What It’s Like to ‘Wake Up’ From Autism -- Science of Us For a long time, it was thought that people with autism spectrum disorder lacked emotion, that even the higher-functioning among them navigated the world like logical robots oblivious to “real” feelings. More recently, research has shown their social issues are more likely to stem from difficulty expressing emotion or reading the emotions of others. Though he wasn’t diagnosed with autism until he was 40, John Elder Robison felt isolated and disconnected throughout his entire youth and early adulthood. But in 2008, at 50, he took part in what became a three-year research project looking at brain function in individuals with autism spectrum disorders and exploring the use of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to help them. TMS is a noninvasive procedure that uses magnetic pulses to stimulate nerve cells in the brain. During treatment, a coil is placed against the patient’s scalp and the TMS energy passes through the skull into the outermost layer of the brain. What happened?
Scientists have found another new way to trick your brain Researchers at Bielefeld University in Germany have found a new way to outwit our perception, the cunning so-and-so’s. The scientists at the Cluster of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology, placed test subject’s fingers in an apparatus upon the surface of an elastic fabric strap. Picture: CITEC/BIELEFELD UNIVERSITY While touching the object, the strap would tighten or loosen at random, although the position of the subjects’ finger would barely change. The volunteers were asked to say whether they thought their finger had bent, and all were confused as to the reality of what had happened, as explained by Dr Alessandro Moscatelli: Astonishingly, all study participants estimated their finger to be most bent when the elastic band was loose. Essentially, the fact that our fingers are fleshy and can give way to a surface can betray our brains as to whether we're touching something hard or soft, as well as to whether our finger has moved. So, how's your perception?
Avian Brain & Senses Due to common ancestry, the brains of reptiles & birds are similar. However, birds have relatively larger cerebral hemispheres & cerebella. In addition, birds have larger optic lobes & smaller olfactory bulbs (Husband and Shimizu 1999). Source: Source: Sharp-shinned Hawk skull and brain Wood Stork skull and brain Woodpeckers, corvids, and parrots have longer, larger cerebellar lobes IV, VI, VII, VIII, and IX than many other birds. Side views of Zebra Finch & human brains. Bird brains (Nova - Science Now) Lecture: Harvey Karten explores what goes on inside a bird's brain. The cerebral hemispheres of birds, like those of other vertebrates, consists of 2 regions: a dorsal PALLIUM & a ventral SUBPALLIUM (including the basal ganglia, which are areas important in coordinating muscular activity) Schematic representation of two theories of brain evolution. From: Jarvis et al. (2005).
The reading test that shows you what it's like to be dyslexic Daniel Britton is a graphic designer who was diagnosed with full dyslexia in his last year as a student at the London School of Communications. In response to the diagnosis and in an attempt to recreate the emotional experience of dyslexia, he created a font. See if you can read it: Picture: Daniel Britton It took you a while, right? Daniel told indy100 that he made the font because he was frustrated with the current material which tries to mimic the condition - or give people a taste of it: What's out there at the moment, in most of the awareness posters, tries to recreate what it’s like with dyslexia - the problem is that with a non-dyslexic brain you can work out exactly what’s going on very, very quickly. Britton set up a crowdfunding page, with which he hoped to create an educational pack around the font, for use in schools, because he sees a lack of awareness about the realities of the condition. Daniel told indy100: >All of the inspirational posters in it are people like Brian Conley.
Neuroscientists: Specific Brain Waves Synchronize Brain Regions During Fear Behavior | Neuroscience A new study led by Nikolaos Karalis of the Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München and Dr. Cyril Herry of the Neurocentre Magendie has shed light on what actually happens in the brain during the retrieval and expression of fear memories. Top image: filtered signals recorded in the two brain regions identify the almost perfect synchronization between the two regions during the expression of fear memories. Bottom image: spectral decomposition of the brain signals allows researchers to identify the frequency and power of neuronal rhythmic oscillations during fear behavior. Fear response to traumatic or threatening situations helps us evade or escape danger. “Fear learning requires only a single experience for the association to be formed and each subsequent exposure to the conditioned stimulus leads to the retrieval of the memory.” “Could it be that this very characteristic state of the body is more than just a response to the stressor or conditioned stimulus?
There's only one type of brain that isn't fooled by this optical illusion Optical illusions are fascinating because of their ability to suspend reality tricking people into seeing a false image. And research indicates that one particular illusion fails to fool those who suffer from schizophrenia. The hollow mask is an illusion in which viewers perceive a concave, rather than convex face. The average brain perceives the world using a combination of bottom-up (what it sees) and top-down processing (the expectation based on experience), Wired reports. Danai Dima, Hannover Medical University and Jonathan Roiser of UCL put 16 healthy subjects and 13 schizophrenia patients through an fMRI machine, and measured their brain activity when they were presented with the image. Danai said: Our top-down processing holds memories, like stock models, all the models in our head have a face coming out, so whenever we see a face, of course it has to come out. Such is the strength of the connection, it makes the person perceive the illusion even when they know it to be one.
Kolmogorov download Presidential optical illusion offers clues to how brain processes faces | Science An optical illusion that appears after looking at pictures of Bill Clinton and George Bush offers important clues to how the brain and eyes see faces. The illusion is conjured by first concentrating for a short while on the red dot between the two men’s faces. When you look down at the second red dot, between a blended version of the faces, you will likely see Clinton’s face on the left side and that of Bush on the right. The illusion, from "Mechanisms of Face Perception" But the bottom two pictures are in fact exactly the same. The illusion comes from an effect called neural adaptation, or sensory adapation, where the way the brain understands things changes over time. It also means that if you look at Clinton for a while and then look at the merged picture, you’ll immediately see Bush, and vice versa. The image was used in a recent study that looked to understand how the eye and brain actually processes such images.
Researchers figure out similarities in brain architecture between birds and apes Some groups of birds are mentally just as smart as apes. This is the conclusion drawn by Prof Dr Onur Güntürkün from the Ruhr-Universität Bochum and Prof Dr Thomas Bugnyar from the University of Vienna in a review article in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences. The researchers compiled numerous neuro-anatomic studies which revealed many similarities in the brains of birds and mammals. These similarities may constitute the foundation of complex cognitive behaviour. At first glance, the brains of birds and mammals show many significant differences. In spite of that, the cognitive skills of some groups of birds match those of apes. Research results gathered in the recent decades have suggested that birds have sophisticated cognitive skills. Together, both researchers compiled studies which had revealed diverse cognitive skills in birds. Complex cognition without cortex In mammals, cognitive skills are controlled by the multi-layered cerebral cortex, also called neocortex.
This optical illusion will make a hole appear in your hand Breaking news: You probably have two eyes. Ok, that's not news, and frankly, this isn't a breaking story either, but it is a neat trick you may want to try if you've got a piece of paper to hand. Roll it up into a tube and look through it with one eye, as if a telescope, while placing your hand over your other eye, a couple of inches from your face. If you look through the tube primarily, it will begin to look like there is a hole in your hand. This is due to a thing called binocular rivalry - ie. your eyes competing for dominance in focus. Watch the full explainer by Vanessa Hill, below: HT Metro More: Seven still images that look like they're moving - and how they work More: The internet is obsessed with the colours of this dress
Bees 'dumb down' after ingesting tiny doses of the pesticide chlorpyrifos Honeybees suffer severe learning and memory deficits after ingesting very small doses of the pesticide chlorpyrifos, potentially threatening their success and survival, new research from New Zealand's University of Otago suggests. In their study, researchers from the Departments of Zoology and Chemistry collected bees from 51 hives across 17 locations in the province of Otago in Southern New Zealand and measured their chlorpyrifos levels. They detected low levels of pesticide in bees at three of the 17 sites and in six of the 51 hives they examined. Detecting chlorpyrifos was not a surprise. In the laboratory they then fed other bees with similar amounts of the pesticide, which is used around the world to protect food crops against insects and mites, and put them through learning performance tests. "For example, the dosed bees were less likely to respond specifically to an odour that was previously rewarded. Journal Journal of Chemical Ecology Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert!