Frontiers in Neuroscience最新文献

{"title":"SpikeAtConv: an integrated spiking-convolutional attention architecture for energy-efficient neuromorphic vision processing.","authors":"Wangdan Liao, Fei Chen, Changyue Liu, Weidong Wang, Hongyun Liu","doi":"10.3389/fnins.2025.1536771","DOIUrl":"10.3389/fnins.2025.1536771","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Introduction: </strong>Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) offer a biologically inspired alternative to conventional artificial neural networks, with potential advantages in power efficiency due to their event-driven computation. Despite their promise, SNNs have yet to achieve competitive performance on complex visual tasks, such as image classification.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>This study introduces a novel SNN architecture called SpikeAtConv, designed to enhance computational efficacy and task accuracy. The architecture features optimized spiking modules that facilitate the processing of spatio-temporal patterns in visual data, aiming to reconcile the computational demands of high-level vision tasks with the energy-efficient processing of SNNs.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Extensive experiments show that the proposed SpikeAtConv architecture outperforms or is comparable to the state-of-the-art SNNs on the datasets. Notably, we achieved a top-1 accuracy of 81.23% on ImageNet-1K using the directly trained Large SpikeAtConv, which is a state-of-the-art result in the field of SNN.</p><p><strong>Discussion: </strong>Our evaluations on standard image classification benchmarks indicate that the proposed architecture narrows the performance gap with traditional neural networks, providing insights into the design of more efficient and capable neuromorphic computing systems.</p>","PeriodicalId":12639,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Neuroscience","volume":"19 ","pages":"1536771"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11936907/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143718558","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The contagion of neurologic Immersion predicts retail purchases.","authors":"Gaia Rancati, Kankana Ghosh, Jorge Barraza, Paul J Zak","doi":"10.3389/fnins.2025.1533784","DOIUrl":"10.3389/fnins.2025.1533784","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Consumers increasingly demand extraordinary experiences and businesses want to provide such experiences to build loyalty and increase customer lifetime value. One of the most significant aspects of consumer experiences is employee-customer interactions. We hypothesized that the value of customers' experiences would be reflected in the neurophysiology of sales associates and that these data would predict eventual purchases. We tested this hypothesis by measuring neurologic Immersion of sales associates serving customers (<i>N</i> = 56) in a field study in two luxury retail stores with actual customers. A synthetic dataset was generated from these data and showed that sales associates' peak Immersion was positively associated with the time customers spent shopping, which, in turn, positively scaled with how much customers spent. Estimating a machine learning model using sales associates' peak Immersion predicted which customers purchased with between 64% and 80% accuracy. Our results demonstrate that the neurophysiologic Immersion of one person can be used to predict the behavior of another person with whom they are interacting even when their goals may not be perfectly aligned. Moreover, we have shown that such a field study is feasible with real customers who are spending nontrivial amounts of money (M = $323, range: $0-$2,734). More generally, measuring the contagion of Immersion from one side of an interaction may be an effective way to assess and improve the quality of social engagements of many types.</p>","PeriodicalId":12639,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Neuroscience","volume":"19 ","pages":"1533784"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11936908/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143718561","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Exploring athletic expertise and conflict processing: behavioral and neural responses to head fakes and flanker tasks.","authors":"Siyu Gao, Zhibo Sun, Danlei Wang, Arash Mirifar, Chenglin Zhou, Mengkai Luan","doi":"10.3389/fnins.2025.1519011","DOIUrl":"10.3389/fnins.2025.1519011","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Deceptive actions in sports, such as head fakes, present cognitive challenges by misleading opponents with irrelevant cues, requiring individuals to resolve conflicting information. This study investigates how athletic expertise influences the processing of deceptive actions and broader conflict scenarios by comparing the behavioral and neural responses of basketball players and non-athletes across three tasks: the head-fake task, the flanker task, and the face-viewpoint direction flanker task. The behavioral results revealed that athletes exhibited shorter reaction times in the head-fake and face-viewpoint direction flanker tasks compared to non-athletes, suggesting an expertise advantage in processing kinematic information and social cues, while no group differences were observed in the flanker task involving non-social stimuli. ERP findings in the head-fake task revealed that non-athletes exhibited larger amplitudes in an early negative component over fronto-central electrodes and an early positive component over parieto-occipital electrodes compared to athletes, regardless of congruency, indicating different neural engagement between the groups. Further analysis suggests that these components may reflect a shared neural process for the entire action processing, rather than distinct processes for conflict resolution. Across all tasks, a significant congruency effect was observed, with faster and more accurate responses in congruent conditions compared to incongruent ones. However, no group-by-congruency interaction effects were found, indicating that athletic expertise does not provide a general advantage in conflict processing. Overall, our findings suggest that athletic expertise enhances the processing of kinematic and social information, but does not confer an advantage in conflict processing.</p>","PeriodicalId":12639,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Neuroscience","volume":"19 ","pages":"1519011"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11937072/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143718654","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Phosphorylated neurofilament heavy chain (pNfH) concentration in cerebrospinal fluid predicts overall disease aggressiveness (D50) in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.","authors":"Julia Meyer, Nayana Gaur, Janina von der Gablentz, Bernd Friedrich, Annekathrin Roediger, Julian Grosskreutz, Robert Steinbach","doi":"10.3389/fnins.2025.1536818","DOIUrl":"10.3389/fnins.2025.1536818","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Introduction: </strong>Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder, characterized by tremendous clinical heterogeneity that necessitates reliable biomarkers for the trajectory of the disease. The potential of phosphorylated Neurofilament-Heavy-chain (pNfH) measured in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) to mirror disease progressiveness has repeatedly been suggested but is not applicable as outcome on an individual patient-level. This potential was probably obfuscated before due to imprecise clinical measures of disease progression that assumed a linear decline of motoric function over time. The primary objective was therefore to study if disease aggressiveness, as quantified via the D50 model, would reveal more stable correlations with pNfH.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>ELISA-quantified pNfH CSF levels of 108 patients with ALS were comparatively analyzed in relation to three different measures of disease progression speed via analyses of covariance, linear and non-linear regressions, respectively. These were (a) the D50, depicting a patient's overall disease aggressiveness, (b) cFL, the calculated functional loss-rate as locally derived parameter of progression speed, and (c) DPR, the disease progression-rate as more commonly used linear approximation of points lost per month in the ALS functional rating scale since symptom onset.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>All analyses of covariance showed a significant main impact of the respective disease progression-speed parameter on pNfH, independent of disease phase, presence of frontotemporal dementia, analyzing laboratory, sex or clinical onset type, while only age revealed borderline additional influence. Notably, CSF pNfH concentration was independent of how far the disease had progressed, as neither disease phase nor a direct regression with the quantified disease accumulation at the time of lumbar puncture revealed a significant correlation. However, the parameter D50 quantifying aggressiveness showed the most significant impact on pNfH-levels, as compared to the cFL and even more evident in contrast to the DPR. This superiority of D50 was confirmed in direct linear and most evident in non-linear regressions with pNfH.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>Overall disease aggressiveness in ALS, as quantified by D50, most robustly correlated with CSF pNfH-levels, independent of the time of collection during symptomatic disease. This opens perspectives to use CSF pNfH as a prognostic outcome measure for future therapeutic interventions in the sense of precision medicine.</p>","PeriodicalId":12639,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Neuroscience","volume":"19 ","pages":"1536818"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11936903/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143718555","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Characterization of 2D precision and accuracy for combined visual-haptic localization.","authors":"Madeline Fischer, Umberto Saetti, Martine Godfroy-Cooper, Douglas Fischer","doi":"10.3389/fnins.2025.1528601","DOIUrl":"10.3389/fnins.2025.1528601","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article describes a combined visual and haptic localization experiment that addresses the area of multimodal cueing. The aim of the present investigation was to characterize two-dimensional (2D) localization precision and accuracy of visual, haptic, and combined visual-tactile targets in the peri-personal space, the space around the body in which sensory information is perceived as ecologically relevant. Participants were presented with visual, haptic, or bimodal cues using the body-centered reference frame and were instructed to indicate the corresponding perceived target location in space using a mouse pointer in an open-loop feedback condition. Outcomes of the unimodal (visual and haptic) and bimodal (combined visual-haptic) localization performance were used to assess the nature of the multisensory combination, using a Bayesian integration model. Results of the study revealed that the visual and haptic perceptive fields are characterized differently in terms of localization performance, providing important considerations for the transformation of each sensory modality when combining cues into a unified percept. The results reaffirmed many well known radial characteristics of vision with respect to localization, and identified a nonlinear pattern of haptic localization performance that was largely influenced by the midline of the center of the torso and each side of the cutaneous region. Overall, the lack of improvement in precision for bimodal cueing relative to the best unimodal cueing modality, vision, is in favor of sensory combination rather than optimal integration predicted by the Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) model. Conversely, the hypothesis that accuracy in localizing the bimodal visual-haptic targets would represent a compromise between visual and haptic performance in favor of the most precise modality was rejected. Instead, the bimodal accuracy was found to be equivalent to or to exceed that of the best unimodal condition, vision. The results provide some insight into the structure of the underlying sensorimotor processes employed by the brain and confirm the usefulness of capitalizing on naturally occurring differences between vision and haptic to better understand their interaction and their contribution to multimodal perception These results will help inform the development of future human-machine interfaces implementing haptic feedback mechanisms In the context of pilot performance, haptic localization can have several benefits including enhanced situational awareness, improved spatial orientation, reduced workload, thereby contributing to safer operations. These benefits can be applied to future systems for aircraft handling by helping overcome visual illusions and discrepancies between visual and vestibular sensory channels, especially in degraded visual environments.</p>","PeriodicalId":12639,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Neuroscience","volume":"19 ","pages":"1528601"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11936952/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143718649","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Preclinical insights into gamma-tACS: foundations for clinical translation in neurodegenerative diseases.","authors":"Guillermo Sánchez-Garrido Campos, Ángela M Zafra, Marta Estévez-Rodríguez, Isabel Cordones, Giulio Ruffini, Javier Márquez-Ruiz","doi":"10.3389/fnins.2025.1549230","DOIUrl":"10.3389/fnins.2025.1549230","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Gamma transcranial alternating current stimulation (gamma-tACS) represents a novel neuromodulation technique with promising therapeutic applications across neurodegenerative diseases. This mini-review consolidates recent preclinical and clinical findings, examining the mechanisms by which gamma-tACS influences neural oscillations, enhances synaptic plasticity, and modulates neuroimmune responses. Preclinical studies have demonstrated the capacity of gamma-tACS to synchronize neuronal firing, support long-term neuroplasticity, and reduce markers of neuroinflammation, suggesting its potential to counteract neurodegenerative processes. Early clinical studies indicate that gamma-tACS may improve cognitive functions and network connectivity, underscoring its ability to restore disrupted oscillatory patterns central to cognitive performance. Given the intricate and multifactorial nature of gamma oscillations, the development of tailored, optimized tACS protocols informed by extensive animal research is crucial. Overall, gamma-tACS presents a promising avenue for advancing treatments that support cognitive resilience in a range of neurodegenerative conditions.</p>","PeriodicalId":12639,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Neuroscience","volume":"19 ","pages":"1549230"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11936909/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143718556","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Real-time fMRI using multi-band echo-volumar imaging with millimeter spatial resolution and sub-second temporal resolution at 3 tesla.","authors":"Stefan Posse, Sudhir Ramanna, Steen Moeller, Kishore Vakamudi, Ricardo Otazo, Bruno Sa de La Rocque Guimaraes, Michael Mullen, Essa Yacoub","doi":"10.3389/fnins.2025.1543206","DOIUrl":"10.3389/fnins.2025.1543206","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Purpose: </strong>In this study we develop undersampled echo-volumar imaging (EVI) using multi-band/simultaneous multi-slab encoding in conjunction with multi-shot slab-segmentation to accelerate 3D encoding and to reduce the duration of EVI encoding within slabs. This approach combines the sampling efficiency of single-shot 3D encoding with the sensitivity advantage of multi-echo acquisition. We describe the pulse sequence development and characterize the spatial-temporal resolution limits and BOLD sensitivity of this approach for high-speed task-based and resting-state fMRI at 3 T. We study the feasibility of further acceleration using compressed sensing (CS) and assess compatibility with NORDIC denoising.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>Multi-band echo volumar imaging (MB-EVI) combines multi-band encoding of up to 6 slabs with CAIPI shifting, accelerated EVI encoding within slabs using up to 4-fold GRAPPA accelerations, 2-shot k_z-segmentation and partial Fourier acquisitions along the two phase-encoding dimensions. Task-based and resting-state fMRI at 3 Tesla was performed across a range of voxel sizes (between 1 and 3 mm isotropic), repetition times (118-650 ms), and number of slabs (up to 12). MB-EVI was compared with multi-slab EVI (MS-EVI) and multi-band-EPI (MB-EPI).</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Image quality and temporal SNR of MB-EVI was comparable to MS-EVI when using 2-3 mm spatial resolution. High sensitivity for mapping task-based activation and resting-state connectivity at short TR was measured. Online deconvolution of T₂* signal decay markedly reduced spatial blurring and improved image contrast. The high temporal resolution of MB-EVI enabled sensitive mapping of high-frequency resting-state connectivity above 0.3 Hz with 3 mm isotropic voxel size (TR: 163 ms). Detection of task-based activation with 1 mm isotropic voxel size was feasible in scan times as short as 1 min 13 s. Compressed sensing with up to 2.4-fold retrospective undersampling showed negligible loss in image quality and moderate region-specific losses in BOLD sensitivity. NORDIC denoising significantly enhanced fMRI sensitivity without introducing image blurring.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>Combining MS-EVI with multi-band encoding enables high overall acceleration factors and provides flexibility for maximizing spatial-temporal resolution and volume coverage. The high BOLD sensitivity of this hybrid MB-EVI approach and its compatibility with online image reconstruction enables high spatial-temporal resolution real-time task-based and resting state fMRI.</p>","PeriodicalId":12639,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Neuroscience","volume":"19 ","pages":"1543206"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11936983/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143718557","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The role of intracellular and extracellular copper compartmentalization in Alzheimer's disease pathology and its implications for diagnosis and therapy.","authors":"Yu-Qi Li, Shuang-Shuang Tan, Di Wu, Qian Zhang, Tao Wang, Gang Zheng","doi":"10.3389/fnins.2025.1553064","DOIUrl":"10.3389/fnins.2025.1553064","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Copper is a trace element indispensable for cellular physiology, integral to cellular redox balance, and a constituent of enzyme active sites, thereby playing a pivotal role in cellular physiological function. Concerning the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD), the homeostatic balance of copper is perturbed both intracellularly and extracellularly. The copper-amyloid precursor protein (APP) complex facilitates the efflux of copper from cells, leading to intracellular copper depletion. Concurrently, extracellular copper associates with amyloid-beta (Aβ) plaques, precipitating copper-enriched Aβ deposition and augmenting reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the brain tissue, which finally culminates in oxidative brain damage. The interaction between copper and APP enhances the α-secretase pathway of APP processing while suppressing the β-secretase pathway, resulting in an increased production of soluble APP (sAPP), which contributes to neuroinflammation in the brain tissue. Utilizing the affinity of copper for Aβ plaques, the application of chelating agents to sequester copper within the brain can mitigate neurodegeneration associated with AD pathology. Furthermore, the use of metal imaging techniques to detect copper in the brain offers a potential diagnostic tool for the early identification of AD.</p>","PeriodicalId":12639,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Neuroscience","volume":"19 ","pages":"1553064"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11936913/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143718563","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Early detection and classification of Alzheimer's disease through data fusion of MRI and DTI images using the YOLOv11 neural network.","authors":"Wided Hechkel, Abdelhamid Helali","doi":"10.3389/fnins.2025.1554015","DOIUrl":"10.3389/fnins.2025.1554015","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder and the leading cause of dementia worldwide, affecting over 55 million people globally, with numbers expected to rise dramatically. Early detection and classification of AD are crucial for improving patient outcomes and slowing disease progression. However, conventional diagnostic approaches often fail to provide accurate classification in the early stages. This paper proposes a novel approach using advanced computer-aided diagnostic (CAD) systems and the YOLOv11 neural network for early detection and classification of AD. The YOLOv11 model leverages its advanced object detection capabilities to simultaneously localize and classify AD-related biomarkers by integrating multimodal data fusion of T2-weighted MRI and DTI images from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) database. Regions of interest (ROIs) were selected and annotated based on known AD biomarkers, and the YOLOv11 model was trained to classify AD into four stages: Cognitively Normal (CN), Early Mild Cognitive Impairment (EMCI), Late Mild Cognitive Impairment (LMCI), and Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). The model achieved exceptional performance, with 93.6% precision, 91.6% recall, and 96.7% mAP50, demonstrating its ability to identify subtle biomarkers by combining MRI and DTI modalities. This work highlights the novelty of using YOLOv11 for simultaneous detection and classification, offering a promising strategy for early-stage AD diagnosis and classification.</p>","PeriodicalId":12639,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Neuroscience","volume":"19 ","pages":"1554015"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11932999/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143709733","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Foveal vision reduces neural resources in agent-based game learning.","authors":"Runping Chen, Gerd J Kunde, Louis Tao, Andrew T Sornborger","doi":"10.3389/fnins.2025.1547264","DOIUrl":"10.3389/fnins.2025.1547264","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Efficient processing of information is crucial for the optimization of neural resources in both biological and artificial visual systems. In this paper, we study the efficiency that may be obtained via the use of a fovea. Using biologically-motivated agents, we study visual information processing, learning, and decision making in a controlled artificial environment, namely the Atari Pong video game. We compare the resources necessary to play Pong between agents with and without a fovea. Our study shows that a fovea can significantly reduce the neural resources, in the form of number of neurons, number of synapses, and number of computations, while at the same time maintaining performance at playing Pong. To our knowledge, this is the first study in which an agent must simultaneously optimize its visual system, along with its decision making and action generation capabilities. That is, the visual system is integral to a complete agent.</p>","PeriodicalId":12639,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Neuroscience","volume":"19 ","pages":"1547264"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11933080/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143709734","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}