The brain is structurally and functionally modular, although recent evidence has raised questions about the extent of both types of modularity. Using a simple, toy artificial neural network setup that allows for precise control, we find that structural modularity does not in general guarantee functional specialization (across multiple measures of specialization). Further, in this setup (1) specialization only emerges when features of the environment are meaningfully separable, (2) specialization preferentially emerges when the network is strongly resource-constrained, and (3) these findings are qualitatively similar across several different variations of network architectures.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnimals continuously detect information via multiple sensory channels, like vision and hearing, and integrate these signals to realise faster and more accurate decisions; a fundamental neural computation known as multisensory integration. A widespread view of this process is that multimodal neurons linearly fuse information across sensory channels. However, does linear fusion generalise beyond the classical tasks used to explore multisensory integration? Here, we develop novel multisensory tasks, which focus on the underlying statistical relationships between channels, and deploy models at three levels of abstraction: from probabilistic ideal observers to artificial and spiking neural networks.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFcauses bacterial leaf blight in rice, and its global spread has been exacerbated by climate change. To understand the genetic diversity and virulence of strains isolated from rice cultivars in Perú, 47 isolates were obtained from infected rice fields, all belonging to , and confirmed by A and B sequences. The BOX-PCR typing group has 38 genomic profiles, and these turn into seven variable number tandem repeats (VNTR) haplotypes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDue to their potential applications for food safety, there is a growing interest in rice root-associated microbial communities, but some systems remain understudied. Here, we compare the assemblage of root-associated microbiota in rice sampled in 19 small farmer's fields from irrigated and rainfed lowlands in Burkina Faso, using an amplicon metabarcoding approach of the 16S rRNA gene (prokaryotes, three plant samples per field) and ITS (fungi, one sample per field). In addition to the expected structure by root compartments (root vs rhizosphere) and geographical zones, we showed that the rice production system is a major driver of microbiome structure.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBurkholderia vietnamiensis LMG10929 and Paraburkholderia kururiensis M130 are bacterial rice growth-promoting models. Besides this common ecological niche, species of the genus are also found as opportunistic human pathogens, while species are mostly environmental and plant associated. In this study, we compared the genetic strategies used by B.
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