Ibotenic acid lesions of the medial septum retard delay eyeblink conditioning in rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus).

S. Berry and R. Thompson (1979) reported that electrolytic lesions of the medial septum significantly retard eyeblink conditioning. However, these electrolytic lesions were nonselective and may have also damaged the subcortical inputs to the hippocampus via the fimbria-fornix. In the present study, the medial septum was selectively lesioned with ibotenic acid in rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus), whose performance in a delay eyeblink conditioning paradigm was compared with that of intact controls, sham-operated controls, and intact controls given a systemic injection of scopolamine. Rabbits with selective medial septal lesions and rabbits receiving systemic scopolamine were significantly slower to condition than were intact and sham-lesioned rabbits. This finding demonstrates that the selective removal of the medial septum retards delay eyeblink conditioning in a manner similar to the disruption seen after systemic administration of scopolamine. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Context Memories and Reactivation: Constraints on the Reconsolidation Hypothesis.

Recent evidence suggests that the maintenance of a reactivated contextual-fear memory requires a protein-synthesis-dependent reconsolidation process in the hippocampus (K. Nader, 2003). In contrast, the authors report a systematic set of experiments that failed to find evidence that the rat's reactivated memory for context becomes labile and requires a new protein to restabilize. Although injecting the protein-synthesis inhibitor into the dorsal hippocampus or intracerebroventricularly following the reactivation of the context memory had no effect, these same treatments did impair the initial consolidation of the context memory and the consolidation of a contextual-fear memory. These results suggest that there may be important constraints determining when a reactivated memory requires reconsolidation. The authors offer 2 hypotheses about the nature of these constraints. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

大鼠海马注入β-淀粉样蛋白致痴呆模型的实验研究

探讨β-淀粉样蛋白（Aβ）海马内注射对大鼠脑内胆碱酯酶（CHE）和乙酰胆碱（Ach）的影响。方法：用D-半乳糖腹腔注射42天造成亚急性衰老大鼠的基础上,双侧海马内注射Aβ后,观察脑内CHE和Ach的损伤情况。结果：海马内注射Aβ造成大鼠脑内CHE活力下降和Ach含量减少。结论：Aβ可造成大鼠脑内胆碱能系统损伤,因其被认为是造成痴呆的重要原因,所以Aβ在造成痴呆大鼠模型方面具有重要作用。     

Modified cuckoo search algorithm in microscopic image segmentation of hippocampus

Microscopic image analysis is one of the challenging tasks due to the presence of weak correlation and different segments of interest that may lead to ambiguity. It is also valuable in foremost meadows of technology and medicine. Identification and counting of cells play a vital role in features extraction to diagnose particular diseases precisely. Different segments should be identified accurately in order to identify and to count cells in a microscope image. Consequently, in the current work, a novel method for cell segmentation and identification has been proposed that incorporated marking cells. Thus, a novel method based on cuckoo search after pre‐processing step is employed. The method is developed and evaluated on light microscope images of rats’ hippocampus which used as a sample for the brain cells. The proposed method can be applied on the color images directly. The proposed approach incorporates the McCulloch's method for lévy flight production in cuckoo search (CS) algorithm. Several objective functions, namely Otsu's method, Kapur entropy and Tsallis entropy are used for segmentation. In the cuckoo search process, the Otsu's between class variance, Kapur's entropy and Tsallis entropy are employed as the objective functions to be optimized. Experimental results are validated by different metrics, namely the peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR), mean square error, feature similarity index and CPU running time for all the test cases. The experimental results established that the Kapur's entropy segmentation method based on the modified CS required the least computational time compared to Otsu's between‐class variance segmentation method and the Tsallis entropy segmentation method. Nevertheless, Tsallis entropy method with optimized multi‐threshold levels achieved superior performance compared to the other two segmentation methods in terms of the PSNR.     

基于边界增强损失的海马体分割算法

快速准确地获得脑部核磁共振图像中海马体的体积变化情况,对阿尔兹海默症等疾病的诊断具有重要意义。海马体在大脑中占比很小且与周边结构的边界不明显,使得基于深度学习的核磁共振影像海马体分割具有一定难度。针对上述问题本文提出一种利用边界增强损失训练含注意力机制网络的海马体分割算法,主要贡献在于:1)设计了一种含注意力机制的U形三维卷积神经网络;2)提出一种边界增强的损失函数。在解决海马体与背景因为尺寸相差过大而带来的类不平衡问题的同时,使网络在训练时更注重对海马体边界的学习。在欧洲阿尔兹海默病协会和阿兹海默症神经影像学倡议数据集上,分析讨论了本文提出的损失函数和网络结构的性能。与目前几种先进的基于深度学习的三维分割算法进行了对比分析,实验结果表明本文提出的算法性能更优,达到了89.41%的Dice精度与人工分割精度相近。     

基于改进水平集的人脑海马图像分割方法

人脑MR图像中的海马结构存在低对比度、边界模糊等缺点,给海马的轮廓分割带来较大干扰.为解决水平集分割海马时边界容易停留在非目标区域梯度极值处的问题,提出一种改进的水平集方法.从图像全局出发考虑方差信息,在水平集函数的外部能量泛函中增加波动能量项,驱动零水平集曲线向灰度波动较小的区域运动.实验结果表明,该方法可提取出MR图像中的海马轮廓,分割效果较好,演化速度有所提高.     

Stereological length estimation using spherical probes

Lineal structures in biological tissue support a wide variety of physiological functions, including membrane stabilization, vascular perfusion, and cell‐to‐cell communication. In 1953, Smith and Guttman demonstrated a stereological method to estimate the total length density (L_v) of linear objects based on random intersections with a two‐dimensional sampling probe. Several methods have been developed to ensure the required isotropy of object–probe intersections, including isotropic‐uniform‐random (IUR) sections, vertical‐uniform‐random (VUR) slices, and isotropic virtual planes. The disadvantages of these methods are the requirements for inconvenient section orientations (IUR, VUR) or complex counting rules at multiple focal planes (isotropic virtual planes). To overcome these limitations we report a convenient and straightforward approach to estimate L_v and total length, L, for linear objects on tissue sections cut at any arbitrary orientation. The approach presented here uses spherical probes that are inherently isotropic, combined with unbiased fractionator sampling, to demonstrate total L estimation for thin nerve fibres in dorsal hippocampus of the mouse brain.     

Spared discrimination and impaired reversal eyeblink conditioning in patients with temporal lobe amnesia.

The effect of medial temporal lobe damage on a 2-tone delay discrimination and reversal paradigm was examined in human classical eyeblink conditioning. Eight medial temporal lobe amnesic patients and their demographically matched controls were compared. Amnesic patients were able to distinguish between 2 tones during the initial discrimination phase of the experiment almost as well as control participants. Amnesic patients were not able to reverse the previously acquired 2-tone discrimination. In contrast, the control participants showed improved discrimination performance after the reversal of the tones. These findings support the hypothesis that the hippocampus and associated temporal lobe regions play a role in eyeblink conditioning that becomes essential in more complex versions of the task, such as the reversal of an acquired 2-tone discrimination. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A model of hippocampal activity in trace conditioning: Where's the trace?

The hippocampus is generally thought to play a modulating role in the timing of conditioned responses in classical trace conditioning. One hypothesis is that the hippocampus stores a memory trace of the conditioned stimulus (CS) during the stimulus-free period. Cellular recordings, however, do not show any obvious CS storage. This article examines this issue by using a biologically plausible model of the CA3 region of the hippocampus. Simulations of the model reproduce both behavioral and physiological experimental data. On the basis of neural codes that develop in the model, the authors hypothesize that the hippocampus functions as a time-indexed encoding device for the CS and not as a CS storage buffer. Specifically, the CS initiates a sequence of neural activity during the trace interval that only indirectly represents the CS. The model yields 2 predictions: Some cells will increase in activity only during the trace interval, and some unconditioned stimulus (US)-coding cells will shift in time and fire before US onset. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)