Polymodal Information Research Articles

Information Technologies in Educational Management: Cultural Dimensions

The purpose of the article is to investigate the role of information technologies in educational management and their cultural manifestation. The research methodology involves the use of an interdisciplinary approach, as well as a set of methods: analytical, synthetic, cultural, which will allow a comprehensive consideration of the given issues and formulate reasonable conclusions. The scientific novelty lies in the systematic generalisation of educational management and its main development trends based on the influence of information technologies, as well as the identification of cultural intentions, taking into account the formation of the creative environment of higher education institutions. Conclusions. Digital information technologies are actively involved in the introduction into the educational sphere and its transformation, directly changing the algorithms of educational management and, in general, the principles of management activities in higher education institutions. Numerous technical capabilities have created a parallel virtual space where not only information is exchanged, but also other important activities take place: unlimited communication, self-representation, value transmission, and functional professional orientation in various spheres of activity, which determine the principles of organising society's life activities. Information technologies as a polymodal information and socio-cultural space undoubtedly act a subject of influence in the functioning of the educational sphere of society, actively generating new meanings, value orientations, professional competences and guidelines for society. Accordingly, systemic educational management should be based on information technologies that will facilitate the adoption of adequate management decisions within the framework of the formation of a humanistic educational paradigm, where one of the important factors is the principle of cultural creativity of the educational and socio-cultural space. Key words: information technologies, higher education institutions, educational management, cultural creativity.

Intelligent Control System Architecture for Phosphorus Production from Apatite-Nepheline Ore Waste

This paper proposes multilevel architecture for an intelligent control system for the complex chemical energy technological process of yellow phosphorus production from apatite-nepheline ore processing waste. The research revealed that, when controlling this process, one has to deal with large amounts of multiformat and polymodal information, and control goals differ at different levels not only in effectiveness criteria, but also in the structuredness of the level problems. On this basis, it is proposed that intelligent methods be used for the implementation of information processes and control goals at individual levels and the whole system. The artificial intelligence methods underlying the informational model of a control system offer solutions to problems of analyzing control processes at different hierarchy levels, namely the initial level of sensing devices, the levels of programmable logic controllers, dispatching of control and production processes, enterprise management and strategic planning. Besides, the intelligent control system architecture includes analytical and simulation models of processes occurring in the multistage procedure of ore waste processing by a plant consisting of a granulating machine, a conveyor-type multichambercalcining machine, and an ore thermal furnace. The architecture of information support for the control system comprises a knowledge-based inference block intended for implementing the self-refinement of neural network and simulation models. Fuzzy logic methods are proposed for constructing this block. The paper considers the deployment of control algorithms for a phosphorus production system using the Matlab software environment on the basis of a modern complex system development paradigm known as the model-oriented design concept.

PHENOMENOLOGY OF INTERDISCIPLINARITY AND ITS APPLICATION CONDITIONS IN TRAINING PROSPECTIVE TEACHERS OF ART AND HUMANITIES

The issue of interdisciplinarity in the modern educational space has been viewed as its organizational principle ensuring that the organization of the educational process complies with the requirements for the development of vision of a holistic picture of the world and personal world view. It has been shown that interdisciplinarity has a wider potential for education and science and can be determined as the methodological basis for research conducted in terms of polyparadigmity. The phenomenology of interdisciplinarity characterizing it through the indications of communicativeness, scientific and semantic role, synergy, personal and world view orientation, and research potential has been revealed. The pedagogical conditions guiding an individual to the independent use of interdisciplinarity in the context of phenomenological features related to the formation of a holistic world view have been presented. It has been shown that pedagogical conditions are introduced on the basis of several interdisciplinary content lines that provide a rhizomatic interdisciplinary model of education: artistic content line uniting integrated programs in art, a professional art form, cultural studies, and folk art; humanitarian content line combining aesthetics, ethics, cultural studies, and even economics with artistic culture and a professional art form, based on multiculturalism as well; professional and pedagogical content line combining psychological, pedagogical, and physiological knowledge of art education and humanities with creativity and pedagogical skills of the teacher; personal and acmeological content line uniting the content concept of creative development and self-realization on the basis of interdisciplinary connections that intensify the way of achieving creative success; experimental and methodological content line combining scientific knowledge and research methodology with the study of art itself and the phenomena of art education. The essence of interdisciplinary thinking as a rhizomatic model for exploring polymodal information sources has been clarified. The phenomenology of interdisciplinarity and the ways of its disclosure, such as the activation of research intentions relating to the content lines of the professional field of knowledge, the development of constructive interdisciplinary content and its introduction into the self-study tasks bank, reliance on the experience of students acquired beyond the learning in an informal way have been explored. The effectiveness of the application of the artistic, humanitarian, professional and pedagogical, personal and acmeological, experimental and methodological lines of interdisciplinary synthesis has been confirmed.

Мethods of polymodal information transmission

The research results upon the application of the existing information transmission methods in polymodal info communication systems are presented herein. The analysis of the existing commutation ways and multiplexing schemes has revealed that modern means of telecommunication are capable of providing polymodal information delivery with the required quality to the customer correspondent terminal. Under these conditions substantial capacity resource consumption in the data transmission networks with a simultaneous static time multiplexing is required, however, it is easier to achieve the modality synchronization within that kind of an infrastructure. The data networks with a static time multiplexing demand employing more sophisticated supporting algorithms of the guaranteed data blocks delivery quality. However, due to the stochastic data blocks delays modality synchronizing during the off-line processing is more difficult to provide. Nowadays there are objective preconditions for a data networking realization which is invariable to the applied transmission technology. This capability is defined by a wide (person-to-person) application of the optical technologies in the transport infrastructure of the polymodal info communication systems. In case of the availability of the customer terminal and networking functioning matching mode it becomes possible to organize channels in the latter which can adaptively select the most effective networking technology according to the current volume allocation and modality types in the messages.

Habitat-specific shaping of proliferation and neuronal differentiation in adult hippocampal neurogenesis of wild rodents

Daily life of wild mammals is characterized by a multitude of attractive and aversive stimuli. The hippocampus processes complex polymodal information associated with such stimuli and mediates adequate behavioral responses. How newly generated hippocampal neurons in wild animals contribute to hippocampal function is still a subject of debate. Here, we test the relationship between adult hippocampal neurogenesis (AHN) and habitat types. To this end, we compare wild Muridae species of southern Africa [Namaqua rock mouse (Micaelamys namaquensis), red veld rat (Aethomys chrysophilus), highveld gerbil (Tatera brantsii), and spiny mouse (Acomys spinosissimus)] with data from wild European Muridae [long-tailed wood mice (Apodemus sylvaticus), pygmy field mice (Apodemus microps), yellow-necked wood mice (Apodemus flavicollis), and house mice (Mus musculus domesticus)] from previous studies. The pattern of neurogenesis, expressed in normalized numbers of Ki67- and Doublecortin(DCX)-positive cells to total granule cells (GCs), is similar for the species from a southern African habitat. However, we found low proliferation, but high neuronal differentiation in rodents from the southern African habitat compared to rodents from the European environment. Within the African rodents, we observe additional regulatory and morphological traits in the hippocampus. Namaqua rock mice with previous pregnancies showed lower AHN compared to males and nulliparous females. The phylogenetically closely related species (Namaqua rock mouse and red veld rat) show a CA4, which is not usually observed in murine rodents. The specific features of the southern environment that may be associated with the high number of young neurons in African rodents still remain to be elucidated. This study provides the first evidence that a habitat can shape adult neurogenesis in rodents across phylogenetic groups.

The amygdala between sensation and affect: a role in pain.

The amygdala is a structure of the temporal lobe thought to be involved in assigning emotional significance to environmental information and triggering adapted physiological, behavioral and affective responses. A large body of literature in animals and human implicates the amygdala in fear. Pain having a strong affective and emotional dimension, the amygdala, especially its central nucleus (CeA), has also emerged in the last twenty years as key element of the pain matrix. The CeA receives multiple nociceptive information from the brainstem, as well as highly processed polymodal information from the thalamus and the cerebral cortex. It also possesses the connections that allow influencing most of the descending pain control systems as well as higher centers involved in emotional, affective and cognitive functions. Preclinical studies indicate that the integration of nociceptive inputs in the CeA only marginally contributes to sensory-discriminative components of pain, but rather contributes to associated behavior and affective responses. The CeA doesn’t have a major influence on responses to acute nociception in basal condition, but it induces hypoalgesia during aversive situation, such as stress or fear. On the contrary, during persistent pain states (inflammatory, visceral, neuropathic), a long-lasting functional plasticity of CeA activity contributes to an enhancement of the pain experience, including hyperalgesia, aversive behavioral reactions and affective anxiety-like states.

Differential postsynaptic compartments in the laterocapsular division of the central nucleus of amygdala for afferents from the parabrachial nucleus and the basolateral nucleus in the rat

Neurons in the laterocapsular division of the central nucleus of the amygdala (CeC), which is known as the "nociceptive amygdala," receive glutamatergic inputs from the parabrachial nucleus (PB) and the basolateral nucleus of amygdala (BLA), which convey nociceptive information from the dorsal horn of the spinal cord and polymodal information from the thalamus and cortex, respectively. Here, we examined the ultrastructural properties of PB- and BLA-CeC synapses identified with EGFP-expressing lentivirus in rats. In addition, the density of synaptic AMPA receptors (AMPARs) on CeC neurons was studied by using highly sensitive SDS-digested freeze-fracture replica labeling (SDS-FRL). Afferents from the PB made asymmetrical synapses mainly on dendritic shafts (88%), whereas those from the BLA were on dendritic spines (81%). PB-CeC synapses in dendritic shafts were significantly larger (median 0.072 μm(2)) than BLA-CeC synapses in spines (median 0.058 μm(2); P = 0.02). The dendritic shafts that made synapses with PB fibers were also significantly larger than those that made synapses with BLA fibers, indicating that the PB fibers make synapses on more proximal parts of dendrites than the BLA fibers. SDS-FRL revealed that almost all excitatory postsynaptic sites have AMPARs in the CeC. The density of AMPAR-specific gold particles in individual synapses was significantly higher in spine synapses (median 510 particles/μm(2)) than in shaft synapses (median 427 particles/μm(2); P = 0.01). These results suggest that distinct synaptic impacts from PB- and BLA-CeC pathways contribute to the integration of nociceptive and polymodal information in the CeC.

Integrating Visual and Tactile Information in the Perirhinal Cortex

By virtue of its widespread afferent projections, perirhinal cortex is thought to bind polymodal information into abstract object-level representations. Consistent with this proposal, deficits in cross-modal integration have been reported after perirhinal lesions in nonhuman primates. It is therefore surprising that imaging studies of humans have not observed perirhinal activation during visual–tactile object matching. Critically, however, these studies did not differentiate between congruent and incongruent trials. This is important because successful integration can only occur when polymodal information indicates a single object (congruent) rather than different objects (incongruent). We scanned neurologically intact individuals using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while they matched shapes. We found higher perirhinal activation bilaterally for cross-modal (visual–tactile) than unimodal (visual–visual or tactile–tactile) matching, but only when visual and tactile attributes were congruent. Our results demonstrate that the human perirhinal cortex is involved in cross-modal, visual–tactile, integration and, thus, indicate a functional homology between human and monkey perirhinal cortices.

Connections of the auditory cortex with the claustrum and the endopiriform nucleus in the cat

We studied the connections of eleven auditory cortical areas with the claustrum and the endopiriform nucleus in the cat, by means of cortical injections of either wheat germ agglutinin conjugated to horseradish peroxidase, or biotinylated dextran amines. Unlike previously accepted reports, all auditory areas have reciprocal connections with the ipsi- and contralateral claustrum, though they differ in strength and/or topography. The areas that send the strongest projections are the intermediate region of the posterior ectosylvian gyrus and the insular cortex, followed by the primary auditory cortex and the dorsal portion of the posterior ectosylvian gyrus. The high degree of convergence of cortical axons in the intermediate region of the claustrum, arising from tonotopic and nontonotopic areas, suggests that claustral neurons are unlikely to be well tuned to the frequency of the acoustic stimulus. Corticoclaustral axons from any given area cover territories largely overlapping with those occupied by the claustrocortical neurons projecting back to the same area. The location of cortically projecting neurons in the claustrum matches the position of the target cortical area in the cerebral hemisphere, both rostrocaudally and dorsoventrally. These findings suggest that the intermediate region of the claustrum integrates inputs from all auditory cortical areas, and then sends the result of such processing back to every auditory cortical field. On the other hand, the endopiriform nucleus, a limbic-related structure thought to play a role in the acquisition of conditioned fear, would process mostly polymodal information, since it only receives projections from the insular and temporal cortices.

A neural-network model of the cortico-hippocampal interplay: Contexts and generalization

This paper presents computer simulations of a neural network comprising two sensory pathways, each built of preprocessing and associative memory modules perhaps corresponding to a primary and higher sensory area, and a hippocampal area that serves as an integration of fusion zone during learning and retrieval of polymodal information. The network is able to store unimodal details about a complex environment in local assemblies restricted to the corresponding associative memory, whereas a representation of the simultaneous occurrences of several stimuli is constituted and stored in a self-organizing manner in the hippocampal area. This can be viewed as storage of a “particular context”. If many stimulus constellations are presented to the network during learning, it may over-learn, that is, the hippocampal area can no longer distinguish particular situations, but instead represents more general contexts or categories that a given environmental situation may belong to. Feedback from the hippocampal region to association areas can restore particular memories; it can still act as a threshold control gate raising sensitivity in the appropriate cortex regions when it is overloaded.