Noninvasive transcranial doppler ultrasound face and object...

Surgery – Diagnostic testing – Detecting nuclear – electromagnetic – or ultrasonic radiation

Reexamination Certificate

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Reexamination Certificate

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ABSTRACT:

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION
U.S. PATENT DOCUMENTS
U.S. Pat. No. 5,295,491
March 1994
Givens, Alan S.
600/544
U.S. Pat. No. 5,724,987
March 1998
Givens et al.
600/544
U.S. Pat. No. 6,309,361
October 2001
Thorton, Kirtley E.
600/544
U.S. Pat. No. 6,390,979
May 2002
Njemanze, Philip C.
600/438
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
This invention is related to computerized systems and methods for determining facial and object recognition using a portable non-invasive transcranial Doppler ultrasound equipment operatively connected to a microcomputer, and the system linked to a computer workstation.
In recent years development of cognitive neuroscience has sort ways to monitor facial and object recognition with the aim to identifying underlying neuropsychological mechanisms. The mechanisms involved in face and object cognition are complex and combine multi-modal memories that permit the experience of familiarity with a given face or object. It has been suggested that, face processing comprise at least three phases: the first, initial formation of a percept originating from the given face, the second phase involves matching the percept to pre-existing stored information, and the third phase involves a contextual non-verbal and/or verbal evocation as described by Kim et al, in an article titled “
Direct comparison of the neural substrates of recognition memory for words and faces” and published in Brain
, dated 1999, volume 122, pages 1069 through 1083.
However, monitoring facial and object recognition has not been an easy task. Currently, there is no comprehensive and universal approach for face and object recognition monitoring that could be implemented in forensic analysis or faces and objects associated with a crime scene. In other cases face and object processing could be applied in the advertisement industry to select the face on the cover of magazines or for product promotion. Similarly, the facial expression of a famous politician on a campaign poster could go a long way to create a desirable impression on voters. Other areas of application include use in plastic surgery when it becomes essential to change particular features of the face to reach a desirable target, for example an actress could wish to change some facial features to improve her sexual appeal among male fans using the brain effects evoked by the face of another famous actress. Object perception is crucial for marketing for example in the design of a new brand of car certain external features could be enhanced by using the known brain effects of these selected features from an old successful brand. To address these problems more effectively, it is important to understand the basic brain mechanisms that underlie face and object recognition. The neuroanatomical correlates of face processing have been fairly well studied. During the perception of faces, major activation occurs in extrastriate areas bilaterally, particularly in the fusiform gyri as described by Haxby et al, in an article titled “
Dissociation of object and spatial visual processing pathways in human extrastriate cortex
” published in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
, dated 1991, volume 88, pages 1621 through 1625, and in the inferior temporal gyri as described by Puce et al, in an article titled “
Face
-
sensitive regions in human extrastriate cortex studied by functional MRI
” published in
Journal of Neurophysiology
, dated 1995, volume 74, pages 11921 through 1195. The fusiform gyrus is activated by all face-processing tasks, suggesting that this area is involved in the first phase of perceptual operations not involving encoding and retrieval of the second phase as described by Haxby et al, in an article titled “
Face encoding and recognition in the human brain
” published in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
, dated 1996, volume 93, pages 922 through 927. Activation of the fusiform gyrus is non-specific and has been implicated in visual discrimination of color or shape as described by Corbetta et al, in an article titled “
Selective and divided attention during visual discriminations of shape, color, and speed: functional anatomy by positron emission tomography
” published in
Journal of Neuroscience
, dated 1991, volume 11, pages 2383 through 2402, and even by visually presented words as described by Nobre et al, in an article titled “
Word recognition in the human inferior temporal lobe
” published in
Nature
, dated 1994, volume 372, pages 260 through 263, but not by visual stimuli like checkerboards or dot patterns as described by Fox et al, in an article titled “
Mapping human visual cortex with positron emission tomography
” published in
Nature
dated 1986, volume 323, pages 806 through 809. Neuroimaging studies on the other hand, suggest that occipitotemporal regions were more active during face perception than during object perception as described by Sergent et al, in an article titled “
Functional neuroanatomy of face and object processing
” published in
Brain
, dated 1992, volume 115, pages 15 through 36, during face matching than during location matching as documented by Haxby et al (1991) and during face perception than while viewing scrambled faces as described by Puce et al (1995) or textures also described by Puce et al (1995). Thus, it has been suggested that different regions of the extrastriate cortex process different visual stimulus attributes. However, there is overwhelming evidence that neural substrates specialized for face perception, and not merely for object perception, exist in the extrastriate cortex.
Neuroimaging techniques have been applied in the study of affective aspects of face processing. In one such study increased regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) was seen in the left anterior frontal cortex when faces were judged as unattractive, while increased rCBF was increased in the left fronto-temporal cortex when faces were assessed as attractive as described by Nakamura et al, in an article titled “
Neuroanatomical correlates of the assessment of facial attractiveness
” published in
Neuroreport
, dated 1998, volume 9, pages 753 through 757. More specifically, perceived attractiveness of an unfamiliar face increases brain activity in the ventral striatum of the viewer when meeting the persons eye, and decreases activity when eye gaze is directed away as described by Kampe et al, in an article titled “
Reward value of attractiveness and gaze
” published in
Nature
, dated 2001, volume 413, page 589. Depending on the direction of the gaze, attractiveness could thus activate dopaminergic regions that are strongly linked to reward prediction, indicating that central reward systems may be engaged during the initiation of social interactions as discussed by Kampe et al (2001). Others have documented that passive viewing of beautiful female faces by males activates reward circuitry, in particular the nucleus accumbens as described by Aharon et al, in an article titled “
Beautiful faces have variable reward value: fMRI and behavioral evidence
” published in
Neuron
, dated 2001, volume 32, pages 537 through 551. Other investigators have established in studies using PET, the role of hippocampal formation during memory of faces as described by Kapur et al, in an article titled “
Activation of human hippocampal formation during memory for faces
. A PET study” published in
Cortex
, dated 1995, volume 31, pages 99 through 108.
It has been documented using neuroimaging methods that increasing the intensity of sad facial expression was associated with enhanced activity in the left amygdala and right temporal pole as described by Blair et al, in an article titled “
Dissociable neural responses to facial expressions of sadness and anger” Brain
, dated 1999, volume 122, pages 883-893. Others have documented enhanced activity in the left amygdala, left pulvinar, left anterior insula and bilateral anterior cingulate gyri was observed during the processing of fearful faces as demonstrated by Morris et al, in an article titled “

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