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. 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 Video games that involve high levels of action, such as first-person-shooter games, increase a player's real-world vision, according to research in today's Nature Neuroscience. http://www.physorg.com/news157558426.html Medicine & Health Sun, 29 Mar 2009 15:14:25 EST news157558426 A visual learning study by scientists at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston indicates that viewers can learn a great deal about objects in their field of vision even without paying attention. The findings will appear in the April 14 print issue of the journal Current Biology. http://www.physorg.com/news157212999.html Medicine & Health Wed, 25 Mar 2009 15:17:09 EST news157212999 Efforts to dissuade youth consumption through negative alcohol consumption depictions can be thwarted by portrayals of positive consumption in prime-time television programming. A new study in the Journal of Consumer Affairs reveals that television series often portray mixed messages about alcohol, but the positive and negative messages were shown differently. http://www.physorg.com/news157211214.html Other Sciences Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:47:31 EST news157211214 The visual system has limited capacity and cannot process everything that falls onto the retina. Instead, the brain relies on attention to bring salient details into focus and filter out background clutter. Two recent studies by researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, one study employing computational modeling techniques and the other experimental techniques, have helped to unravel the mechanisms underlying attention. http://www.physorg.com/news157210633.html Medicine & Health Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:37:44 EST news157210633 A University of Pennsylvania psychology study, using functional magnetic resonance imaging technology to scan the brain, reveals that people who consider themselves visual learners, as opposed to verbal learners, have a tendency to convert linguistically presented information into a visual mental representation. The more strongly an individual identified with the visual cognitive style, the more that individual activated the visual cortex when reading words. http://www.physorg.com/news157202233.html Medicine & Health Wed, 25 Mar 2009 12:25:05 EST news157202233 Patients who have lost part of their visual awareness following a stroke can show an improved ability to see when they are listening to music they like, according to a new study published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http://www.physorg.com/news157048796.html Medicine & Health Mon, 23 Mar 2009 17:40:58 EST news157048796 In a study by Miall, Gowen and Tchalenko published by Elsevier, in the March issue of Cortex, a brain scanner was used to record the brain's activity in each stage of the process of drawing faces. The researchers found that the captured visual information is stored as a series of locations or action plans to reach those locations. It is as if the brain remembers key locations and then "joins the dots" with a straight or curved line to achieve the desired image on the page. http://www.physorg.com/news156713625.html Medicine & Health Thu, 19 Mar 2009 20:34:21 EST news156713625 Imagine you are talking to a coworker when your vision blurs, and spots of light appear on the periphery. Feeling nauseated, you try to continue the conversation, but you`re having trouble remembering the words for things. Twenty minutes later you retreat home to bed, your head filled with a painful throbbing that magnifies every sound and makes light unbearable. http://www.physorg.com/news156712003.html Medicine & Health Thu, 19 Mar 2009 20:07:53 EST news156712003 The sense of touch allows us to make a better connection between sight and hearing and therefore helps adults to learn to read. This is what has been shown by the team of Édouard Gentaz, CNRS researcher at the Laboratoire de Psychologie et Neurocognition in Grenoble (France). These results, published March 16th in the journal PloS One, should improve learning methods, both for children learning to read and adults learning foreign languages. http://www.physorg.com/news156697376.html Medicine & Health Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:03:12 EST news156697376 A new study challenges the prevailing assumption that you must pay attention to something in order to learn it. The research, published by Cell Press in the March 12th issue of the journal Neuron, demonstrates that stimulus-reward pairing can elicit visual learning in adults, even without awareness of the stimulus presentation or reward contingencies. http://www.physorg.com/news155994784.html Medicine & Health Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:53:44 EST news155994784 Individuals with no or inconsistent health care coverage appear less likely to regularly seek eye care, even if they are visually impaired, according to a report in the March issue of Archives of Ophthalmology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. http://www.physorg.com/news155844749.html Medicine & Health Mon, 09 Mar 2009 19:13:14 EST news155844749 Understanding what a friend is saying in the hubbub of a noisy party can present a challenge - unless you can see the friend's face. http://www.physorg.com/news155372117.html Medicine & Health Wed, 04 Mar 2009 06:55:46 EST news155372117 In macular degeneration, the most common form of adult blindness, patients progressively lose vision in the center of their visual field, thereby depriving the corresponding part of the visual cortex of input. Previously, researchers discovered that the deprived neurons begin responding to visual input from another spot on the retina - evidence of plasticity in the adult cortex. http://www.physorg.com/news155323109.html Medicine & Health Tue, 03 Mar 2009 17:19:28 EST news155323109 A longitudinal study of infants from birth to age 3 showed TV viewing before the age of 2 does not improve a child's language and visual motor skills, according to research conducted at Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School. The findings, published in the March issue of Pediatrics, reaffirm current guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) that recommend no television under the age of 2, and suggest that maternal, child, and household characteristics are more influential in a child's cognitive development. http://www.physorg.com/news155188381.html Medicine & Health Mon, 02 Mar 2009 03:53:34 EST news155188381 A layer of "dark cells" in the retina that is responsible for maintaining the health of the light-sensing cells in our eyes has been imaged in a living retina for the first time. http://www.physorg.com/news154869888.html Medicine & Health Thu, 26 Feb 2009 11:26:58 EST news154869888 (PhysOrg.com) -- Colonies of social insects such as ants and bees could collectively make decisions using mechanisms similar to those used in primate brains, according to new research from the University of Bristol. http://www.physorg.com/news154795756.html Biology Wed, 25 Feb 2009 14:50:36 EST news154795756 People voluntarily pick what information they store in short-term memory. Now, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), researchers can see just what information people are holding in memory based only on patterns of activity in the brain. http://www.physorg.com/news154466439.html Medicine & Health Sat, 21 Feb 2009 19:21:20 EST news154466439 Working memory (also known as short term memory) is our ability to keep a small amount of information active in our mind. This is useful for information we need to know on-the-fly, such as a phone number or the few items we need to pick up from the grocery store. We hang on to the information for a brief period of time, just long enough to make a phone call or get through the checkout line, and then we forget it forever. http://www.physorg.com/news154349817.html Medicine & Health Fri, 20 Feb 2009 10:57:22 EST news154349817 (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 (PhysOrg.com) -- Vanderbilt University researchers have discovered that early visual areas, long believed to play no role in higher cognitive functions such as memory, retain information previously hidden from brain studies. The researchers made the discovery using a new technique for decoding data from functional magnetic resonance imaging or fMRI. The findings are a significant step forward in understanding how we perceive, process and remember visual information. http://www.physorg.com/news154186809.html Medicine & Health Wed, 18 Feb 2009 13:41:06 EST news154186809 (PhysOrg.com) -- In comparison to many other living creatures, flies tend to be small and their brains, despite their complexity, are quite manageable. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried have now ascertained that these insects can make up for their low number of nerve cells by means of sophisticated network interactions. http://www.physorg.com/news154100854.html Biology Tue, 17 Feb 2009 13:48:05 EST news154100854 (PhysOrg.com) -- Queen Mary scientists have, for the first time, used computer artificial intelligence to create previously unseen types of pictures to explore the abilities of the human visual system. http://www.physorg.com/news153990584.html Medicine & Health Mon, 16 Feb 2009 07:10:36 EST news153990584 When someone speaks to you, do you see what they are saying? We tend to think of speech as being something we hear, but recent studies suggest that we use a variety of senses for speech perception - that the brain treats speech as something we hear, see and even feel. In a new report in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychologist Lawrence Rosenblum describes research examining how our different senses blend together to help us perceive speech. http://www.physorg.com/news153579230.html Medicine & Health Wed, 11 Feb 2009 12:54:15 EST news153579230 If you ever argued with your mother when she told you to get some sleep after studying for an exam instead of pulling an all-nighter, you owe her an apology, because it turns out she's right. And now, scientists are beginning to understand why. http://www.physorg.com/news153578717.html Medicine & Health Wed, 11 Feb 2009 12:45:56 EST news153578717 A new study identifies specific chromosomal regions linked to auditory visual synaesthesia, a neurological condition characterized by seeing colors in response to sounds. The research, published online on February 5th in the American Journal of Human Genetics, makes major strides towards identifying the genes that underlie synaesthesia and may eventually lead to improved understanding of typical and atypical cognitive development. http://www.physorg.com/news153058875.html Medicine & Health Thu, 05 Feb 2009 12:21:46 EST news153058875 Like Russell Crowe's character in A Beautiful Mind, life is often difficult for the 2.4 million Americans with schizophrenia. A late or incorrect diagnosis and the lack of effective treatment options can destroy a sufferer's quality of life. http://www.physorg.com/news152975145.html Medicine & Health Wed, 04 Feb 2009 13:06:21 EST news152975145 Ever get a little motion sick from an illusion graphic designed to look like it's moving? A new study suggests that these illusions do more than trick the eye; they may also convince the brain that the graphic is actually moving. http://www.physorg.com/news152816091.html Medicine & Health Mon, 02 Feb 2009 16:55:49 EST news152816091 The antiepileptic drug vigabatrin (VGB) has been shown to be one of the best treatments against a special form of epilepsy in infants, called infantile spasm. However, its use has been limited in many countries because it has been shown to cause a permanent narrowing of visual fields in approximately 40 percent of adults who have been exposed at school age or later. A new study published in Epilepsia examined school-aged children who had been treated with VGB in infancy. The findings showed normal visual fields in 15 of the 16 children studied children. http://www.physorg.com/news152811904.html Medicine & Health Mon, 02 Feb 2009 15:45:50 EST news152811904 As technology has played a bigger role in our lives, our skills in critical thinking and analysis have declined, while our visual skills have improved, according to research by Patricia Greenfield, UCLA distinguished professor of psychology and director of the Children's Digital Media Center, Los Angeles. http://www.physorg.com/news152360207.html Medicine & Health Wed, 28 Jan 2009 10:17:30 EST news152360207