Tag: Perception

Researchers at Tokyo Institute of Technology, Imperial College London and the University of Tokyo have demonstrated that physical coordination is more beneficial in larger groups. The researchers used robotic interfaces to test coordination in groups of two, three and four partners, and found that performance was improving with every additional group member. The researchers believe

The pill could be blurring your social judgement — but perhaps not enough so you’d notice. By challenging women to identify complex emotional expressions like pride or contempt, rather than basic ones like happiness or fear, scientists have revealed subtle changes in emotion recognition associated with oral contraceptive pill (OCP) use. Published in Frontiers in

Ooh, surprise! Those spontaneous sounds we make to express everything from elation (woohoo) to embarrassment (oops) say a lot more about what we’re feeling than previously understood, according to new research from the University of California, Berkeley. Proving that a sigh is not just a sigh, UC Berkeley scientists conducted a statistical analysis of listener

Academics at the University of Warwick have found that low functional connectivity of the lateral orbitofrontal cortex that is associated with the tendency to smoke is associated with increased impulsiveness — which may contribute to the tendency to smoke. The high connectivity of the reward-related medial orbitofrontal cortex in drinkers may increase the tendency to

That moment when you step on the gas pedal a split second before the light changes, or when you tap your toes even before the first piano note of Camila Cabello’s “Havana” is struck. That’s anticipatory timing. One type relies on memories from past experiences. The other on rhythm. Both are critical to our ability

Consumers make assumptions based on the language used by a brand or advertiser, and politeness does matter, say researchers at the University of Oregon and University of Washington. In a series of three studies, Aparna Sundar, a professor of marketing in the UO’s Lundquist College of Business, and Edita Cao, a doctoral student in UW’s

According to a study conducted by the UAB and the UPO, scene changes diminish a spectator’s blink rate, producing an increase in attention. The results of the study demonstrate that a dynamic and chaotic audiovisual editing causes more activity in the visual processing areas, while continuous and orderly editing produces more cognitive processing activity. Scene

Nearly 30 years ago, scientists demonstrated that visually recognizing an object, such as a cup, and performing a visually guided action, such as picking the cup up, involved distinct neural processes, located in different areas of the brain. A new study shows that the same is true for how the brain perceives our environment —

A QUT journalism academic says the current freelancer-heavy market for media professionals could be preventing photographers and video journalists who report on traumatic news events from accessing the support they need. The results of TJ Thomson’s peer-reviewed study Mapping the emotional labor and work of visual journalism has been published in Journalism. “People understand exposure

New research suggests that higher-level brain functions have a major role in losing weight. In a study among 24 participants at a weight-loss clinic, those who achieved greatest success in terms of weight loss demonstrated more activity in the brain regions of the lateral prefrontal cortex associated with self-control. The results of the study were

Our level of alertness rises and falls over the course of a workday, sometimes causing our energy to drop and our minds to wander just as we need to perform important tasks. To help understand these patterns and improve productivity, Cornell University researchers have developed a tool that tracks alertness by measuring pupil size, captured

Researchers at the University of Waterloo have made progress towards predicting who is likely to feel sick from virtual reality technology. In a recent study, the researchers found they could predict whether an individual will experience cybersickness (motion sickness caused by virtual reality) by how much they sway in response to a moving visual field.

About every five seconds or so we close our eyes and blink to moisten them. During this brief moment no light falls on our retina yet it is not constantly dark and we continue to observe a stable picture of our environment. The brain seems to remember the percepts that have just happened. Caspar Schwiedrzik

For most people, the sense of happiness derived from a luxurious vacation, a good movie or a tasty dinner at a restaurant may seem short-lived, but what if it were possible to extend these feelings of enjoyment? Researchers from the University of Minnesota and Texas A&M University decided to explore whether the way people frame

The brains of professional beatboxers and guitarists respond to music differently when compared to each other and non-musicians, finds a new UCL-led study. The study, published in Cerebral Cortex and funded by Wellcome, sheds light on how learning and making music can affect mental processes. The researchers found that the area of the brain that

Scientists report they were unable to reproduce the results of a well-known study showing that people are less likely to cheat on a task after making a list of the Ten Commandments. Their findings are published in a Registered Replication Report (RRR) in Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, a journal of the

Figuring out how to make articles and videos go viral is the holy grail for any content creator. Although a magic formula remains elusive, in recent years, neuroscientists have forecasted which content will go viral by showing it to a small number of people and observing their brain activity. Now, they’ve taken that research a

Most animals have a keen sense of smell, which assists them in everyday tasks. Now, a new study led by researchers at NYU School of Medicine sheds light on exactly how animals follow smells. Published online in the journal eLife on Aug. 21, the study measured the behavior of fruit flies as they navigated through

Researchers have long believed that the amygdala, an almond-shaped structure in the brain, is central to the experience and perception of fear. Studies initiated in the 1990s of a patient with a rare condition affecting the amygdala initially seemed to support this conclusion. However, as Lisa Feldman Barrett, Ph.D., of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)

Being aware of our surroundings is a fundamental aspect of our existence. But what in our biological makeup determines how we access and interpret the endless stream of information around us? A new Tel Aviv University study published in Current Biology suggests that noradrenaline, a neurotransmitter responsible for arousal in the brain, plays a vital