Adaptive rewiring: a general principle for neural network development.

The nervous system, especially the human brain, is characterized by its highly complex network topology. The neurodevelopment of some of its features has been described in terms of dynamic optimization rules. We discuss the principle of adaptive rewiring, i.

A multidisciplinary approach to forensic biological profiling on a single tooth and nail sample.

Introduction: Analysis of a single tooth and nail can provide valuable forensic information, including year of birth, year of death, age, sex, DNA-profile, geographic residence during childhood and at time of death and drug exposure. The aim is to minimize the amount of used bodily material and to validate the applicability of a multidisciplinary sampling protocol.

Methods: A nail of the big toe, a tooth and blood of seven deceased individuals were collected postmortem.

Prior EEG marks focused and mind-wandering mental states across trials.

Whether spontaneous or induced by a tedious task, the transition from a focused mental state to mind wandering is a complex one, possibly involving adjacent mental states and extending over minutes or even hours. This complexity cannot be captured by relying solely on subjective reports of mind wandering. To characterize the transition in a mind-wandering-inducing tone counting task, in addition we collected subjective reports of thought generation along with task performance as a measure of cognitive control and EEG measures, namely auditory probe evoked potentials (AEP) and ongoing 8-12 Hz alpha-band amplitude.

Retinal waves in adaptive rewiring networks orchestrate convergence and divergence in the visual system.

Spontaneous retinal wave activity shaping the visual system is a complex neurodevelopmental phenomenon. Retinal ganglion cells are the hubs through which activity diverges throughout the visual system. We consider how these divergent hubs emerge, using an adaptively rewiring neural network model.