The existing emotion recognition techniques based on the analysis of the tone of voice or facial expressions do not possess sufficient specificity and accuracy. These parameters can be significantly improved by employing physiological signals that escape the filters of human consciousness. The aim of this work was to carry out an EEG-based binary classification of emotional valence using a convolutional neural network and to compare its performance to that of a random forest algorithm. A healthy 30-year old male was recruited for the experiment. The experiment included 10 two-hour-long sessions of watching videos that the participant had selected according to his personal preferences. During the sessions, an electroencephalogram was recorded. Then, the signal was cleared of artifacts, segmented and fed to the model. Using a neural network, we were able to achieve a F1 score of 87%, which is significantly higher than the F1 score for a random forest model (67%). The results of our experiment suggest that convolutional neural networks in general and the proposed architecture in particular hold great promise for emotion recognition based on electrophysiological signals. Further refinement of the proposed approach may involve optimization of the network architecture to include more classes of emotions and improvement of the network’s generalization capacity when working with a large number of participants.
VIEWS 5182
Congenital core myopathies are a clinically and genetically heterogenous group of congenital myopathies that share a specific histopathological feature: areas of reduced oxidative activity in muscle fibers. The relationship between clinical, genetic and morphological characteristics of this group of disorders remains understudied. The aim of this work was to compare clinical presentations and morphological phenotypes of patients with congenital myopathies/myodystrophy to the data yielded by massively parallel exome sequencing. Eight children were included in the study: 2 boys and 6 girls aged 3 to 14 years. Their biopsy material was analyzed by light and electron microscopy. Sequencing was performed on HiSeq2500. Mutations were detected in 7 (87.5%) of 8 participants. Six children had 8 mutations in the genes associated with congenital core myopathies; one patient had 2 mutations in the LAMA2 gene implicated in merosin-deficient muscular dystrophy. The proportions of patients with mutations in RYR1 and SEPN1 were equal (42.86%). Of 10 detected mutations, 3 had not been previously described, including c.7561G>A in RYR1, c.485C>A in SEPN1 and p.Cys1136Arg in LAMA2. The clinical and morphological features of core myopathies suggest that genetic causes of this group of disorders should not be limited to RYR1 and SEPN1 genes only. This necessitates the search for and the study of other genes implicated in congenital myopathies or myodystrophy using state-of-the-art molecular genetic tools.
VIEWS 5110
Process of development of epiretinal membrane (ERM) on the retinal surface of macular area is one of the important problems associated with vitreoretinal pathologies. Up to the present day, there has not been developed an effective method to arrest fibrosis at the early stages of its development. This study aimed to evaluate efficacy and safety of the new combined laser technique designed to treat early idiopathic ERM (stages 0–1). Ninety-two patients aged 64.7 ± 9.6 years (mean) participated in the clinical research. They were divided into three groups: treatment group (n = 32), patients whose ERM was treated following the new combined laser technique; comparison group (n = 30), patients who underwent grid laser coagulation; control group (n = 30), no treatment, observation of the natural course. Based on the results of examination of the patients, we assessed uncorrected visual acuity, best corrected visual acuity, central retinal thickness, central retinal sensitivity. Assessed against the results registered in comparison and control groups, the developed combined laser treatment technique applied in the treatment group proved to be highly effective in maintaining/improving visual functional indicators and stabilizing/improving morphofunctional indicators throughout the entire period of observation. As pertains to the morphological and functional structures of sensory retina, the technique enabled retinal sensitivity improvement at different stages of observation, which reflects its safety and efficacy.
VIEWS 4977