Connectivity In Motion

This original collection brings islands to the fore in a growing body of scholarship on the Indian Ocean, examining them as hubs or points of convergence and divergence in a world of maritime movements and exchanges. Straddling history and anthropology and grounded in the framework of connectivity, the book tackles central themes such as smallness, translocality, and “the island factor.” It moves to the farthest reaches of the region, with a rich variety of case studies on the Swahili-Comorian world, the Maldives, Indonesia, and more. With remarkable breadth and cohesion, these essays capture the circulations of people, goods, rituals, sociocultural practices, and ideas that constitute the Indian Ocean world. Together, they take up “islandness” as an explicit empirical and methodological issue as few have done before.

In the last few years, advances in human structural and functional neuroimaging (fMRI, PET, EEG/MEG) have resulted in an explosion of studies investigating the anatomical and functional connectivity between different regions of the brain. More and more studies have employed resting and task-related connectivity analyses to assess functional interactions, and diffusion-weighted tractography to study white matter organization. Many of these studies have addressed normal human function, but recently, a number of investigators have turned their attention to examining brain disorders. The study of brain disorders is a complex endeavor; not only does it require understanding the normal brain, and the regions involved in a particular function, but also it needs a deeper understanding of brain networks and their dynamics. This Research Topic will provide the scientific community with an overview of how to apply connectivity methods to study brain disease, and with perspectives on what are the strength and limitations of each modality. For this Research Topic, we solicit both reviews and original research articles on the use of brain connectivity analysis, with non-human or human models, to explore neurological, psychiatric, developmental and neurodegenerative disorders from a system perspective. Connectivity studies that have focused on one or more of the following will be of particular interest: (1) detection of abnormal functional/structural connectivity; (2) neural plasticity, assessed by changes in connectivity, in patients with brain disorders; (3) assessment of therapy using connectivity measures; (4) relation of connectivity changes to behavioral changes.

An innovative collection of essays that foregrounds specific cargoes as a means to understand connectivity and mobility across the Indian Ocean world. Scholars have long appreciated the centrality of trade and commerce in understanding the connectivity and mobility that underpin human experience in the Indian Ocean region. But studies of merchant and commercial activities have paid little attention to the role that cargoes have played in connecting the disparate parts of this vast oceanic world. Drawing from the work of anthropologists, geographers, and historians, Cargoes in Motion tells the story of how material objects have informed and continue to shape processes of exchange across the Indian Ocean. By following selected cargoes through both space and time, this book makes an important and innovative contribution to Indian Ocean studies. The multidisciplinary approach deepens our understanding of the nature and dynamics of the Indian Ocean world by showing how transoceanic connectivity has been driven not only by economic, social, cultural, and political factors but also by the materiality of the objects themselves. Essays by: Edward A. Alpers Fahad Ahmad Bishara Eva-Maria Knoll Karl-Heinz Kohl Lisa Jenny Krieg Pedro Machado Rupert Neuhöfer Mareike Pampus Hannah Pilgrim Burkhard Schnepel Hanne Schönig Tansen Sen Steven Serels Julia Verne Kunbing Xiao

The brain's ability to process information crucially relies on connectivity. Understanding how the brain processes complex information and how such abilities are disrupted in individuals with neuropsychological disorders will require an improved understanding of brain connectivity. Autism is an intriguingly complex neurodevelopmental disorder with multidimensional symptoms and cognitive characteristics. A biological origin for autism spectrum disorders (ASD) had been proposed even in the earliest published accounts (Kanner, 1943; Asperger, 1944). Despite decades of research, a focal neurobiological marker for autism has been elusive. Nevertheless, disruptions in interregional and functional and anatomical connectivity have been a hallmark of neural functioning in ASD. Theoretical accounts of connectivity perceive ASD as a cognitive and neurobiological disorder associated with altered functioning of integrative circuitry. Neuroimaging studies have reported disruptions in functional connectivity (synchronization of activated brain areas) during cognitive tasks and during task-free resting states. While these insights are valuable, they do not address the time-lagged causality and directionality of such correlations. Despite the general promise of the connectivity account of ASD, inconsistencies and methodological differences among studies call for more thorough investigations. A comprehensive neurological account of ASD should incorporate functional, effective, and anatomical connectivity measures and test the diagnostic utility of such measures. In addition, questions pertaining to how cognitive and behavioral intervention can target connection abnormalities in ASD should be addressed. This research topic of the Frontiers in Human Neuroscience addresses “Brain Connectivity in Autism” primarily from cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging perspectives.

This issue of Neuroimaging Clinics of North America focuses on Functional Connectivity, and is edited by Dr. Jay Pillai. Articles will include: Applications of rs-fMRI to presurgical mapping: sensorimotor mapping; Dynamic functional connectivity methods; Machine learning applications to rs-fMRI analysis; Frequency domain analysis of rs-fMRI; Applications of rs-fMRI to epilepsy; Data-driven analysis methods for rs-fMRI; Applications of rs-fMRI to presurgical mapping: language mapping; Limitations of rs-fMRI in the setting of focal brain lesions; Applications of rs-fMRI to neuropsychiatric disease; Applications of rs-fMRI to Traumatic Brain Injury; Applications of rs-fMRI to neurodegenerative disease; Graph theoretic analysis of rs-fMRI; and more!

The two volume set LNCS 4984 and LNCS 4985 constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, ICONIP 2007, held in Kitakyushu, Japan, in November 2007, jointly with BRAINIT 2007, the 4th International Conference on Brain-Inspired Information Technology. The 228 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous ordinary paper submissions and 15 special organized sessions. The 116 papers of the first volume are organized in topical sections on computational neuroscience, learning and memory, neural network models, supervised/unsupervised/reinforcement learning, statistical learning algorithms, optimization algorithms, novel algorithms, as well as motor control and vision. The second volume contains 112 contributions related to statistical and pattern recognition algorithms, neuromorphic hardware and implementations, robotics, data mining and knowledge discovery, real world applications, cognitive and hybrid intelligent systems, bioinformatics, neuroinformatics, brain-conputer interfaces, and novel approaches.

Imaging in Movement Disorders: Imaging in Movement Disorder Dementias and Rapid Eye Movement Sleep Behavior Disorder, Volume 144 provides an up-to-date textbook on the use of imaging modalities across the spectrum of movement disorders and dementias. The book brings together lessons learned from neuroimaging tools in the content of movement disorders, including chapters on Molecular Imaging of Dementia with Lewy Bodies, Structural and Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Dementia with Lewy Bodies, Network Imaging in Parkinsonian and Other Movement Disorders: Network Dysfunction and Clinical Correlates, Neuroimaging of Rapid Eye Movement Sleep Behavior Disorder, Hybrid PET-MRI Applications in Movement Disorders, and more. Covers the role of neuroimaging research in movement disorder dementias Presents the importance of imaging techniques as biomarkers of disease progression and treatment response in therapeutic trials

This book discusses the concepts, theory, and core technologies of intelligent theory and human animation, including video based human animation and intelligent technology of motion data management and reusing. It introduces systems developed to demonstrate the technologies of video based animation. Lively pictures and demos throughout the text help make the theory and technologies more accessible to readers.