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Study: People Pay More Attention to the Upper Half of Field of Vision

By Guest PostApril 27, 2014Sciencefruit fly hybrids, hybrid inviability gene, jing feng, milliseconds, nitin phadnis, north Carolina, paleo diaet, state university, university of toronto, vegetarier

A new study from North Carolina State University and the University of Toronto finds that people pay more attention to the upper half of their field of vision – a finding which could have ramifications for everything from traffic signs to software interface design.

“Specifically, we tested people’s ability to quickly identify a target amidst visual clutter,” says Dr. Jing Feng, an assistant professor of psychology at NC State and lead author of a paper on the work. “Basically, we wanted to see where people concentrate their attention at first glance.” (more…)

A Micro-Muscular Break Through

By Guest PostJanuary 13, 2014Scienceartificial muscles, berkeley lab, break through, carbon nanotubes, chromium, chun cheng, electronics industry, electrostatics, energy-efficient, helix, joonki suh, junqiao wu, kai liu, micro explosion, micro muscular, micro systems, milliseconds, motion, optical devices, pantheon of superstars, piezoelectrics, vanadium dioxide

Berkeley Lab Researchers Make a Powerful New Microscale Torsional Muscle/Motor from Vanadium Dioxide

Vanadium dioxide is poised to join the pantheon of superstars in the materials world. Already prized for its extraordinary ability to change size, shape and physical identity, vanadium dioxide can now add muscle power to its attributes. A team of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has demonstrated a micro-sized robotic torsional muscle/motor made from vanadium dioxide that for its size is a thousand times more powerful than a human muscle, able to catapult objects 50 times heavier than itself over a distance five times its length within 60 milliseconds – faster than the blink of an eye. (more…)

First Measurements Made of Key Brain Links

By Guest PostDecember 5, 2012Scienceamalia gonzalez, axons, barry connors, behavioral significance, brain scientists, brown university, consciousness, cortex cells, excitatory cells, fundamental functions, inhibitory neurons, margot elmaleh, mental arousal, milliseconds, nonspecific thalamus, omar ahmed, optogenetics, outermost layer, prefrontal cortex, saundra patrick, scott cruikshank, sensory signals, tanya stevens, thalamic signals, thalamocortical partnership

Until now, brain scientists have been almost completely in the dark about how most of the nonspecific thalamus interacts with the prefrontal cortex, a relationship believed to be key in such fundamental functions as maintaining consciousness and mental arousal. Brown University researchers performed a set of experiments, described in the Journal of Neuroscience, to explore and measure those circuits for the first time.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Inside the brains of mice and men alike, a relatively big football-shaped region called the thalamus acts like a switchboard, providing the prefrontal cortex, the part that does abstract thinking and decision-making, with most of its information. The thalamus’s responsibility even includes helping the prefrontal cortex to maintain consciousness and arousal. (more…)

Moral Evaluations of Harm are Instant and Emotional, Brain Study Shows

By Guest PostDecember 2, 2012Scienceaccidental, age, amygdala, brain, brain activity, callous unemotional traits, Chicago, data, emotion, empathy, evolutionary heritage, humans, hurtful action, intentional, jean decety, milliseconds, moral computations, moral response, morality, mri scans, posterior, psychopaths, split second, step, stephanie cacioppo, sulcus, superior, temporal, tpj area, university, ventromedial prefrontal cortex

People are able to detect, within a split second, if a hurtful action they are witnessing is intentional or accidental, new research on the brain at the University of Chicago shows.

The study is the first to explain how the brain is hard-wired to recognize when another person is being intentionally harmed. It also provides new insights into how such recognition is connected with emotion and morality, said lead author Jean Decety, the Irving B. Harris Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at UChicago. (more…)

Study of How Brain Corrects Perceptual Errors Has Implications For Brain Injuries, Robotics

By Guest PostMarch 24, 2011Sciencebiological and artificial systems, brain, david bowie, david wozny, flash of light, ladan shams, mars rovers, milliseconds, NASA, perception of the sound, perceptual systems, radio static, rehabilitation from brain injuries, robotic recalibration, sensory recalibration, shams, shams and wozny, spatial map, static environments, ventriloquist illusion

“Don’t you wonder sometimes about sound and vision?” — David Bowie

New research provides the first evidence that sensory recalibration — the brain’s automatic correcting of errors in our sensory or perceptual systems — can occur instantly.

“Until recently, neuroscientists thought of sensory recalibration as a mechanism that is primarily used for coping with long-term changes, such as growth during development, brain injury or stroke,” said Ladan Shams, a UCLA assistant professor of psychology and an expert on perception and cognitive neuroscience. “It appeared that extensive time, and thus many repetitions of error, were needed for mechanisms of recalibration to kick in. However, our findings indicate we don’t need weeks, days, or even minutes or seconds to adapt. To some degree, we adapt instantaneously. (more…)

Tag Archives: milliseconds

Study: People Pay More Attention to the Upper Half of Field of Vision

A Micro-Muscular Break Through

First Measurements Made of Key Brain Links

Moral Evaluations of Harm are Instant and Emotional, Brain Study Shows

Study of How Brain Corrects Perceptual Errors Has Implications For Brain Injuries, Robotics