http://www.physorg.com/ en-us Physorg.com internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. A new study may explain why the England soccer team keeps losing in penalty shootouts - and could help the team address the problem in time for the World Cup 2010. Research by the University of Exeter shows for the first time the effect of anxiety on a footballer's eye movements while taking a penalty. http://www.physorg.com/news179749980.html Medicine & Health Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:34:43 EST news179749980 (PhysOrg.com) -- Software that tracks shoppers' eye movements as they browse supermarket shelves may seem a bit Big Brother, but the latest technology in 'eye-tracking', which monitors what grabs a person's attention, could have far-reaching implications for consumers and result in services being tailored towards their specific interests in the future. http://www.physorg.com/news175356808.html Technology Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:30:04 EST news175356808 In a small "proof of principle" study, stroke researchers at Johns Hopkins and the University of Illinois have found that a simple, one-minute eye movement exam performed at the bedside worked better than an MRI to distinguish new strokes from other less serious disorders in patients complaining of dizziness, nausea and spinning sensations. http://www.physorg.com/news172497547.html Medicine & Health Fri, 18 Sep 2009 13:10:03 EST news172497547 (PhysOrg.com) -- Most parents will attest that infants convey their needs and interests in a variety of ways, many times without ever making a sound. For researchers in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, it is what babies communicate with their eyes that could be key to understanding the development of certain disabilities, including autism. http://www.physorg.com/news172157500.html Medicine & Health Mon, 14 Sep 2009 15:00:03 EST news172157500 (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists may have discovered a way to glean information about stored memories by tracking patterns of eye movements, even when an individual is unable (or perhaps even unwilling) to report what they remember. The research, published by Cell Press in the September 10th issue of the journal Neuron, provides compelling insight into the relationship between activity in the hippocampus, eye movements, and both conscious and unconscious memory. http://www.physorg.com/news171723086.html Medicine & Health Wed, 09 Sep 2009 13:51:45 EST news171723086 When the eyes move, objects in the line of sight suddenly jump to a different place on the retina, but the mind perceives the scene as stable and continuous. A new study reports that the brain predicts the consequences of eye movement even before the eyes take in a new scene. http://www.physorg.com/news170422607.html Medicine & Health Tue, 25 Aug 2009 12:50:01 EST news170422607 (PhysOrg.com) -- People from East Asia tend to have a tougher time than those from European countries telling the difference between a face that looks fearful versus surprised, disgusted versus angry, and now a new report published online on August 13th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, explains why. Rather than scanning evenly across a face as Westerners do, Easterners fixate their attention on the eyes. http://www.physorg.com/news169385578.html Medicine & Health Thu, 13 Aug 2009 12:33:41 EST news169385578 (PhysOrg.com) -- Technology that allows gamers to control game functions with only their eyes is helping to open virtual worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft to people with severe motor disabilities. http://www.physorg.com/news169305148.html Technology Wed, 12 Aug 2009 14:13:20 EST news169305148 The study of the neural basis of language has largely focused on regions in the cortex - the outer brain layers thought by many researchers to have expanded during human evolution. Research at Brown University's Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, reported in the September Issue of Cortex, published by Elsevier, adds to evidence that deeper, subcortical regions are also critical by pinpointing when Parkinson's disease patients have difficulty while processing grammatically complex sentences. In Parkinson's disease, degeneration of subcortical dopamine-secreting neurons leads not only to motor symptoms but often also to cognitive deficits. http://www.physorg.com/news168600345.html Medicine & Health Tue, 04 Aug 2009 10:26:14 EST news168600345 (PhysOrg.com) -- If you've ever felt doomed to repeat your mistakes, researchers at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory may have explained why: Brain cells may only learn from experience when we do something right and not when we fail. http://www.physorg.com/news168092756.html Medicine & Health Wed, 29 Jul 2009 13:26:18 EST news168092756 University of Utah School of Medicine researchers and their colleagues at University of Texas (UT) Southwestern Medical Center have found strong evidence that abnormal calcium signaling in neurons may play an important role in the development of spinocerebellar ataxia type 2 (SCA2), a disorder causing progressive loss of coordination, speech difficulty, and abnormal eye movements. Their findings are published in the July 27, 2009 issue of Journal of Neuroscience. http://www.physorg.com/news167488840.html Medicine & Health Wed, 22 Jul 2009 13:41:02 EST news167488840 Eye movement tests developed by Queen's University researchers to aid in understanding childhood brain development and healthy aging may also help in the diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and detecting the early onset of Parkinson's disease. The project has received close to $1 million in recent funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). http://www.physorg.com/news166714506.html Medicine & Health Mon, 13 Jul 2009 14:37:34 EST news166714506 (PhysOrg.com) -- Technology that allows gamers to control game functions with only their eyes is helping to open virtual worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft to people with severe motor disabilities. http://www.physorg.com/news165073860.html Technology Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:51:28 EST news165073860 Like the robots in the "Terminator" movies, our eyes move methodically through a scene when seeking out an object. If we don't immediately find what we're searching for, our attention leaves the already-scanned area behind and moves on to new, unexplored regions of a scene, still seeking the target. http://www.physorg.com/news164469120.html Medicine & Health Wed, 17 Jun 2009 15:30:01 EST news164469120 Researchers at the Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience (CMBN) at Rutgers University in Newark have identified the need to develop a new framework for understanding "perceptual stability" and how we see the world with their discovery that visual input obtained during eye movements is being processed by the brain but blocked from awareness. http://www.physorg.com/news163177022.html Medicine & Health Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:57:24 EST news163177022 Whether a monkey is looking to the left or merely watching another monkey looking that way, the same neurons in his brain are firing, according to researchers at the Duke University Medical Center. http://www.physorg.com/news161886058.html Medicine & Health Mon, 18 May 2009 17:21:22 EST news161886058 Facial recognition is not as automatic as it may seem. Researchers have identified specific areas in the brain devoted solely to picking out faces among other objects we encounter. Two specific effects have been established as being critical for facial recognition - holistic processing (in which we view the face as a whole, instead of in various parts) and left-side bias (in which we have a preference for the left side of the face). Psychologists Janet H. Hsiao from the University of Hong Kong and Garrison W. Cottrell from the University of California, San Diego wanted to test if these effects were specific for facial recognition or if they help us to identify other objects as well. http://www.physorg.com/news160145799.html Medicine & Health Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:57:15 EST news160145799 When we look at a scene in front of us, we need to focus on the important items and be able to ignore distracting elements. Studies have suggested that inhibition of return (in which our attention is less likely to return to objects we've already viewed) helps make visual search more efficient - when searching a scene to find an object, we have a bias toward inspecting new regions of a scene, and we avoid looking for the object in already searched areas. Psychologists Michael D. Dodd from the University of Nebraska - Lincoln, Stefan Van der Stigchel of Utrecht University, and Andrew Hollingworth from the University of Iowa examined if inhibition of return is specific for visual search or if it applies more generally in visual behavior. http://www.physorg.com/news158943465.html Medicine & Health Tue, 14 Apr 2009 15:58:25 EST news158943465 Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) tend to stare at people's mouths rather than their eyes. Now, an NIH-funded study in 2-year-olds with the social deficit disorder suggests why they might find mouths so attractive: lip-sync -the exact match of lip motion and speech sound. Such audiovisual synchrony preoccupied toddlers who have autism, while their unaffected peers focused on socially meaningful movements of the human body, such as gestures and facial expressions. http://www.physorg.com/news157558974.html Medicine & Health Sun, 29 Mar 2009 15:23:26 EST news157558974 (PhysOrg.com) -- To recognize faces in a crowd, the brain employs tiny eye movements called saccades and microsaccades to help us search for objects of interest. While researchers know that these movements are involuntary and vary in magnitude, they still do not fully understand how saccades and microsaccades work. http://www.physorg.com/news154327802.html Medicine & Health Fri, 20 Feb 2009 04:51:04 EST news154327802 Our eyes are in constant motion. Even when we attempt to stare straight at a stationary target, our eyes jump and jiggle imperceptibly. Although these unconscious flicks, also known as microsaccades, had long been considered mere "motor noise," researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies found that they are instead actively controlled by the same brain region that instructs our eyes to scan the lines in a newspaper or follow a moving object. http://www.physorg.com/news153670434.html Medicine & Health Thu, 12 Feb 2009 14:14:50 EST news153670434 Neuroscientists at Barrow Neurological Institute at St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center have discovered a direct link between eye motions and the perception of illusory motion that solves a 200-year-old debate. http://www.physorg.com/news146422347.html Medicine & Health Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:52:27 EST news146422347 Blindsight is a phenomenon in which patients with damage in the primary visual cortex of the brain can tell where an object is although they claim they cannot see it. A research team led by Prof. Tadashi Isa and Dr. Masatoshi Yoshida of the National Institute for Physiological Sciences, Japan, provides compelling evidence that blindsight occurs because visual information is conveyed bypassing the primary visual cortex. Japan Science and Technology Agency supported this study. The team reports their finding in the Journal of Neuroscience on Oct 15, 2008. http://www.physorg.com/news143222136.html Medicine & Health Tue, 14 Oct 2008 16:55:36 EST news143222136