No Arabic abstract
We apply flicker-noise spectroscopy (FNS), a time series analysis method operating on structure functions and power spectrum estimates, to study the clinical electroencephalogram (EEG) signals recorded in children/adolescents (11 to 14 years of age) with diagnosed schizophrenia-spectrum symptoms at the National Center for Psychiatric Health (NCPH) of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences. The EEG signals for these subjects were compared with the signals for a control sample of chronically depressed children/adolescents. The purpose of the study is to look for diagnostic signs of subjects susceptibility to schizophrenia in the FNS parameters for specific electrodes and cross-correlations between the signals simultaneously measured at different points on the scalp. Our analysis of EEG signals from scalp-mounted electrodes at locations F3 and F4, which are symmetrically positioned in the left and right frontal areas of cerebral cortex, respectively, demonstrates an essential role of frequency-phase synchronization, a phenomenon representing specific correlations between the characteristic frequencies and phases of excitations in the brain. We introduce quantitative measures of frequency-phase synchronization and systematize the values of FNS parameters for the EEG data. The comparison of our results with the medical diagnoses for 84 subjects performed at NCPH makes it possible to group the EEG signals into 4 categories corresponding to different risk levels of subjects susceptibility to schizophrenia. We suggest that the introduced quantitative characteristics and classification of cross-correlations may be used for the diagnosis of schizophrenia at the early stages of its development.
This work introduces an integrative approach based on Q-analysis with machine learning. The new approach, called Neural Hypernetwork, has been applied to a case study of pulmonary embolism diagnosis. The objective of the application of neural hyper-network to pulmonary embolism (PE) is to improve diagnose for reducing the number of CT-angiography needed. Hypernetworks, based on topological simplicial complex, generalize the concept of two-relation to many-body relation. Furthermore, Hypernetworks provide a significant generalization of network theory, enabling the integration of relational structure, logic and analytic dynamics. Another important results is that Q-analysis stays close to the data, while other approaches manipulate data, projecting them into metric spaces or applying some filtering functions to highlight the intrinsic relations. A pulmonary embolism (PE) is a blockage of the main artery of the lung or one of its branches, frequently fatal. Our study uses data on 28 diagnostic features of 1,427 people considered to be at risk of PE. The resulting neural hypernetwork correctly recognized 94% of those developing a PE. This is better than previous results that have been obtained with other methods (statistical selection of features, partial least squares regression, topological data analysis in a metric space).
Schizophrenia (SZ) is a mental disorder whereby due to the secretion of specific chemicals in the brain, the function of some brain regions is out of balance, leading to the lack of coordination between thoughts, actions, and emotions. This study provides various intelligent Deep Learning (DL)-based methods for automated SZ diagnosis via EEG signals. The obtained results are compared with those of conventional intelligent methods. In order to implement the proposed methods, the dataset of the Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology in Warsaw, Poland, has been used. First, EEG signals are divided into 25-seconds time frames and then were normalized by z-score or norm L2. In the classification step, two different approaches are considered for SZ diagnosis via EEG signals. In this step, the classification of EEG signals is first carried out by conventional DL methods, e.g., KNN, DT, SVM, Bayes, bagging, RF, and ET. Various proposed DL models, including LSTMs, 1D-CNNs, and 1D-CNN-LSTMs, are used in the following. In this step, the DL models were implemented and compared with different activation functions. Among the proposed DL models, the CNN-LSTM architecture has had the best performance. In this architecture, the ReLU activation function and the z-score and L2 combined normalization are used. The proposed CNN-LSTM model has achieved an accuracy percentage of 99.25%, better than the results of most former studies in this field. It is worth mentioning that in order to perform all simulations, the k-fold cross-validation method with k=5 has been used.
We show that dynamical gain modulation of neurons stimulus response is described as an information-theoretic cycle that generates entropy associated with the stimulus-related activity from entropy produced by the modulation. To articulate this theory, we describe stimulus-evoked activity of a neural population based on the maximum entropy principle with constraints on two types of overlapping activities, one that is controlled by stimulus conditions and the other, termed internal activity, that is regulated internally in an organism. We demonstrate that modulation of the internal activity realises gain control of stimulus response, and controls stimulus information. A cycle of neural dynamics is then introduced to model information processing by the neurons during which the stimulus information is dynamically enhanced by the internal gain-modulation mechanism. Based on the conservation law for entropy production, we demonstrate that the cycle generates entropy ascribed to the stimulus-related activity using entropy supplied by the internal mechanism, analogously to a heat engine that produces work from heat. We provide an efficient cycle that achieves the highest entropic efficiency to retain the stimulus information. The theory allows us to quantify efficiency of the internal computation and its theoretical limit.
We study correlation properties of the magnitude and the sign of the increments in the time intervals between successive heartbeats during light sleep, deep sleep, and REM sleep using the detrended fluctuation analysis method. We find short-range anticorrelations in the sign time series, which are strong during deep sleep, weaker during light sleep and even weaker during REM sleep. In contrast, we find long-range positive correlations in the magnitude time series, which are strong during REM sleep and weaker during light sleep. We observe uncorrelated behavior for the magnitude during deep sleep. Since the magnitude series relates to the nonlinear properties of the original time series, while the signs series relates to the linear properties, our findings suggest that the nonlinear properties of the heartbeat dynamics are more pronounced during REM sleep. Thus, the sign and the magnitude series provide information which is useful in distinguishing between the sleep stages.
This paper reports nano-CT analysis of brain tissues of schizophrenia and control cases. The analysis revealed that: (1) neuronal structures vary between individuals, (2) the mean curvature of distal neurites of the schizophrenia cases was 1.5 times higher than that of the controls, and (3) dendritic spines were categorized into two geometrically distinctive groups, though no structural differences were observed between the disease and control cases. The differences in the neurite curvature result in differences in the spatial trajectory and hence alter neuronal circuits. We suggest that the structural alteration of neurons in the schizophrenia cases should reflect psychiatric symptoms of schizophrenia.