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Qingming Luo

Publications and source records attributed to Qingming Luo.

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Let Robots Feel Your Touch: Visuo-Tactile Cortical Alignment for Embodied Mirror Resonance

Observing touch on another's body can elicit corresponding tactile sensations in the observer, a phenomenon termed mirror touch that supports empathy and social perception. This visuo-tactile resonance is thought to rely on structural correspondence between visual and somatosensory cortices, yet robotic systems lack computational frameworks that instantiate this principle. Here we demonstrate that cortical correspondence can be operationalized to endow robots with mirror touch. We introduce Mirror Touch Net, which imposes semantic, distributional and geometric alignment between visual and tactile representations through multi-level constraints, enabling prediction of millimetre-scale tactile signals across 1,140 taxels on a robotic hand from RGB images. Manifold analysis reveals that these constraints reshape visual representations into geometry consistent with the tactile manifold, reducing the complexity of cross-modal mapping. Extending this alignment framework to cross-domain observations of human hands enables tactile prediction and reflexive responses to observed human touch. Our results link a neural principle of visuo-tactile resonance to robotic perception, providing an explainable route towards anticipatory touch and empathic human-robot interaction. Code is available at https://github.com/fun0515/Mirror-Touch-Net.

cs.RO

Semantic-Enhanced Feature Matching with Learnable Geometric Verification for Cross-Modal Neuron Registration

Accurately registering in-vivo two-photon and ex-vivo fluorescence micro-optical sectioning tomography images of individual neurons is critical for structure-function analysis in neuroscience. This task is profoundly challenging due to a significant cross-modality appearance gap, the scarcity of annotated data and severe tissue deformations. We propose a novel deep learning framework to address these issues. Our method introduces a semantic-enhanced hybrid feature descriptor, which fuses the geometric precision of local features with the contextual robustness of a vision foundation model DINOV3 to bridge the modality gap. To handle complex deformations, we replace traditional RANSAC with a learnable Geometric Consistency Confidence Module, a novel classifier trained to identify and reject physically implausible correspondences. A data-efficient two-stage training strategy, involving pre-training on synthetically deformed data and fine-tuning on limited real data, overcomes the data scarcity problem. Our framework provides a robust and accurate solution for high-precision registration in challenging biomedical imaging scenarios, enabling large-scale correlative studies.

eess.IV

A large-scale complexity-graded dataset of neuronal images and annotations

Accurate reconstruction of neuronal morphology is essential for classifying cell types and understanding brain connectivity. Recent advances in imaging and reconstruction techniques have greatly expanded the scale and quality of neuronal data. However, large-scale, standardized annotated datasets remain limited. Here, we present an open, multi-level neuronal dataset covering the whole mouse brain. Using a hierarchical strategy, we divided imaging data from 237 mouse brains into about 13,570,000 standardized blocks, classified into four levels of reconstruction difficulty. With the custom-developed reconstruction platform, we achieved high-precision three-dimensional reconstructions of 9,676 neurons at the whole-brain scale. This dataset will be made publicly available, providing a valuable resource for algorithm development and brain circuit modeling in neuroscience research.

q-bio.NC

Convergent and divergent connectivity patterns of the arcuate fasciculus in macaques and humans

The organization and connectivity of the arcuate fasciculus (AF) in nonhuman primates remain contentious, especially concerning how its anatomy diverges from that of humans. Here, we combined cross-scale single-neuron tracing - using viral-based genetic labeling and fluorescence micro-optical sectioning tomography in macaques (n = 4; age 3 - 11 years) - with whole-brain tractography from 11.7T diffusion MRI. Complemented by spectral embedding analysis of 7.0T MRI in humans, we performed a comparative connectomic analysis of the AF across species. We demonstrate that the macaque AF originates in the temporal-parietal cortex, traverses the auditory cortex and parietal operculum, and projects into prefrontal regions. In contrast, the human AF exhibits greater expansion into the middle temporal gyrus and stronger prefrontal and parietal operculum connectivity - divergences quantified by Kullback-Leibler analysis that likely underpin the evolutionary specialization of human language networks. These interspecies differences - particularly the human AF's broader temporal integration and strengthened frontoparietal linkages - suggest a connectivity-based substrate for the emergence of advanced language processing unique to humans. Furthermore, our findings offer a neuroanatomical framework for understanding AF-related disorders such as aphasia and dyslexia, where aberrant connectivity disrupts language function.

q-bio.NC

Grand Challenges for Global Brain Sciences

The next grand challenges for society and science are in the brain sciences. A collection of 60+ scientists from around the world, together with 10+ observers from national, private, and foundations, spent two days together discussing the top challenges that we could solve as a global community in the next decade. We eventually settled on three challenges, spanning anatomy, physiology, and medicine. Addressing all three challenges requires novel computational infrastructure. The group proposed the advent of The International Brain Station (TIBS), to address these challenges, and launch brain sciences to the next level of understanding.

q-bio.NC