Biomedical subjects

L L Beason-Held

Publications and source records attributed to L L Beason-Held.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2000

Striate cortex in humans demonstrates the relationship between activation and variations in visual form.

Electrophysiologic and functional imaging studies have shown that the visual cortex produces differential responses to the presence or absence of structure within visual textures. To further define and characterize regions involved in the analysis of form, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to detect changes in activation during the viewing of four levels of isodipole textures. The texture levels systematically differed in the density of visual features such as extended contours and blocks of solid color present within the images. A linear relationship between activation level and density of structure was observed in the striate cortex of human subjects. This finding suggests that a special subpopulation of striate cortical neurons participates in the ability to extract and process structural continuity within visual stimuli.

Adult↗

PubMed1999

Hippocampal formation lesions produce memory impairment in the rhesus monkey.

There is much debate over the role of temporal lobe structures in the ability to learn and retain new information. To further assess the contributions of the hippocampal formation (HF), five rhesus monkeys received stereotactically placed ibotenic acid lesions of this region without involvement of surrounding ventromedial temporal cortices. After surgery, the animals were trained on two recognition memory tasks: the Delayed Non-Match to Sample (DNMS) task, which tests the ability to remember specific trial unique stimuli, and the Delayed Recognition Span Task (DRST), which tests the ability to remember an increasing array of stimuli. Relative to normal control monkeys, those with HF lesions demonstrated significant impairments in both learning and memory stages of the DNMS task. Additionally, the HF group was significantly impaired on spatial, color, and object versions of the DRST. Contrary to suggestions that damage to the entorhinal and parahippocampal cortices is required to produce significant behavioral deficits in the monkey, these results demonstrate that selective damage to the HF is sufficient to produce impairments on tasks involving delayed recognition and memory load. This finding illustrates the importance of the HF in the acquisition and retention of new information.

Animals↗

PubMed1999

Bolus injection versus slow infusion of [15O]water for positron emission tomography activation studies.

In positron emission tomography studies using bolus injection of [15O]water, activation responses reflect underlying CBF changes during a short time (15 to 20 seconds) after arrival of the bolus in the brain. This CBF sensitivity window may be too short for complex activation paradigms, however, particularly those of longer duration. To perform such paradigms, we used a slow infusion method of tracer administration to lengthen the CBF sensitivity window. The present study was designed to determine if this slow infusion technique yields similar results to a bolus injection with a short activation task involving memory for faces. When analyzed using statistical parametric mapping, scanning durations of either 90 or 120 seconds and a 90-second slow infusion schedule produced very similar results to a standard 60-second scan collected after bolus injection, indicating that statistically similar brain activation maps can be produced with the two infusion techniques. This slow infusion approach allows for increased flexibility in designing future studies in which a short CBF sensitivity window is a limiting factor.

Adult↗

PubMed1998

Cortical regions involved in visual texture perception: a fMRI study.

To determine visual areas of the human brain involved in elementary form processing, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to measure regional responses to two types of achromatic textures. Healthy young adults were presented with 'random' textures which lacked spatial organization of the black and white pixels that make up the image, and 'correlated' textures in which the pixels were ordered to produce extended contours and rectangular blocks at multiple spatial scales. Relative to a fixation condition, random texture stimulation resulted in increased signal intensity primarily in the striate cortex, with slight involvement of the cuneus and middle occipital, lingual and fusiform gyri. Correlated texture stimulation also resulted in activation of these areas, yet the regional extent of this activation was significantly greater than that produced by random textures. Unlike random stimulation, correlated stimulation additionally resulted in middle temporal activation. Direct comparison of the two stimulation conditions revealed significant differences most consistently in the anterior fusiform gyrus, but also in striate, middle occipital, lingual and posterior temporal regions in subjects with robust activation patterns. While both random and correlated stimulation produced activation in similar areas of the occipital lobe, the increase in regional activation during the correlated condition suggests increased recruitment of neuronal populations occurs in response to textures containing visually salient features. This increased recruitment occurs within striate, extrastriate and temporal regions of the brain, also suggesting the presence of receptive field mechanisms in the ventral visual pathway that are sensitive to features produced by higher-order spatial correlations.

Adult↗

PubMed1995

CA3 neuronal degeneration follows chronic entorhinal cortex lesions.

Entorhinal cortex lesions are a common experimental paradigm to study memory function and neural plasticity after hippocampal deafferentation. The long term consequences of such lesions are of particular interest both in the context of these models and because pathological changes of Alzheimer's disease destroy entorhinal cortex projection neurons. We used stereological counting techniques to assess the structural integrity of the hippocampal formation 0.5-28 months after entorhinal lesion in the rhesus monkey. Surprisingly, 18-28 months after lesion the number of CA3 neurons was decreased by 57%, while neuron numbers in other subfields did not change. These results suggest that delayed transsynaptic neural degeneration can occur long after brain injury.

Animals↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Age-related differences in visual perception: a PET study.

To assess age-related differences in cortical activation during form perception, two classes of visual textures were shown to young and older subjects undergoing positron emission tomography (PET). Subjects viewed even textures that were rich in rectangular blocks and extended contours and random textures that lacked these organized form elements. Within-group significant increases in regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) during even stimulation relative to random stimulation in young subjects were seen in occipital, inferior and medial temporal regions, and cerebellum, and in older subjects, in posterior occipital and frontal regions. Group by texture type interactions revealed significantly smaller rCBF increases in older subjects relative to young in occipital and medial temporal regions. These results indicate that young subjects activate the occipitotemporal pathway during form perception, whereas older subjects activate occipital and frontal regions. The between-group differences suggest that age-related reorganization of cortical activation occur during early visual processes in humans.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

PET reveals occipitotemporal pathway activation during elementary form perception in humans.

To define brain regions involved in feature extraction or elementary form perception, regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) was measured using positron emission tomography (PET) in subjects viewing two classes of achromatic textures. Textures composed of local features (e.g. extended contours and rectangular blocks) produced activation or increased rCBF along the occipitotemporal pathway relative to textures with the same mean luminance, contrast, and spatial-frequency content but lacking organized form elements or local features. Significant activation was observed in striate, extrastriate, lingual, and fusiform cortices as well as the hippocampus and brain stem. On a scan-by-scan basis, increases in rCBF shifted from the occipitotemporal visual cortices to medial temporal (hippocampus) and frontal lobes with increased exposure to only those textures containing local features. These results suggest that local feature extraction occurs throughout the occipitotemporal (ventral) pathway during extended exposure to visually salient stimuli, and may indicate the presence of similar receptive-field mechanisms in both occipital and temporal visual areas of the human brain.

Adult↗