Eiji Watanabe Lab @ NIBB, Japan

Why Do We See Colors in a Black-and-White Top? — Predictive AI Offers New Clues to a 200-Year-Old Mystery — When a pattern drawn only in black and white is rotated, people sometimes perceive colors that are not actually present. This phenomenon is known as “subjective color” and has been studied for approximately 200 years as one of the remarkable mysteries of vision. Among such phenomena, Benham’s top is a well-known example in which colors are perceived simply by spinning a black-and-white disk. A research group led by Kyohei Ueda, a graduate student at the Laboratory of Neurophysiology, National Institute for Basic Biology, and SOKENDAI; Dr. Lana Sinapayen, a researcher at Sony Computer Science Laboratories Kyoto and concurrently a Specially Appointed Associate Professor at the AI Facility, Center for Trans-Scale Biology, National Institute for Basic Biology; and Associate Professor Eiji Watanabe of the Laboratory of Neurophysiology, National Institute for Basic Biology, who also se...

Preparation of Pseudopregnant Recipient Females Using Female Mice ( Mus musculus ) Showing Nonestrous Signs: Investigation of a Unique Approach Based on the Whitten Effect Abstract Availability of pseudopregnant recipient females is an essential component of embryo transfer in mice. However, conventional methods for sorting females based on estrous signs (proestrus or estrus) require maintaining a large stock of mice, thereby presenting challenges for animal welfare. Furthermore, these large numbers of female mice are often maintained in group housing due to space constraints; and this can induce the Lee-Boot effect, leading to decreased preparation efficiency. Therefore, this study examined a method for preparing pseudopregnant recipient females using mice showing nonestrous signs through a unique approach based on the Whitten effect. Female ICR mice exhibiting metestrus or diestrus characteristics were deliberately sorted and housed with vasectomized males for 3 consecutive days. The...

  Title: Using SlowFast Networks for Near-Miss Incident Analysis in Dashcam Videos Authors: Zhang, Emura, and Watanabe

  The deep echo state network (Deep-ESN) architecture, which comprises a multi-layered reservoir layer, exhibits superior performance compared to conventional echo state networks (ESNs) owing to the divergent layer-specific time-scale responses in the Deep-ESN. Although researchers have attempted to use experimental trial-and-error grid searches and Bayesian optimization methods to adjust the hyperparameters, suitable guidelines for setting hyperparameters to adjust the time scale of the dynamics in each layer from the perspective of dynamical characteristics have not been established. In this context, we hypothesized that evaluating the dependence of the multi-time-scale dynamical response on the leaking rate as a typical hyperparameter of the time scale in each neuron would help to achieve a guideline for optimizing the hyperparameters of the Deep-ESN. Inoue, Nobukawa et al., Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence 2024 https://doi.org/10.3389/frai.2024.1397915

Integration of motion information in illusory motion perceived in stationary patterns https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-48265-4 Illusory motion is a phenomenon in which stationary images with repeating luminance gradient patterns appear to be moving. In this study, we conducted experiments focusing on illusory motion to verify the hypothetical rule that velocity information, extracted from local luminance patterns, is integrated by summation in visual information processing. This rule is based on the hypothesis of velocity integration, and could estimate perceived velocity of stimulus. The summation rule was evaluated by a psychophysical experiment. Our results showed that the summation rule unbiasedly predicted perceived velocity, suggesting that an algorithm for integrating velocity information in illusory motion is based on the summation rule. These results would contribute to understanding of the spatial integration of local motion signals in visual information processing.

Teleost fishes exhibit complex sexual characteristics in response to androgens, such as fin enlargement and courtship display. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying their evolutionary acquisition remain largely unknown. To address this question, we analyse medaka (Oryzias latipes) mutants deficient in teleost-specific androgen receptor ohnologs (ara and arb). We discovered that neither ar ohnolog was required for spermatogenesis, whilst they appear to be functionally redundant for the courtship display in males. However, both were required for reproductive success: ara for tooth enlargement and the reproductive behaviour eliciting female receptivity, arb for male-specific fin morphogenesis and sexual motivation. We further showed that differences between the two ar ohnologs in their transcription, cellular localisation of their encoded proteins, and their downstream genetic programmes could be responsible for the phenotypic diversity between the ara and arb mutants. These findin...

 Rapid evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) based on deep neural networks has resulted in artificial systems such as generative pre-trained transformer 3 (GPT-3), which can generate human-like language. Such a system may provide a novel platform for studying how human perception is related to knowledge and the ability of language generation. We compared the frequency distribution of basic color terms in the answers of human subjects and GPT-3 when both were asked similar questions regarding color names associated with the letters of the alphabet. We found that GPT-3 generated basic color terms at a frequency very similar to that of human non-synaesthetes. A similar frequency was observed when color names associated with numerals were tested indicating that simple co-occurrence of alphabet and color word in the trained dataset cannot explain the results. We suggest that the proposed experimental framework using the latest AI models has the potential to explore the mechanisms of...

 Teleost fishes exhibit complex unique sexual characteristics, such as fin enlargement and courtship display, in response to androgens. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying their evolutionary acquisition remain largely unknown. To address this question, we analysed medaka (Oryzias latipes) mutants deficient in androgen receptor ohnologs (ara and arb) generated by the teleost-specific whole-genome duplication event (TSGD). We discovered that both ar ohnologs are not required for spermatogenesis and appear to be functionally redundant for courtship display in males, while both copies were necessary for their reproductive success; ara was required for tooth enlargement and behavioural attractiveness, while arb for male-specific fin morphogenesis and sexual motivation. We further showed that the differences in both the transcription of the two ars, cellular localisation of their encoded proteins and their downstream genetic programs could be responsible for the phenotypic diver...

The water flea, Daphnia magna, is a representative zooplankton that lives in freshwater environments. It primarily propagates via asexual reproduction in normal and healthy environmental conditions. Unsuitable environmental conditions induce D. magna to change its mode of reproduction from asexual to sexual reproduction. During sexual reproduction, D. magna produces special tough eggs (resting eggs) that can survive severe environmental conditions. Despite an increase in our understanding of their mating behavior, the sex-specific characteristics of swimming behavior among daphnid species are poorly understood. In this study, we analysed the swimming patterns and dynamics of female and male adult D. magna using computer modeling. Males displayed laterally biased diffusion in contrast to the homogeneous, nondirectional diffusion of females. Computer modeling analysis using a discrete-time Markov chain simulation, in which the frequencies of turning behavior were evaluated as probability...

The Fiction Science Contest has its 2022 winners! Read all submissions here:  https://sites.google.com/view/fiction-science/archives

 In our previous study, we successfully reproduced the illusory motion perceived in the rotating snakes illusion using deep neural networks incorporating predictive coding theory. In the present study, we further examined the properties of the network using a set of 1500 images, including ordinary static images of paintings and photographs and images of various types of motion illusions. Results showed that the networks clearly classified a group of illusory images and others and reproduced illusory motions against various types of illusions similar to human perception. Notably, the networks occasionally detected anomalous motion vectors, even in ordinally static images where humans were unable to perceive any illusory motion. Additionally, illusion-like designs with repeating patterns were generated using areas where anomalous vectors were detected, and psychophysical experiments were conducted, in which illusory motion perception in the generated designs was detected. The observe...

Science progresses slowly, but occasionally jumps forward when a new discovery reveals that some common knowledge was based on wrong assumptions. Can fake discoveries also reveal shaky assumptions?   We write a short "breaking news"-like text reporting on an impossible discovery. You make up a plausible scientific explanation. Submission deadline: February 28th, 2022 - 23:59 Anywhere on Earth (AoE) Judges:  @Neuro_Skeptic @eijwat @sina_lana THE FICTION SCIENCE CONTEST

Why do we sometimes perceive static images as if they were moving? Visual motion illusions enjoy a sustained popularity, yet there is no definitive answer to the question of why they work. We present a generative model, the Evolutionary Illusion GENerator (EIGen), that creates new visual motion illusions. The structure of EIGen supports the hypothesis that illusory motion might be the result of perceiving the brain's own predictions rather than perceiving raw visual input from the eyes. The scientific motivation of this paper is to demonstrate that the perception of illusory motion could be a side effect of the predictive abilities of the brain. The philosophical motivation of this paper is to call attention to the untapped potential of "motivated failures", ways for artificial systems to fail as biological systems fail, as a worthy outlet for Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Life research. "Evolutionary Generation of Visual Motion Illusions" Lana Sinapaye...

"Using optical illusions and AI to study brain function" [Video content from NHK WORLD] is now available! URL:  https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/tv/scienceview/20211116/2015268/ Higher layers of neurons visualize more complex shapes (Illustration from NHK world)