OpenNeuro Research Articles

An effective diagnosis of schizophrenia using kernel ridge regression-based optimized RVFL classifier

Schizophrenia (SCZ) is a severe mental and debilitating neuropsychiatric disorder that disrupts a person’s thought processes, emotions, and behavior. Due to misdiagnosis, self-denial, and social stigma, many SCZ cases go untreated. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is an excellent noninvasive tool for soft tissue contrast imaging because it provides crucial data on tissue structure size, position, and shape. The Resnet50 network is a deep residual learning framework used for feature extraction. Random-vector functional link network (RVFL) is an example of a single-hidden-layer feedforward network in which input features and hidden layer features are fed to the output layer. In this paper, we introduced a kernel ridge regression-based random vector functional link (KRR-RVFL) classifier which focuses on addressing the linearity issues in RVFL by designating the kernel function in the input layer for the precise diagnosis of SCZ. The genetic algorithm (GA) seeks to minimize the loss function by optimizing the weights and biases of the KRR-RVFL network. The classification performance is investigated on the SCZ and cognitive normal (CN) subjects, collected from the available open neuro platform, including 99 participants. The results of the suggested network show superior performance to the recent state-of-the-art networks in terms of accuracy 93.66%, sensitivity 92.22%, specificity 95.17%, precision 95.33%, F-measure 93.74%, and G-mean 93.68%. The performance metrics demonstrated the applicability of this framework for assisting clinicians in the automatic, precise evaluation of SCZ.

A Study Over Brain Connectivity Network of Parkinson's Patients, Using Nonparametric Bayesian Model.

Parkinson disease is a neurodegenerative disease that disrupts functional brain networks. Many neurodegenerative disorders are associated with changes in brain communication patterns. Resting-state functional connectivity studies can distinguish the topological structure of Parkinson patients from healthy individuals by analyzing patterns between different regions of the brain. Accordingly, the present study aimed to determine the brain topological features and functional connectivity in patients with Parkinson disease, using a Bayesian approach. The data of this study were downloaded from the open neuro site. These data include resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) of 11 healthy individuals and 11 Parkinson patients with mean ages of 64.36 and 63.73, respectively. An advanced nonparametric Bayesian model was used to evaluate topological characteristics, including clustering of brain regions and correlation coefficient of the clusters. The significance of functional relationships based on each edge between the two groups was examined through false discovery rate (FDR) and network-based statistics (NBS) methods. Brain connectivity results showed a major difference in terms of the number of regions in each cluster and the correlation coefficient between the patient and healthy groups. The largest clusters in the patient and control groups were 26 and 53 regions, respectively, with clustering correlation values of 0.36 and 0.26. Although there are 15 common areas across the two clusters, the intensity of the functional relationship between these areas was different in the two groups. Moreover, using NBS and FDR methods, no significant difference was observed for each edge between the patient and healthy groups (P>0.05). The results of this study show a different topological configuration of the brain network between the patient and healthy groups, indicating changes in the functional relationship between a set of areas of the brain.

OpenNeuro – a free online platform for sharing and analysis of neuroimaging data

OpenNeuro – a free online platform for sharing and analysis of neuroimaging data

Augmented Cognition via Brainwave Entrainment in Virtual Reality: An Open, Integrated Brain Augmentation in a Neuroscience System Approach

Building on augmented cognition theory and technology, our novel contribution in this work enables accelerated, certain brain functions related to task performance as well as their enhancement. We integrated in an open-source framework, latest immersive virtual reality (VR) head-mounted displays, with the Emotiv EPOC EEG headset in an open neuro- and biofeedback system for cognitive state detection and augmentation. Our novel methodology allows to significantly accelerate content presentation in immersive VR, while lowering brain frequency at alpha level—without losing content retention by the user. In our pilot experiments, we tested our innovative VR platform by presenting to N = 25 subjects a complex 3D maze test and different learning procedures for them on how to exit it. The subjects exposed to our VR-induced entrainment learning technology performed significantly better than those exposed to other “classical” learning procedures. In particular, cognitive task performance augmentation was measured for: learning time, complex navigational skills and decision-making abilities, orientation ability.