Publications by authors named "A L Levina"

The fundamental question of normal brain myelination in human is still poorly understood. : Age-dependent global, regional, and interhemispheric sex-related differences in brain myelination of 42 (19 men, 23 women) healthy adults (19-67 years) were explored using the MRI method of fast macromolecular fraction (MPF) mapping. : Higher brain myelination in males compared to females was found in global white matter (WM), most WM tracts, juxtacortical WM regions, and putamen.

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Cortical neurons are versatile and efficient coding units that develop strong preferences for specific stimulus characteristics. The sharpness of tuning and coding efficiency is hypothesized to be controlled by delicately balanced excitation and inhibition. These observations suggest a need for detailed co-tuning of excitatory and inhibitory populations.

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Developing reliable mechanisms for continuous local learning is a central challenge faced by biological and artificial systems. Yet, how the environmental factors and structural constraints on the learning network influence the optimal plasticity mechanisms remains obscure even for simple settings. To elucidate these dependencies, we study meta-learning via evolutionary optimization of simple reward-modulated plasticity rules in embodied agents solving a foraging task.

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Article Synopsis
  • siRNAs face challenges as antiviral agents due to poor cell penetration and instability, which can be addressed using non-agglomerated aminopropylsilanol nanoparticles (NP) for delivery.
  • The study focused on modifying siRNAs, specifically their nucleoside sequences, to create NP-siRNA nanocomplexes aimed at inhibiting the replication of the influenza A/H5N1 virus.
  • Results showed significant viral suppression, with the most effective nanocomplexes achieving a 900-fold reduction in virus replication, suggesting that certain siRNA modifications enhance their potential as therapeutic agents.
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The critical brain hypothesis states that the brain can benefit from operating close to a second-order phase transition. While it has been shown that several computational aspects of sensory processing (e.g.

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