Modeling Biological Face Recognition with Deep Convolutional Neural Networks.

Deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) have become the state-of-the-art computational models of biological object recognition. Their remarkable success has helped vision science break new ground, and recent efforts have started to transfer this achievement to research on biological face recognition. In this regard, face detection can be investigated by comparing face-selective biological neurons and brain areas to artificial neurons and model layers.

Guiding visual attention in deep convolutional neural networks based on human eye movements.

Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (DCNNs) were originally inspired by principles of biological vision, have evolved into best current computational models of object recognition, and consequently indicate strong architectural and functional parallelism with the ventral visual pathway throughout comparisons with neuroimaging and neural time series data. As recent advances in deep learning seem to decrease this similarity, computational neuroscience is challenged to reverse-engineer the biological plausibility to obtain useful models. While previous studies have shown that biologically inspired architectures are able to amplify the human-likeness of the models, in this study, we investigate a purely data-driven approach.

Comparing Object Recognition in Humans and Deep Convolutional Neural Networks-An Eye Tracking Study.

Deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) and the ventral visual pathway share vast architectural and functional similarities in visual challenges such as object recognition. Recent insights have demonstrated that both hierarchical cascades can be compared in terms of both exerted behavior and underlying activation. However, these approaches ignore key differences in spatial priorities of information processing.

Investigating the Effects of Seizures on Procedural Memory Performance in Patients with Epilepsy.

Memory complaints are frequently reported by patients with epilepsy and are associated with seizure occurrence. Yet, the direct effects of seizures on memory retention are difficult to assess given their unpredictability. Furthermore, previous investigations have predominantly assessed declarative memory.

"How does Austria sleep?" self-reported sleep habits and complaints in an online survey.

During the past years, the prevalence of sleep problems has been increasing steadily in industrial societies and represents a major social and socioeconomic burden. The situation in Austria was last evaluated in 2007 by Zeitlhofer and colleagues in a representative sample of 1000 participants. In the current study, we sought to evaluate the sleep behaviour of the Austrian population in an ongoing online survey, in which we have collected data from 986 participants (66% women, mean age 40.

Alpha phase, temporal attention, and the generation of early event related potentials.

In the present study, we have investigated the influence of ongoing alpha phase on the generation of the P1 component of the visual ERP, recorded in a target detection task. Our hypothesis is that in trials where pre- or peristimulus alpha phase is already aligned in a way that voltage positive alpha peaks develop seamlessly into the P1, detection performance will be enhanced as compared to trials where alpha is not aligned. The findings supported our hypothesis and showed that target detection times for the subset of seamless alpha trials was significantly shorter than for trials that are not seamless.

Brain oscillatory substrates of visual short-term memory capacity.

The amount of information that can be stored in visual short-term memory is strictly limited to about four items. Therefore, memory capacity relies not only on the successful retention of relevant information but also on efficient suppression of distracting information, visual attention, and executive functions. However, completely separable neural signatures for these memory capacity-limiting factors remain to be identified.

Human frontal midline theta and its synchronization to gamma during a verbal delayed match to sample task.

The involvement of oscillatory activity, especially at theta and gamma frequency, in human working memory has been reported frequently. A salient pattern during working memory is electroencephalographic frontal midline theta activity which has been suggested to reflect monitoring functions in order to deal with a task. In general, theta activity has been credited with integrative functions of distributed activity.

Cross-frequency phase synchronization: a brain mechanism of memory matching and attention.

Spatial attention amplifies the neural response, i.e. spike rates, brain metabolism, and oscillatory activity at gamma frequency (beyond 30 Hz).

P1 and traveling alpha waves: evidence for evoked oscillations.

The hypothesis is tested whether the P1 of the event-related potential (ERP) component behaves like an evoked, traveling alpha wave. This hypothesis is based on different kinds of evidence showing, e.g.

Distinguishing the evoked response from phase reset: a comment to Mäkinen et al.

Mäkinen et al. [Mäkinen, V., Tiitinen, H.

Alpha phase synchronization predicts P1 and N1 latency and amplitude size.

The oscillatory phase-resetting model predicts that event-related potential (ERP) components are generated by a superposition of evoked oscillations with different frequencies. We investigate this question in a memory task in which human subjects had to retrieve a verbal label in response to the presentation of a picture. The results show that (i) evoked oscillations in the delta, theta, alpha and beta range undergo a significant phase resetting and (ii) become synchronized in absolute phase during small time windows that (iii) coincide with the latencies of the P1-N1 complex.

Theta coupling in the human electroencephalogram during a working memory task.

The role of coupling between prefrontal and temporo-parietal brain areas within the theta frequency range of the human electroencephalogram was explored in a working memory task. During encoding of visual information higher theta amplitudes were observed in the right compared to the left hemisphere. Retrieval of visuospatial and verbal information elicited a more bilateral activation pattern.