The amygdala is the neural structure that acts as an evaluator of potentially threatening stimuli. We present a biologically plausible model of the visual fear conditioning pathways leading to the amygdala, using a topographic conditioning map (TCM). To evaluate the model, we first use abstract stimuli to understand its ability to form topographic representations, and subsequently to condition ...

Recent studies have provided convincing evidence that cellular forms of synaptic plasticity that are thought to represent the building blocks of learning and memory are also used during development to establish organized sensory projections within the brain.

Scree – a mass of small stones covering a slope on a mountain – is extremely labour-intensive to reproduce on topographic maps when each stone is drawn separately. Th is is due to the large number of stones – typically several hundreds of stones per square centimetre in a scree fi eld. An automatic procedure to produce scree representations would therefore greatly simplify and accelerate the pr...

Recognition of features in topographic maps is useful for GIS applications. In particular, elevation data can be extracted and utilized by recognizing contour lines in maps. In this project, the viability of contour extraction using image segmentation and Delaunay triangulation for line reconstruction was investigated. Results suggest that, while the method has a high success rate for well beha...

The self-organizing map (SOM) and neural gas (NG) and generalizations thereof such as the generative topographic map constitute popular algorithms to represent data by means of prototypes arranged on a (hopefully) topology representing map. However, most standard methods rely on the Euclidean metric, hence the resulting clusters are isotropic and they cannot account for local distorsions or cor...

Avalanches represent a very short, local, dynamic event in snow-covered mountainous regions. They are not easy to predict and often can produce devastating results. Avalanche cartography deals with the causes and consequences of such incidents and attempts to depict them in a variety of ways. The most common cartographic representation within this field is the avalanche hazard map. It incorpora...