Summaries | Headlines

Those Who Once Were Blind Can Learn To See, Study Shows (February 20, 2007) -- How does the human brain "learn" to see? If the brain is deprived of visual input early in life, can it later learn to see at all? MIT researchers are exploring those questions by studying some ... > full story

Stem Cell Transplants Explored As A Possible Treatment For Hearing Loss (February 20, 2007) -- As a leader in stem cell-based research on the inner ear at the Stanford University School of Medicine, he's got a step-by-step plan for making this dream a ... > full story

New Research Finds People And Pigeons See Eye To Eye (February 20, 2007) -- Pigeons and humans use similar visual cues to identify objects, a finding that could have promising implications in the development of novel technologies, according to new research conducted by a ... > full story

Harnessing The Brain's Plasticity Key To Treating Neurological Damage (February 20, 2007) -- To truly harness the capacity of neural prostheses to treat complex damage of the nervous system, the devices must be designed to exploit the brain's "plasticity," or capacity for change, says ... > full story

Sense And Sensibility In Short-term Memory: Auditory And Visual Memory Use Similar Neural Mechanisms (February 20, 2007) -- More than three centuries ago, Sir Isaac Newton reflected on the similarities between the sense of hearing and the sense of sight. Newton's speculations were impossible to test scientifically, until ... > full story

Is There A Pilot In The Insect? (February 19, 2007) -- Researchers in France have revealed an automatic mechanism called the "optic flow regulator" that controls the lift force in insects. They then developed a captive flying robot, a micro helicopter ... > full story

Artificial Retina Could Help Blind Regain Partial Sight (February 17, 2007) -- Patients who have gone blind are a step closer to perhaps one day regaining some of their sight. Researchers at the USC Doheny Eye Institute announced the next step in their efforts to advance ... > full story

More Than Meets The Tongue: Color Of A Drink Can Fool The Taste Buds Into Thinking It Is Sweeter (February 16, 2007) -- Does orange juice taste sweeter if it's a brighter orange? A new study in the March issue of the Journal of Consumer Research finds that the color of a drink can influence how we think it tastes. In ... > full story

Computer Model Mimicks How Brain Recognizes Street Scenes (February 16, 2007) -- Scientists have developed a computational model of how the brain processes visual information and applied it to a complex, real world task: Recognizing the objects in a busy street scene. The ... > full story

Low-pitch Treatment Alleviates Ringing Sound Of Tinnitus (February 15, 2007) -- For those who pumped up the volume one too many times, UC Irvine researchers may have found a treatment for the hearing damage loud music can ... > full story

Psychologist Explains The Neurochemistry Behind Romance (February 14, 2007) -- The Beatles' George Harrison wondered in his famous love song about the "something" that "attracts me like no other lover." A University at Buffalo expert explains that that "something" is actually ... > full story

Study Looks At Benefits Of Two Cochlear Implants In Deaf Children (February 13, 2007) -- Nature has outfitted us with a pair of ears for good reason: having two ears enhances hearing. University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists are now examining whether this is also true for the growing ... > full story

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Sensory system -- A sensory system is a part of the nervous system responsible for processing sensory information. A sensory system consists of sensory receptors, neural pathways, and parts of the brain involved in ... > full article

Peripheral vision -- Peripheral vision is a part of vision that occurs outside the very center of gaze. There is in actuality a very broad set of non-central points in the field of view that is included in the notion of ... > full article

Motion perception -- Motion perception is the process of inferring the speed and direction of objects that move in a visual scene given some visual input. While this process appears straighforward to most observers, it ... > full article

Visual perception -- Visual perception is one of the senses, consisting of the ability to detect light and interpret (see) it as the perception known as sight or naked eye vision. Vision has a specific sensory system, ... > full article

Olfaction -- Olfaction, the sense of odor (smell), is the detection of chemicals dissolved in air (or in water, by animals that live under water). In vertebrates smells are sensed by the olfactory epithelium ... > full article

Alpha wave -- Alpha waves are electromagnetic oscillations in the frequency range of 8-12 Hzへるつ arising from synchronous and coherent (in phase / constructive) electrical activity of large groups of neurons in the ... > full article

Sensory neuron -- Sensory neurons are nerve cells within the nervous system responsible for converting external stimuli from the organism's environment into internal electrical impulses. For example, some sensory ... > full article

Hearing impairment -- A hearing impairment is a decrease in one's ability to hear (i.e. perceive auditory information). While some cases of hearing loss are reversible with medical treatment, many lead to a permanent ... > full article

Auditory system -- The auditory system is the sensory system for the sense of hearing. The sound waves enter the ear canal, a simple tube (but one which amplifies sounds that are between 3 and 12 kHzきろへるつ). At the far end ... > full article

Psychophysics -- Psychophysics is an interdisciplinary field occupying the intersection between cognitive psychology and experimental psychology and dealing with the relationship between physical stimuli and their ... > full article

Visual system -- The visual system is the part of the nervous system which allows organisms to see. It interprets the information from visible light to build a representation of the world surrounding the body. The ... > full article

Functional neuroimaging -- Functional neuroimaging is the use of neuroimaging technology to measure an aspect of brain function, often with a view to understanding the relationship between activity in certain brain areas and ... > full article

Empathy -- Empathy is the recognition and understanding of the states of mind, beliefs, desires, and particularly, emotions of others. It is often characterized as the ability to "put oneself into another's ... > full article

Attention -- Attention is the cognitive process of selectively concentrating on one thing while ignoring other things. Attention is one of the most intensely studied topics within psychology and cognitive ... > full article

Occipital lobe -- The occipital lobe is the visual processing center of the mammalian brain. The primary visual cortex is Brodmann area 17, located in the interior portion of the occipital lobe at the calcarine sulcus ... > full article

Hallucination -- A hallucination is a sensory perception experienced in the absence of an external stimulus, as distinct from an illusion, which is a misperception of an external stimulus. Hallucinations may occur in ... > full article

Learning disability -- In the United States and Canada, the term learning disability is used to refer to psychological and neurological conditions that affect a person's communicative capacities and potential to be taught ... > full article

Synesthesia -- Synesthesia (also spelled synæsthesia or synaesthesia, plural synesthesiae) is a neurological condition in which two or more bodily senses are coupled. In a form of synesthesia known as grapheme to ... > full article

Retina -- The retina is a thin layer of neural cells that lines the back of the eyeball of vertebrates and some cephalopods. In vertebrate embryonic development, the retina and the optic nerve originate as ... > full article

Theory of cognitive development -- Although there is no general theory of cognitive development, the most historically influential theory was developed by Jean Piaget, a Swiss Psychologist (1896-1980). His theory provided many central ... > full article