и когнитивных функций у доношенных и недоношенных младенцев в возрасте от 6 до 13 месяцев. Для реализации исследования были сформированы три группы: экспериментальная (недоношенные дети) и 2 контрольных группы (соответствующие по хронологическому и гестационному возрасту). На основе полученных данных делается вывод, что недоношенные дети демонстрируют отставание в развитии моторики при типичном развитии когнитивных функций. / This work is devoted to research of sensorimotor and cognitive development in premature infants. Prematurity is considered as a set of symptoms, which is being implemented by many mechanisms. It was analyzed the most common forms of non-infectious perinatal pathology, particularly prematurity using the works of Russian and foreign researchers. It was conducted comparison of the level of development of sensorimotor and cognitive functions in term and preterm infants aged 6 to 13 months using one-way ANOVA. Three groups were formed: experimental (premature babies), and two control groups (corresponding to chronological and gestational age). It was shown that preterm infants have delay in motor development and typical development of cognitive functions.

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