Convolutional neural network with batch normalization for glioma and stroke lesion detection using MRI

Accurate glioma detection using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a complicated job. In this research, deep learning model is presented for glioma and stroke lesion detection. The proposed architecture consists of 14 layers. The first input layer is followed by three convolutional layers while 5th, 6th and 7th layers correspond to batch normalization, followed by next three layers of rectified linear unit (ReLU). Eleventh layer is average pooling 2D which is followed by fully connected (FC), softmax and classification layers respectively. The presented method is verified on six MICCAI databases namely multimodal brain tumor segmentation (BRATS) 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and sub-acute ischemic stroke lesion segmentation (SISS-ISLES) 2015. The computational time is also measured across each benchmark dataset such as 53 s on BRATS 2013, 26 s on BRATS 2014, 41 s on BRATS 2015, 36 s on BRATS 2016, and 38 s on BRATS 2017 and 4.13 s on ISLES 2015 proving that the proposed technique has less processing time. The proposed method achieved 0.9943 ACC, 1.00 SP, 0.9839 SE on BRATS 2013, 0.9538 ACC, 0.9991 SP, 0.7196 SE on BRATS 2014, 0.9978 ACC, 1.00 SP, 0.9919 SE on BRATS 2015, 0.9569 ACC, 0.9491 SP, 0.9755 SE on BRAST 2016, 0.9778 ACC, 0.9770 SP, 0.9789 SE on BRATS 2017 and 0.9227 ACC, 1.00 SP, 0.8814 SP on ISLES 2015 datasets respectively.     

孤独症群体的孤岛能力

孤岛能力是个体在一般能力普遍落后的情况下某一个或几个领域表现出来的与其整体能力极不匹配的超常能力。令人惊讶的是,人类近一半的孤岛能力产自于孤独症谱系障碍。本文系统回顾了孤独症孤岛能力的特征、传统的各种心理学解释和当前最有力的认知神经科学发现:脑病理性优势假说和孤独症特质假说。在此基础上,本文认为脑优势中心的转移和混乱的大脑连接可能是孤岛能力产生的前提,而特定技能的遗传和后天的反复练习则是孤岛能力得以强化和巩固的重要因素。     

Autistic traits and neuropsychological performance in 6- to-10-year-old children: a population-based study

Clinical studies of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) provide evidence for poorer neuropsychological performance within specific domains compared to age, gender, and sometimes IQ-matched controls. Since recent evidence suggests that autistic symptoms form a spectrum that extends into the general population, it was our goal to evaluate the nature of the relationship between autistic traits and neuropsychological performance across the continuum in the general population. We examined neuropsychological performance across five different domains in 1019 6-to-10-year-old children participating in a population-based study of child development. Autistic traits were assessed when the children were 6 years of age using the Social Responsiveness Scale and ASD diagnoses were obtained via medical records. Neuropsychological functioning was measured using the NEPSY-II-NL and included the domains of attention and executive function, memory and learning, sensorimotor functioning, language, and visuospatial functioning. We found that children with higher autistic traits showed significantly lower neuropsychological performance in all domains investigated and that this association remained even after excluding children with the highest autistic traits or confirmed ASD. When comparing 41 children with confirmed ASD diagnosis to typically developing controls, children with ASD showed significantly lower neuropsychological performance across all domains. Taken together, our results suggest that children with both ASD and subclinical autistic traits have lower neuropsychological performance. Thus, this may provide an understanding of why some children without an ASD diagnosis may require some additional assistance within academic settings.     

Executive functions in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Executive dysfunction is a characteristic impairment of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). However whether such deficits are related to autism per se, or to associated intellectual disability is unclear. This paper examines executive functions in a group of children with ASD (N = 54, all IQ?70) in relation to a typically developing control group individually matched on the basis of age, gender, IQ and vocabulary. Significant impairments in the inhibition of prepotent responses (Stroop, Junior Hayling Test) and planning (Tower of London) were reported for children with ASD, with preserved performance for mental flexibility (Wisconsin Card Sorting Task) and generativity (Verbal Fluency). Atypical age-related patterns of performance were reported on tasks tapping response inhibition and self-monitoring for children with ASD compared to controls. The disparity between these and previous research findings are discussed. A multidimensional notion of executive functions is proposed, with difficulties in planning, the inhibition of prepotent responses and self-monitoring reflecting characteristic features of ASD that are independent of IQ and verbal ability, and relatively stable across the childhood years.     

Social isolation as a punishment procedure: a controlled study

Contingent social isolation was investigated as a punishment procedure for the disruptive behavior of emotionally disturbed children in a classroom setting. The methodological limitations of previous studies were outlined, and alternatives adopted. Within a reversal and multiple baseline design, contingent social isolation was found to be an effective and relatively specific punisher. By introducing a new observation procedure, “pseudo-timeout”, it was determined that the punishing effect of social isolation was not attributable to observation artifact. A means for resolving the terminological confusion in the present use of timeout and social isolation was recommended.     

Infants' sensitivity to correlations between static and dynamic features in a category context

Four experiments with the habituation procedure investigated 14-22-month-olds' ability to attend to correlations between static and dynamic features embedded in a category context. In Experiment 1, infants were habituated to four objects that exhibited invariant relations between moving features and motion trajectory. Results revealed that 14-month-olds did not process any independent features, 18-month-olds processed individual features but not relations among features, and 22-month-olds processed relations among features. In Experiment 2, 14-month-olds differentiated all of the features in the events in a simpler discrimination task. In Experiments 3a and 3b, 22-month-olds failed to show sensitivity to correlations between dynamic and static features in a category context. In Experiment 4, 22-month-olds, but not 18-month-olds, generalized the learned feature-motion relation to a novel instance. The results are discussed in relation to infants' developing ability to attend to correlations, constraints on learning, category coherence, and the development of the animate-inanimate distinction.     

Names,concepts, features and the living/nonliving things dissociation

The present paper evaluates different hypotheses for explaining the living/nonliving things dissociation phenomenon in terms of feature type, considering the role of this dimension in the organization of conceptual semantic representations and in the activation of name representations. For this purpose we used Sloman and associates' (Memory and Cognition 27(3) (1999) 526; Cognitive Science 22(2) (1998) 189) name centrality and conceptual centrality tasks and asked subjects to judge functional and perceptual/visual features of living and nonliving items. Conceptual centrality results are more in accordance with a "single feature-domain connection hypothesis" where visual features are more important than functional features for the representation of living things and no feature type advantage is found for nonliving things. Name centrality results show that functional features are more important than sensory/visual features overall, a result that is not predicted by any of the hypotheses considered. The fact that the two judgments diverge emphasizes their importance for evaluating the role of feature type in the living/nonliving dissociation. Implications for explaining this phenomenon are also discussed.     

Use of landmark features and geometry by children and adults during a two-dimensional search task

Three- to six-year-old children (n = 28) and adults (n = 46) participated in a two-dimensional search task that included geometry and feature conditions. During each of 24 trials, participants watched as a cartoon character hid behind one of three landmarks arranged in a triangle on a computer screen. The landmarks and character then disappeared and reappeared in the same or a new position on the screen. During feature condition trials participants could use unique features of the landmarks to locate the hidden character, while during geometry trials participants could only use the geometry of the triangle. In both conditions, adults’ performance was near ceiling while children’s performance was significantly worse. Children’s performance was worse in the geometry condition than in the feature condition but search accuracy improved with age for both types of information. Findings are considered in the context of the broader literature on spatial cognition and development.     

Dynamic facial expressions are processed holistically,but not more holistically than static facial expressions

There is evidence that facial expressions are perceived holistically and featurally. The composite task is a direct measure of holistic processing (although the absence of a composite effect implies the use of other types of processing). Most composite task studies have used static images, despite the fact that movement is an important aspect of facial expressions and there is some evidence that movement may facilitate recognition. We created static and dynamic composites, in which emotions were reliably identified from each half of the face. The magnitude of the composite effect was similar for static and dynamic expressions identified from the top half (anger, sadness and surprise) but was reduced in dynamic as compared to static expressions identified from the bottom half (fear, disgust and joy). Thus, any advantage in recognising dynamic over static expressions is not likely to stem from enhanced holistic processing, rather motion may emphasise or disambiguate diagnostic featural information.     

Is the link between autistic traits and ability to succeed in science independent of other psychopathological dimensions?

IntroductionBesides the well-established link between autistic traits and scientific skills, the role of personality in students involved in science has not been thoroughly examined.ObjectiveThis study aimed at reexamining the link between scientific aptitudes and personality, by considering autistic features and other psychopathological dimensions.MethodTwo hundred and ninety-four individuals from French scientific universities answered questionnaires assessing autistic, schizotypal and bipolar dimensions, as well as depressive symptomatology and other variables.ResultsA cluster analysis led to the identification of 4 different groups, among which a cluster was characterized by high scores in autistic, schizotypal and bipolar dimensions. This group, representing nearly 30% of the sample, displayed higher level of depression symptoms (M = 28.5, SD = 12.0) in comparison with other groups (M = 11.7 to 19.1, SD = 5.4 to 9.2). Moreover, the suicidal ideation score was much more important in this cluster (M = 1.6, SD = 2.3) than in the three other groups (M = 0.1 to 0.5, SD = 0.3 to 1.3). This suggested that autistic features, when associated with other personality traits, interfere negatively with the ability of individuals to succeed in science studies, which was partly confirmed by comparing the academic level and results of the different clusters.ConclusionOne may reconsider the link between elevated autistic traits and the ability to accomplish science studies, considering that autistic features are thus frequently associated with other psychopathological traits which may, altogether, lead to depression or other comorbidities negatively interfering with the accomplishment of an academic cursus.