Functional brain laterality for sequential movements： Impact of transient practice

The impact of learning on brain functional laterality has not been systematically investigated. We employed an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging combined with a delayed sequential movement task to investigate brain activation pattern and laterality during a transient practice in 12 subjects. Both hemispheres, involving motor areas and posterior parietal cortex, were engaged during motor preparation and execution, with larger activation volume in the left hemisphere than in the right. Activation volume in these regions significantly decreased after a transient practice, with more reduction in the right hemisphere resulting increase in left lateralization. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the physiological significance of brain functional laterality.     

Modulation of neuronal activity of cerebellar fastigial nucleus by locus coeruleus stimulation in the rat

The effects of stimulating locus coeruleus (LC) on neuronal activity of cerebellar fastigial nucleus (FN) was investigated. Stimulation of LC elicited inhibitory, excitatory and biphasic (inhibition-excitation) responses from FN cells. The majority of responsive cells showed an inhibitory response with a latency of less than 10 ms. Injection of α adrenoreceptor antagonists phentolamine (ⅳ) could block the inhibitory response of FN cells to the LC stimulation, but propranolol (ⅳ), a β adrenoreceptor antagonist, could not. These results suggest that LC-cerebellar noradrenergic afferent fibers may be involved in the cerebellar sensorimotor integration process by exerting their modulatory action on the cerebellar nuclear cells' activities.     

Excitatory effect of histamine on neuronal activity of rat cerebellar fastigial nucleus Jn vitro

The cerebellar fastigial nucleus （FN） holds an important role in motor control and body balance. Previous studies have revealed that the nucleus is innervated by direct hypothalamocerebellar hletaminergic fibers. However, the functional role of histaminergic projection in cerebellar FN has never been established. In this study, we investigated the effect of histamine on neuronal firing of cerebellar FN by using slice preparations. Sixty-five FN cells were recorded from 47 cerebellar slices, and a vast majority of the cells responded to histamine stimulation with an excitatory response （58/65, 89.2%）. Perfusing slices with low-Ca^2＋/high-Mg^2＋ medium did not block the histamine-induced excitation （n=10）, supporting a direct postsynaptic action of histamine on the cells. Furthermore, the excitatory effect of histamine on FN neurons was not blocked by selective histamine H1 receptor antagonist triprolidine （n=15） or chlorpheniramine （n=10）, but was effectively suppressed by ranitidine （n=15）, a highly selective histamine H2 receptor antagonist. On the other hand, highly selective histamine H2 receptor agonist dimaprit （n=20） instead of histamine HI receptor agonist 2-pyridylethylamine （n=16） mimicked the excitatory effect of histamine on FN neurons. The dimaprit-induced FN neuronal excitation was effectively antagonized by selective histamine H2 receptor antagonist ranitidine （n=13） but not influenced by selective histamine H1 receptor antagonist triprolidine （n=15）. These results demonstrate that histamine excites cerebellar FN cells via the histamine H2 receptor mechanism and suggest that the hypothalamocerebellar histaminergic fibers may modulate cerebellar FN-mediated sensorimotor integration through their excitatory innervations on FN neurons.     

Excitatory effect of histamine on neuronal activity of rat cerebellar fastigial nucleus in vitro

The cerebellar fastigial nucleus (FN) holds an important role in motor control and body balance. Previous studies have revealed that the nucleus is innervated by direct hypothalamocerebellar histaminergic fibers. However, the functional role of histaminergic projection in cerebellar FN has never been established. In this study, we investigated the effect of histamine on neuronal firing of cerebellar FN by using slice preparations. Sixty-five FN cells were recorded from 47 cerebellar slices, and a vast majority of the cells responded to histamine stimulation with an excitatory response (58/65, 89.2%). Perfusing slices with low-Ca2 /high-Mg2 medium did not block the histamine-induced excitation (n=10), supporting a direct postsynaptic action of histamine on the cells. Furthermore, the excitatory effect of histamine on FN neurons was not blocked by selective histamine H1 receptor antagonist triprolidine (n=15) or chlorpheniramine (n=10), but was effectively suppressed by ranitidine (n=15), a highly selective histamine H2 receptor antagonist. On the other hand, highly selective histamine H2 receptor agonist dimaprit (n=20) instead of histamine H1 receptor agonist 2-pyridylethylamine (n=16) mimicked the ex- citatory effect of histamine on FN neurons. The dimaprit-induced FN neuronal excitation was effectively antagonized by selective histamine H2 receptor antagonist ranitidine (n=13) but not influenced by se- lective histamine H1 receptor antagonist triprolidine (n=15). These results demonstrate that histamine excites cerebellar FN cells via the histamine H2 receptor mechanism and suggest that the hypotha- lamocerebellar histaminergic fibers may modulate cerebellar FN-mediated sensorimotor integration through their excitatory innervations on FN neurons.     

Improving Adaptive Learning Rate of BP Neural Network for the Modelling of 3D Woven Composites Using the Golden Section Law

Focused on various BP algorithms with variable learning rate based on network system error gradient, a modified learning strategy for training non-linear network models is developed with both the incremental and the decremental factors of network learning rate being adjusted adaptively and dynamically. The golden section law is put forward to build a relationship between the network training parameters, and a series of data from an existing model is used to tram and test the network parameters. By means of the evaluation of network performance in respect to convergent speed and predicting precision, the effectiveness of the proposed learning strategy can be illustrated.     

Aerodynamic force generation of an insect-inspired flapper actuated by a compressed unimorph actuator

We examined experimentally the flapping performance in terms of aerodynamic force generation of an insect-inspired flapper actuated by both of original LIPCA and compressed LIPCA. Flapping tests for two artificial wing shapes of horse botfly and hawk moth were conducted at the wing rotation angle of 60° and a flapping frequency range from 6 Hz to 12 Hz to find the optimum flapping frequency and to investigate the effect of compressed LIPCA and wing shape on the force generation. Flapping tests in the vacuum were also undertaken to measure the induced inertia force. The aerodynamic force was calculated by subtracting the inertia force from the total force measured in the air. It was found that the average inertia force was relatively small when compared with the average total force. The use of the compressed LIPCA could significantly improve the flapping angle of the flapper from 110° to 130° （18.2% increase） resulting in 24.5% increase in the average aerodynamic force. It was also found that flapper with hawk moth wings could produce larger force than the flapper with horse botfly wings.     

Cloning, sequencing and polymorphism analyzing of the exon 4 of the kappa-casein gene in yak

According to the nucleotide sequence of cattle kappa- casein gene, a pair of primers was synthesized to amplify the sequences of the exon 4 and partial intron 4 of this gene in yak. The restriction fragment length polymor¬phisms were identified by the digestions of the PCR product with Hind 111 or Pst I in both populations of cattle and yak, 'but the frequency of the allele and the genotype were significantly different between the two animal populations.     

Channel estimation for MIMO-OFDM systems in wireless mobile channels

New training sequences and frame structure are proposed to estimate time-varying channel for multipie-input multiple-output and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing （MIMO-OFDM） systems. The training sequences are modulatable orthogonal polyphase sequences, which have both good autocorrelations and cross-correlations. The channel impulse response （CIR） can be obtained by measuring the correlation between the received training sequence and the locally generated training sequence. The training sequences are used as guard interval instead of cyclic prefix, which not only improve the transmission efficiency but also enable the channel estimator to track time-varying channel. The simulation results show that the proposed method has about 2dB SNR gain over conventional methods in fast time-varying channel.     

小脑经颅直流电刺激技术提升运动表现的应用

小脑是脑皮层下的一个重要运动调节中枢,它与大脑不同皮层区域在解剖和功能上紧密连接,配合大脑皮层完成机体的运动功能和运动学习。经颅直流电刺激(transcranial direct current stimulation, tDCS)是一种非侵入性的脑刺激技术,通过电极将微弱的电流作用于小脑能有效地提升皮层脊髓兴奋性和调控小脑与大脑皮层间的功能连接。本文系统梳理近20年国内外关于tDCS刺激小脑对提升人类运动表现影响的相关文献,研究结果表明tDCS刺激小脑可以改善人体的运动表现,如姿势控制、运动适应与运动学习、肌肉力量表现等。然而,tDCS刺激小脑的生理机制和刺激强度、刺激时间、刺激时间间隔等参数的选择有待进一步研究。未来的体育科学研究中,如何将tDCS刺激小脑的技术应用于运动训练,帮助运动员突破现有的运动能力仍有待深入探究。     

Human cerebellar activity reflecting an acquired internal model of a new tool

Theories of motor control postulate that the brain uses internal models of the body to control movements accurately. Internal models are neural representations of how, for instance, the arm would respond to a neural command, given its current position and velocity. Previous studies have shown that the cerebellar cortex can acquire internal models through motor learning. Because the human cerebellum is involved in higher cognitive function as well as in motor control, we propose a coherent computational theory in which the phylogenetically newer part of the cerebellum similarly acquires internal models of objects in the external world. While human subjects learned to use a new tool (a computer mouse with a novel rotational transformation), cerebellar activity was measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging. As predicted by our theory, two types of activity were observed. One was spread over wide areas of the cerebellum and was precisely proportional to the error signal that guides the acquisition of internal models during learning. The other was confined to the area near the posterior superior fissure and remained even after learning, when the error levels had been equalized, thus probably reflecting an acquired internal model of the new tool.     

Temporal dissociation of parallel processing in the human subcortical outputs.

Many tasks require rapid and fine-tuned adjustment of motor performance based on incoming sensory information. This process of sensorimotor adaptation engages two parallel subcorticocortical neural circuits, involving the cerebellum and basal ganglia, respectively. How these distributed circuits are functionally coordinated has not been shown in humans. The cerebellum and basal ganglia show very similar convergence of input-output organization, which presents an ideal neuroimaging model for the study of parallel processing at a systems level. Here we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure the temporal coherence of brain activity during a tactile discrimination task. We found that, whereas the prefrontal cortex maintained a high level of activation, output activities in the cerebellum and basal ganglia showed different phasic patterns. Moreover, cerebellar activity significantly correlated with the activity of the supplementary motor area but not with that of the primary motor cortex; in contrast, basal ganglia activity was more strongly associated with the activity of the primary motor cortex than with that of the supplementary motor area. These results demonstrate temporally partitioned activity in the cerebellum and basal ganglia, implicating functional independence in the parallel subcortical outputs. This further supports the idea of task-related dynamic reconfiguration of large-scale neural networks.     

Endogenous nitric oxide release required for long-term synaptic depression in the cerebellum.

Conjunctive stimulation of climbing and parallel fibres in the cerebellum evokes a long-term depression of parallel-fibre Purkinje-cell transmission, a phenomenon implicated as the cellular mechanism for cerebellar motor learning. It is suspected that the increase in cyclic GMP concentration that occurs after activation of climbing fibres is required to evoke long-term depression. Excitatory amino acids are known to cause the release of nitric oxide (NO), resulting in elevation of the cGMP level in the cerebellum. Here we report that endogenous NO is released after stimulation of climbing fibres, that long-term depression evoked by conjunctive stimulation of parallel and climbing fibres is blocked by haemoglobin (which strongly binds NO) or L-NG-monomethyl-arginine (an inhibitor of NO synthase), and that exogenous NO or cGMP can substitute for the stimulation of climbing fibres to cause long-term depression in rat cerebellar slices. These results demonstrate that the release of endogenous NO is essential for the induction of synaptic plasticity in the cerebellum.     

Encoding of movement time by populations of cerebellar Purkinje cells

One of the earliest computational principles attributed to the cerebellum was the measurement of time. This idea was originally suggested on anatomical grounds, and was taken up again to explain some of the deficits in cerebellar patients. The contribution of the cerebellum to eye movements, in contrast, has traditionally been discussed in the context of motor learning. This view has received support from the loss of saccade adaptation, one of the key examples of motor learning, following lesions of the posterior cerebellar vermis. However, the relationship between the properties of saccade-related vermal Purkinje cells and the behavioural deficits that follow lesions is unclear. Here we report results from single-unit recording experiments on monkeys that reconcile the seemingly unrelated concepts of timing and motor learning. We report that, unlike individual Purkinje cells, the population response of larger groups of Purkinje cells gives a precise temporal signature of saccade onset and offset. Thus a vermal population response may help to determine saccade duration. Modifying the time course of the population response by changing the weights of the contributing individual Purkinje cells, discharging at different times relative to the saccade, would directly translate into changes in saccade amplitude.     

方位辨别知觉学习的眼传递及空间频率调谐特性

为了研究方位辨别知觉学习的神经机制,采用心理物理的方法,研究了方位辨别知觉学习的空间频率调谐与眼传递特性.通过对9个被试在固定空间频率（周期/度）进行方位辨别的训练,并于训练前后在多个空间频率（0.5, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16和32周期/度）测量方位辨别的阈值,发现被试在训练空间频率的方位辨别阈值平均下降了7.01 dB,并且这种学习效应可显著传递到非训练眼.学习效应可分为两个部分：一部分可传递到其他空间频率（4.10 dB）,另外一部分则特异于训练空间频率（2.95 dB）.这些结果说明方位辨别学习可能发生在双眼信息汇聚之后的视皮层,且可能有多种机制参与其中.     

Synaptic excitation produces a long-lasting rebound potentiation of inhibitory synaptic signals in cerebellar Purkinje cells.

Persistent changes in synaptic efficacy are thought to underlie the formation of learning and memory in the brain. High-frequency activation of an afferent excitatory fibre system can induce long-term potentiation, and conjunctive activation of two distinct excitatory synaptic inputs to the cerebellar Purkinje cells can lead to long-term depression of the synaptic activity of one of the inputs. Here we report a new form of neural plasticity in which activation of an excitatory synaptic input can induce a potentiation of inhibitory synaptic signals to the same cell. In cerebellar Purkinje cells stimulation of the excitatory climbing fibre synapses is followed by a long-lasting (up to 75 min) potentiation of gamma-aminobutyric acid A (GABAA) receptor-mediated inhibitory postsynaptic currents (i.p.s.cs), a phenomenon that we term rebound potentiation. Using whole-cell patch-clamp recordings in combination with fluorometric video imaging of intracellular calcium ion concentration, we find that a climbing fibre-induced transient increase in postsynaptic calcium concentration triggers the induction of rebound potentiation. Because the response of Purkinje cells to bath-applied exogenous GABA is also potentiated after climbing fibre-stimulation with a time course similar to that of the rebound potentiation of i.p.s.cs, we conclude that the potentiation is caused by a calcium-dependent upregulation of postsynaptic GABAA receptor function. We propose that rebound potentiation is a mechanism by which in vivo block of climbing fibre activity induces an increase in excitability in Purkinje cells. Moreover, rebound potentiation of i.p.s.cs is a cellular mechanism which, in addition to the long-term depression of parallel fibre synaptic activity, may have an important role for motor learning in the cerebellum.     

Consolidation during sleep of perceptual learning of spoken language

Memory consolidation resulting from sleep has been seen broadly: in verbal list learning, spatial learning, and skill acquisition in visual and motor tasks. These tasks do not generalize across spatial locations or motor sequences, or to different stimuli in the same location. Although episodic rote learning constitutes a large part of any organism's learning, generalization is a hallmark of adaptive behaviour. In speech, the same phoneme often has different acoustic patterns depending on context. Training on a small set of words improves performance on novel words using the same phonemes but with different acoustic patterns, demonstrating perceptual generalization. Here we show a role of sleep in the consolidation of a naturalistic spoken-language learning task that produces generalization of phonological categories across different acoustic patterns. Recognition performance immediately after training showed a significant improvement that subsequently degraded over the span of a day's retention interval, but completely recovered following sleep. Thus, sleep facilitates the recovery and subsequent retention of material learned opportunistically at any time throughout the day. Performance recovery indicates that representations and mappings associated with generalization are refined and stabilized during sleep.     

Quisqualate receptors are specifically involved in cerebellar synaptic plasticity

Long-term modification of transmission efficacy at synapses is the cellular basis of memory and learning. A special type of synaptic plasticity in the cerebellum was postulated theoretically, and has since been verified. Each cerebellar Purkinje cell (PC) receives two distinct excitatory inputs, one from parallel fibres (PFs) and the other from a climbing fibre (CF). When these two types of inputs are conjunctively activated, PF-PC transmission undergoes long-term depression (LTD). Accumulated evidence suggests that LTD plays a role in the motor learning processes of the cerebellum. At the molecular level, LTD appears to be caused by desensitization of receptor molecules in PC dendrites towards the PF neurotransmitter, presumably L-glutamate (Glu). Glu receptors are heterogeneous and can be divided into several subtypes. In this study, we compared the potency of several Glu agonists in inducing LTD and found a highly selective dependency of LTD on the quisqualate(QA)-selective subtype of Glu receptors.     

αCaMKII在前脑过量表达损伤小鼠灵活性学习能力

将3月龄实验小鼠分为αCaMKII-F89G转基因组和同窝野生对照组,进行疲劳转棒实验和Morris水迷宫实验测试.结果显示,转基因组小鼠的体力和运动协调能力与对照组相比无显著的差异;在Morris水迷宫实验的可视平台测试中,转基因鼠的视觉和求生的动机表现正常;在定位航行训练和第一次空间探索测试中,两组鼠在训练时逃避潜伏期及测试中在目标象限探索时间无统计学差异;但是在反向定位空间学习阶段,转基因组在第二、三天逃避潜伏期和距离明显长于同窝对照组(P0.05).由此认为,αCaMKII在前脑过量表达对小鼠的灵活性学习有损伤作用,推测这种损伤有可能由前脑LTD的缺陷造成的.