Psychology
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Eulerian Video Magnification
Abstract Our goal is to reveal temporal variations in videos that are difficult or impossible to see with the naked eye and display them in an indicative manner. Our method, which we call Eulerian Video Magnification, takes a standard video sequence as input, and applies spatial decomposition, followed by temporal filtering to the frames.fMRI Evidence of ‘Mirror’ Responses to Geometric Shapes
Mirror neurons may be a genetic adaptation for social interaction [1] . Alternatively, the associative hypothesis [2] , [3] proposes that the development of mirror neurons is driven by sensorimotor learning, and that, given suitable experience, mirror neurons will respond to any stimulus. This hypothesis was tested using fMRI adaptation to index populations of cells with mirror properties.
"The mind is willing, but the flesh is weak": th... [Psychol Sci. 2012] - PubMed - NCBI
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i 1 Vote Research done at Pitt shows that decision-making memories are stored in a mysterious area of the brain known to be involved with vision and eye movements Aug 8, 2012
Why Living in the Moment Is Impossible | University of Pittsburgh News « Tracing Knowledge … Στα ίχνη της Γνώσης
Smelling a skunk after a cold: Brain changes after a stuffed nose protect the sense of smell
Credit: University of Wisconsin and Michigan State Comparative Mammalian Brain Collections and the National Museum of Health and Medicine Has a summer cold or mold allergy stuffed up your nose and dampened your sense of smell? We take it for granted that once our nostrils clear, our sniffers will dependably rebound and alert us to a lurking neighborhood skunk or a caramel corn shop ahead. That dependability is no accident. It turns out the brain is working overtime behind the scenes to make sure the sense of smell is just as sharp after the nose recovers. A new Northwestern Medicine study shows that after the human nose is experimentally blocked for one week, brain activity rapidly changes in olfactory brain regions .
Is the Map in Our Head Oriented North?
+ Author Affiliations Julia Frankenstein, Center for Cognitive Science, University of Freiburg, Friedrichstrasse 50, 79098 Freiburg, Germany E-mail: julia.frankenstein@cognition.uni-freiburg.de Tobias Meilinger, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Spemannstrasse 38, 72076 Tübingen, Germany E-mail: tobias.meilinger@tuebingen.mpg.de Abstract We examined how a highly familiar environmental space—one’s city of residence—is represented in memory. Twenty-six participants faced a photo-realistic virtual model of their hometown and completed a task in which they pointed to familiar target locations from various orientations. Each participant’s performance was most accurate when he or she was facing north, and errors increased as participants’ deviation from a north-facing orientation increased.Zap your brain into the zone: Fast track to pure focus - life - 06 February 2012
I'm close to tears behind my thin cover of sandbags as 20 screaming, masked men run towards me at full speed, strapped into suicide bomb vests and clutching rifles. For every one I manage to shoot dead, three new assailants pop up from nowhere. I'm clearly not shooting fast enough, and panic and incompetence are making me continually jam my rifle. My salvation lies in the fact that my attackers are only a video, projected on screens to the front and sides.
The man who hand-draws mathematical fractals
One of the subjects I work with, JP, has acquired synesthesia and acquired savant syndrome. This happened as a result of a brutal assault in 2002, during which he was kicked and hit on the head. He was subsequently diagnosed with a bleeding kidney and an unspecified head injury. What the doctors didn't know was that JP no longer saw the world the way he used to. Objects suddenly did not have smooth boundaries. Things no longer moved smoothly.
The statistical error that just keeps on coming | Ben Goldacre | Comment is free
In a hypothetical trial on two kinds of mice, several tests are needed to prove statistically significant differences. Photograph: Sam Yeh/AFP/Getty Images We all like to laugh at quacks when they misuse basic statistics. But what if academics, en masse, deploy errors that are equally foolish?
Shakespeare famously referred to "the mind's eye," but scientists at USC now have also identified a "mind's touch." USC scientists have discovered that as you look at an object, your brain not only processes what the object looks like, but remembers what it feels like to touch it as well. This connection is so strong that a computer examining data coming only from the part of your brain that processes touch can predict which object you are actually looking at. Building on previous work demonstrating a comparable link between the visual and auditory sectors of the brain, Antonio and Hanna Damasio's research group at the USC Dornsife Brain and Creativity Institute, used magnetic resonance brain scans and specially programmed computers to explore how memory and the senses interact. The findings appear in the September issue of the journal Cerebral Cortex .
Scientists probe connection between sight and touch in the brain
In an article published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ( http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/08/31/1112937108.abstract ), scientists from the Kanwisher lab at MIT report finding regions of the brain that are specialized for language! What, you aren't excited? Admittedly, this will not seem like news to the general public, despite the press release from MIT. In the popular imagination, local specialization--what we in the neurosciences call selectivity --is just how the brain works: this bit for vision, that bit for language, this one for motor control. So the paper reports exactly what we already know. Dog bites man.
MIT Scientists Declare There Is No Science of Brains!
A microglial cell from the mouse brain expressing green fluorescent protein. Photograph: EMBL/ Rosa Paolicelli The human brain is an organ of staggering complexity, with hundreds of billions of neurons and glial cells forming something like a quadrillion connections, or synapses. Generating this connectivity is a mammoth task, and the growing brain uses a number of strategies to ensure that the process runs smoothly – it produces far more cells than it needs, and these in turn form many more synapses than are required.
The brain treats unwanted synapses like invading microbes | Science
July 1, 2007 — Psychologists have found that thought patterns used to recall the past and imagine the future are strikingly similar. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging to show the brain at work, they have observed the same regions activated in a similar pattern whenever a person remembers an event from the past or imagines himself in a future situation. This challenges long-standing beliefs that thoughts about the future develop exclusively in the frontal lobe. Remembering your past may go hand-in-hand with envisioning your future! It's an important link researchers found using high-tech brain scans. It's answering questions and may one day help those with memory loss.
Brain Scans Of The Future -- Psychologists Use fMRI To Understand Ties Between Memories And The Imagination
God made man because He loves stories. ~ Elie Wiesel I’ve always loved this quote in part because I’m a sucker for stories. (As a writer I guess that’s a prerequisite, but we’re all storytellers by nature; yes, all of us.) Stories are how we make sense of our lives and the world and how we communicate with others. Stories also are how we make sense of ourselves . According to researcher Dan P.