Researchers find color sensitive atomic switch in bacteria
...rane-embedded protein, similar in structure to our visual pigments, is controlled by blue versus orange photon absorption." Spudich said. That function makes the protein unusual among its family of light-sensing proteins known as rhodopsins, which are present in microbes and higher animals. In human eyes...Knock knock knocking on rhythm's neural doors
... of the wrist while undergoing fMRI monitoring. A visual signal instructed the subjects to do one of three actions: rhythm -- flexing the wrist repeatedly at a comfortable pace, back and forth; discrete -- flexing the wrist, pausing, flexing it back, and rest. Another set of experiments had the timing of ...Anthrax enzyme images reveal secrets of antibiotic resistance, suggest new drug design
...ructural Biology department. "Without that kind of visual information it's impossible to fully understand how the enzyme works, how the sulfa drugs interfere with DHPS and what kind of changes in the structure of DHPS make this enzyme resistant to sulfa drugs." White is senior author of the Structure repor...Binocular rivalry: Fulfilling visual expectations
...aling in the brain allows expectation to influence visual perception. It is normal to think of vision as ... signals deep into the brain. It is in the brain's visual cortex that these signals are interpreted. Signals in the visual cortex also travel in the opposite,...Study reveals why eyes in some paintings seem to follow viewers
... have demonstrated the very natural cause for this visual effect. All it takes for the effect to work is to ...fessor of psychology at Ohio State University. Our visual perception takes care of the rest. "The core idea is simple: no matter what angle you look at a pain...Brain has center for detecting sound motion
...ocessing sound motion. While it was known that the visual system has a specialized region for perceiving mot...cation of sounds and their identity. Also, all her visual abilities remained normal. While her ability to detect sound motion improved over the next three yea...News tips from the Journal of Neuroscience
...ation of individual neurons in the middle temporal visual area (MT) Cook et al. Two highly-trained monkeys performed a motion detection task under two different attentional states. For cells that had robust responses to the motion stimulus, attention modulated the response function without a shift in the t...In a world of distortion, archer fish learn to judge absolute size of aerial prey
...any animals are able to judge the absolute size of visual objects, a skill that becomes especially useful fo...to judge absolute size, however, requires that the visual system be able to perform a critical correction to account for distance between the eye and the view...A genetic disorder yields insight into genes and cognition
...could reveal the "modularity" of the processing of visual information in the brain's visual cortex. The visual cortex is basically organized into two processing pathways--a ventral pathway tha...Rare deficit maps thinking circuitry
...e brain that processes locations of objects in the visual field. The researchers report on their Magnetic Re...uospatial construction deficit would be found in a visual processing circuit that courses forward and upward from the back of the brain. This "where" circuit ...Gene changes linked to increased eye pressure may have implications for glaucoma therapy
...ome squeezed. As this is the area that carries the visual signals from eye to brain, vision loss can occur, Borrs said. In earlier studies, Borrs and her research group had shown that a greater outflow of fluid occurred when researchers artificially increased the pressure in human donor eyes. "I...Brain's reward circuitry revealed in procrastinating primates
... errors, because they could no longer learn to use visual cues to predict how their work was going to get th...ed the task correctly when the spot turned blue. A visual cue--a gray bar on the screen--got brighter as they progressed through a succession of trials requir...Despite darkness, nocturnal bees learn visual landmarks while foraging at night
...h as the fabled honeybee, are well known for using visual landmarks to locate a favoured patch of flowers an... of Lund, Sweden, advance our understanding of the visual powers of nocturnal animals. The competitive and dangerous world of the tropical rainforest has driv...Biologists deciphering complex lemur scent language
...t particularly olfactorily equipped. They use more visual communications in their social groups. So, the prosimians represent sort of a more primitive branch of the primate tree, and they're more similar to species such as rodents in terms of olfactory communication playing a very important part of their so...Revealing bizarre deep-sea secrets
...where Dr. Frank and colleagues can study how their visual systems respond to light. The overall goal will be to learn what these animals are able to see under conditions where humans can see absolutely nothing. Answering such questions will not only help the team better understand the importance and functio...Computer imaging of Archeopteryx skull suggests this dinosaur-bird link could fly
...significant brain power because of the specialized visual and other requirements of flight. High flyers, for example, need to coordinate information coming from their eyes and ears, while relying less on smell. Because of the markings the Archeopteryx brain left inside its skull, the scientists could tell...Study explains spatial orientation differences between sexes
...Tremblay, is piloting a plane in a situation where visual cues have been lost. "Because women tend to judge their horizontal a few degrees below what it actually is, they tend to pull up to compensate, thus directing the plane away from the ground." Tremblay says his finding has good potential for practic...News tips from the Journal of Neuroscience
...ganize its auditory map to match its perception of visual space. This plasticity was thought to center on only one brain area--the inferior colliculus (ICX), the initial site in which the map is formed. Now DeBello and Knudsen identify a second site of plasticity: the superficial layers of the optic tectum ...New diagnostic technology helps justify earlier cataract surgery
...ment. These results could explain the significant visual symptoms in patients with early cataracts that the...ront testing can be used to accurately measure the visual errors that show up as glare and other problems that cataract patients experience. This will give i...Researchers find that color perception is not innate, but acquired after birth
...on, researchers have found new evidence that early visual experience is indispensable for the development of...ancy," is the most important property of the color visual system. It has been unclear based on previous work whether the attribute of color constancy is innat...