"The function of the primary visual cortex (V1) has been extensively explored by electrophysiological recordings under passive viewing conditions. In recent years, the importance of exploring V1 function during active visual perception has been increasingly recognized. Notably, electrophysiological studies from awake behaving primates have demonstrated that visual stimulus processing in V1 is modulated by saccadic (rapid) eye movements. However, to date, we have a poor understanding of V1 neuronal responses in the context of other voluntary gaze movements, for instance, smooth pursuit gaze movements. In this thesis, a novel experimental design was used to investigate V1 neural response to a visual stimulus during smooth pursuit gaze movement (either by eye pursuit alone or by a combination of eye and head pursuit). A cynomolgus monkey was trained to actively perform horizontal smooth pursuit elicited by step-ramp target trajectories (0, 20°/s, 40°/s, 60°/s) of a fixation target, while single V1 neuronal responses were recorded in response to a drifting grating stimulus in the neuron's receptive field. To prevent a velocity mismatch between gaze pursuit and the visual stimulus, the position of the stimulus was adjusted online in a frame-based manner (60 Hz) according to the on-going gaze position, so as to keep the stimulus stabilized within the neuron's receptive field. The results revealed that, in conditions where the monkey generated smooth pursuit eye movements, neural responses exhibited an initial suppression around 100 - 200ms followed by an enhancement between 200 - 350ms, after stimulus onset. The initial suppression produced by smooth pursuit eye movement was reached earlier for the highest tracking velocity (i.e., 60°/s). In contrast, the timing of the subsequent enhancement did not change across pursuit velocities. Furthermore, the results also provide evidence that V1 neurons may signal the onset of head movement - V1 neurons demonstrated a response for the initiation of head motion during coordinated eye and head pursuit movement. Taken together, these results have revealed a clear modulatory effect on V1 visual processing from smooth pursuit gaze movement, suggesting that the visual system combines extra-retinal information about both eye and head movement to help maintain a perceptually stable world." --

Population-wide synchronized rhythmic bursts of electrical activity are present in a variety of neural circuits. The proposed general mechanisms for rhythmogenesis are often attributed to intrinsic and synaptic properties. For example, the recurrent excitation through excitatory synaptic connections determines burst initiation, and the slower kinetics of ionic currents or synaptic depression results in burst termination. In such theories, a slow recovery process is essential for the slow dynamics associated with bursting. This thesis presents a new hypothesis that depends on the connectivity pattern among neurons rather than a slow kinetic process to achieve the network-wide bursting. The thesis begins with an introduction of bursts of electrical activity in a purely excitatory neural network and existing theories explaining this phenomenon. It then covers the small-world approach, which is applied to modify the network structure in the simulation, and the Morris-Lecar (ML) neuron model, which is used as the component cells in the network. Simulation results of the dependence of bursting activity on network connectivity, as well as the inherent network properties explaining this dependence are described. This work shows that the network-wide bursting activity emerges in the small-world network regime but not in the regular or random networks, and this small-world bursting primarily results from the uniform random distribution of long-range connections in the network, as well as the unique dynamics in the ML model. Both attributes foster progressive synchronization in firing activity throughout the network during a burst, and this synchronization may terminate a burst in the absence of an obvious slow recovery process. The thesis concludes with possible future work.

Since the concept of the enterprise zone was envisioned by Peter Hall (1977), it has been widely used in many countries using different theories, policies and practices based on their different economic backgrounds and situations. In the research conducted for this thesis, the author briefly observed the enterprise zone practices in the USA, and then focused on the enterprise zone practices in China by analyzing a unique International Enterprise Zone, the Singapore Suzhou Industrial Park (CS-SIP) to see whether the main goals for the enterprise zone are reached. During the research, the author answered questions regarding why China selected Singapore as its model for this enterprise zone, what China wanted to learn from Singapore, whether this 7.5-year old collaboration is successful or not, what the management organizations of CS-SIP is, what kind of management is used in CS-SIP, and what criteria China used to choose the enterprise zone's location. By working on these questions, the author explored the set of factors governing that choice in China, the policies they set to develop this park, and the measurable achievements of it via some appropriate economic and financial data used as indicators of success or failure. The author concluded at the end of the research that this unique International Enterprise Zone should be considered a success and provides some future research directions regarding China's enterprise zone theoretical base, as well as the policies and practices based on it.