Event‐related potentials affected by spatial frequencies of background visual pattern during a cognitive task

Spatial variation in luminance, which is one of the most important attributes of a visual image, may cause characteristic reactions in higher order brain functions. We aim to characterize the event‐related potentials (ERPs) associated with a cognitive task (simple addition) in terms of how they are influenced by the spatial frequencies of the background visual pattern. We use vertically striped visual stimuli with embedded numbers (0–9) and different spatial frequency characteristics (white noise, 1/f, 1/f², and 1/f³). The subjects are instructed to perform two tasks: an addition task that involved adding numbers presented as visual stimuli, and a reference task wherein the numbers were not added. In ERPs averaged over four types of visual stimuli for the addition task, positive components peaking at latencies of 182 ms in the central and frontal areas and 360 ms in the parietal area are observed, and significant differences are found between ERPs for the addition and reference tasks. In the addition task, the 182‐ms latency component shows a larger positive amplitude for 1/f³ compared with other stimuli in the right parietal‐occipital‐temporal area (P₄, T₆, O₂), and the 360‐ms latency component tends to show a larger positive amplitude for 1/f compared with other stimuli in the parietal‐central area (C₃, P₃, P_z). We conclude that spatial frequency characteristics influence ERPs associated with the retrieval of arithmetic data and certain neural activities that accompany simple forms of addition. © 2013 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Surface-discharge characteristics in a ferrite-cathode diode

The surface-discharge characteristics of a HV diode with a planar ferrite cathode are described. This experimental setup consists of a constant HV power supply, a polarity inversion line pulser with a 200 m coaxial cable, a turbomolecular pump and a discharge chamber. The chamber was of a diode type which was evacuated by a turbomolecular pump with a pressure of 13.3×10^-3 Pa and was composed of a tungsten disk anode, a planar ferrite cathode, and a polymethylmethacrylate tube body. The cathode was set perpendicular to the anode plane, and the space between the anode and cathode electrodes had a value of 0.5 mm. The coaxial cable of the pulser was charged from 10 to 40 kV by the power supply, and the rectangular pulses with output voltages of -1× the charged voltage were produced with short rise times of ~20 ns. The effective duration of the pulse was determined by the cable length and had a value of ~1 μs. The process of the flashover investigated in this report consisted of two stages. In the first stage, because the discharge current flowed inside the cathode plate, the current was primarily regulated by the cathode impedance in proportion to the resistance. Next, the current substantially increased with corresponding growth of the surface discharge on the ferrite cathode. The duration of the initial current increased with the thickness of the cathode and the diameter of the contact electrode. In the present work, the maximum current was determined by the characteristic impedance of the pulser cable since the discharge impedance in the diode substantially decreased during the surface discharge