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1.
Wine psychology: basic & applied.
Spence, C
Cognitive research: principles and implications. 2020;(1):22
Abstract
Basic cognitive research can help to explain our response to wine, and the myriad factors that affect it. Wine is a complex, culture-laden, multisensory stimulus, and our perception/experience of its properties is influenced by everything from the packaging in which it is presented through the glassware in which it is served and evaluated. A growing body of experiential wine research now demonstrates that a number of contextual factors, including everything from the colour of the ambient lighting through to background music can exert a profound, and in some cases predictable, influence over the tasting experience. Sonic seasoning - that is, the matching of music or soundscapes with specific wines in order to accentuate or draw attention to certain qualities/attributes in the wine, such as sweetness, length, or body, also represents a rapidly growing area of empirical study. While such multisensory, experiential wine research undoubtedly has a number of practical applications, it also provides insights concerning multisensory perception that are relevant to basic scientists. Furthermore, the findings of the wine research are also often relevant to those marketers interested in understanding how the consumers' perception of any other food or beverage product can potentially be modified.
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Low-Level Visual Information Is Maintained across Saccades, Allowing for a Postsaccadic Handoff between Visual Areas.
Fabius, JH, Fracasso, A, Acunzo, DJ, Van der Stigchel, S, Melcher, D
The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience. 2020;(49):9476-9486
Abstract
Experience seems continuous and detailed despite saccadic eye movements changing retinal input several times per second. There is debate whether neural signals related to updating across saccades contain information about stimulus features, or only location pointers without visual details. We investigated the time course of low-level visual information processing across saccades by decoding the spatial frequency of a stationary stimulus that changed from one visual hemifield to the other because of a horizontal saccadic eye movement. We recorded magnetoencephalography while human subjects (both sexes) monitored the orientation of a grating stimulus, making spatial frequency task irrelevant. Separate trials, in which subjects maintained fixation, were used to train a classifier, whose performance was then tested on saccade trials. Decoding performance showed that spatial frequency information of the presaccadic stimulus remained present for ∼200 ms after the saccade, transcending retinotopic specificity. Postsaccadic information ramped up rapidly after saccade offset. There was an overlap of over 100 ms during which decoding was significant from both presaccadic and postsaccadic processing areas. This suggests that the apparent richness of perception across saccades may be supported by the continuous availability of low-level information with a "soft handoff" of information during the initial processing sweep of the new fixation.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Saccades create frequent discontinuities in visual input, yet perception appears stable and continuous. How is this discontinuous input processed resulting in visual stability? Previous studies have focused on presaccadic remapping. Here we examined the time course of processing of low-level visual information (spatial frequency) across saccades with magnetoencephalography. The results suggest that spatial frequency information is not predictively remapped but also is not discarded. Instead, they suggest a soft handoff over time between different visual areas, making this information continuously available across the saccade. Information about the presaccadic stimulus remains available, while the information about the postsaccadic stimulus has also become available. The simultaneous availability of both the presaccadic and postsaccadic information could enable rich and continuous perception across saccades.
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3.
That's My Cue to Eat: A Systematic Review of the Persuasiveness of Front-of-Pack Cues on Food Packages for Children vs. Adults.
Hallez, L, Qutteina, Y, Raedschelders, M, Boen, F, Smits, T
Nutrients. 2020;(4)
Abstract
Packaging is increasingly recognized as an essential component of any marketing strategy. Visual and informational front-of-pack cues constitute salient elements of the environment that may influence what and how much someone eats. Considering their overwhelming presence on packaging of non-core foods, front-of-pack cues may contribute to the growing rates of overweight and obesity in children and adults. We conducted a systematic review to summarize the evidence concerning the impact of front-of-pack cues on choices and eating behaviors. Four electronic databases were searched for experimental studies (2009-present). This resulted in the inclusion of 57 studies (in 43 articles). We identified studies on children (3-12 years) and adults (≥ 18 years), but no studies on adolescents (12-18 years). The results suggest that children and adults are susceptible to packaging cues, with most evidence supporting the impact of visual cues. More specifically, children more often choose products with a licensed endorser and eat more from packages portraying the product with an exaggerated portion size. Adults' eating behaviors are influenced by a range of other visual cues, mainly, package size and shape, and less so by informational cues such as labels.
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4.
Organization of area hV5/MT+ in subjects with homonymous visual field defects.
Papanikolaou, A, Keliris, GA, Papageorgiou, TD, Schiefer, U, Logothetis, NK, Smirnakis, SM
NeuroImage. 2019;:254-268
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Abstract
Damage to the primary visual cortex (V1) leads to a visual field loss (scotoma) in the retinotopically corresponding part of the visual field. Nonetheless, a small amount of residual visual sensitivity persists within the blind field. This residual capacity has been linked to activity observed in the middle temporal area complex (V5/MT+). However, it remains unknown whether the organization of hV5/MT+ changes following early visual cortical lesions. We studied the organization of area hV5/MT+ of five patients with dense homonymous defects in a quadrant of the visual field as a result of partial V1+ or optic radiation lesions. To do so, we developed a new method, which models the boundaries of population receptive fields directly from the BOLD signal of each voxel in the visual cortex. We found responses in hV5/MT+ arising inside the scotoma for all patients and identified two possible sources of activation: 1) responses might originate from partially lesioned parts of area V1 corresponding to the scotoma, and 2) responses can also originate independent of area V1 input suggesting the existence of functional V1-bypassing pathways. Apparently, visually driven activity observed in hV5/MT+ is not sufficient to mediate conscious vision. More surprisingly, visually driven activity in corresponding regions of V1 and early extrastriate areas including hV5/MT+ did not guarantee visual perception in the group of patients with post-geniculate lesions that we examined. This suggests that the fine coordination of visual activity patterns across visual areas may be an important determinant of whether visual perception persists following visual cortical lesions.
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5.
The effects of preterm birth on visual development.
Leung, MP, Thompson, B, Black, J, Dai, S, Alsweiler, JM
Clinical & experimental optometry. 2018;(1):4-12
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Abstract
Children born very preterm are at a greater risk of abnormal visual and neurological development when compared to children born at full term. Preterm birth is associated with retinopathy of prematurity (a proliferative retinal vascular disease) and can also affect the development of brain structures associated with post-retinal processing of visual information. Visual deficits common in children born preterm, such as reduced visual acuity, strabismus, abnormal stereopsis and refractive error, are likely to be detected through childhood vision screening programs, ophthalmological follow-up or optometric care. However, routine screening may not detect other vision problems, such as reduced visual fields, impaired contrast sensitivity and deficits in cortical visual processing, that may occur in children born preterm. For example, visual functions associated with the dorsal visual processing stream, such as global motion perception and visuomotor integration, may be impaired by preterm birth. These impairments can continue into adolescence and adulthood and may contribute to the difficulties in learning (particularly reading and mathematics), attention, behaviour and cognition that some children born preterm experience. Improvements in understanding the mechanisms by which preterm birth affects vision will inform future screening and interventions for children born preterm.
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Social media interruption affects the acquisition of visually, not aurally, acquired information during a pathophysiology lecture.
Marone, JR, Thakkar, SC, Suliman, N, O'Neill, SI, Doubleday, AF
Advances in physiology education. 2018;(2):175-181
Abstract
Poor academic performance from extensive social media usage appears to be due to students' inability to multitask between distractions and academic work. However, the degree to which visually distracted students can acquire lecture information presented aurally is unknown. This study examined the ability of students visually distracted by social media to acquire information presented during a voice-over PowerPoint lecture, and to compare performance on examination questions derived from information presented aurally vs. that presented visually. Students ( n = 20) listened to a 42-min cardiovascular pathophysiology lecture containing embedded cartoons while taking notes. The experimental group ( n = 10) was visually, but not aurally, distracted by social media during times when cartoon information was presented, ~40% of total lecture time. Overall performance among distracted students on a follow-up, open-note quiz was 30% poorer than that for controls ( P < 0.001). When the modality of presentation (visual vs. aural) was compared, performance decreased on examination questions from information presented visually. However, performance on questions from information presented aurally was similar to that of controls. Our findings suggest the ability to acquire information during lecture may vary, depending on the degree of competition between the modalities of the distraction and the lecture presentation. Within the context of current literature, our findings also suggest that timing of the distraction relative to delivery of material examined affects performance more than total distraction time. Therefore, when delivering lectures, instructors should incorporate organizational cues and active learning strategies that assist students in maintaining focus and acquiring relevant information.
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Corollary Discharge and Oculomotor Proprioception: Cortical Mechanisms for Spatially Accurate Vision.
Sun, LD, Goldberg, ME
Annual review of vision science. 2016;:61-84
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Abstract
A classic problem in psychology is understanding how the brain creates a stable and accurate representation of space for perception and action despite a constantly moving eye. Two mechanisms have been proposed to solve this problem: Herman von Helmholtz's idea that the brain uses a corollary discharge of the motor command that moves the eye to adjust the visual representation, and Sir Charles Sherrington's idea that the brain measures eye position to calculate a spatial representation. Here, we discuss the cognitive, neuropsychological, and physiological mechanisms that support each of these ideas. We propose that both are correct: A rapid corollary discharge signal remaps the visual representation before an impending saccade, computing accurate movement vectors; and an oculomotor proprioceptive signal enables the brain to construct a more accurate craniotopic representation of space that develops slowly after the saccade.
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Preserved retinotopic brain connectivity in macular degeneration.
Haak, KV, Morland, AB, Rubin, GS, Cornelissen, FW
Ophthalmic & physiological optics : the journal of the British College of Ophthalmic Opticians (Optometrists). 2016;(3):335-43
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Abstract
PURPOSE The eye disease macular degeneration (MD) is a leading cause of blindness worldwide. There is no cure for MD, but several promising treatments aimed at restoring vision at the level of the retina are currently under investigation. These treatments assume that the patient's brain can still process appropriately the retinal input once it is restored, but whether this assumption is correct has yet to be determined. METHODS We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and connective field modelling to determine whether the functional connectivity between the input-deprived portions of primary visual cortex (V1) and early extrastriate areas (V2/3) is still retinotopically organised. Specifically, in both patients with juvenile macular degeneration and age-matched controls with simulated retinal lesions, we assessed the extent to which the V1-referred connective fields of extrastriate voxels, as estimated on the basis of spontaneous fMRI signal fluctuations, adhered to retinotopic organisation. RESULTS We found that functional connectivity between the input-deprived portions of visual areas V1 and extrastriate cortex is still largely retinotopically organised in MD, although on average less so than in controls. Patients with stable fixation exhibited normal retinotopic connectivity, however, suggesting that for the patients with unstable fixation, eye-movements resulted in spurious, homogeneous signal modulations across the entire input-deprived cortex, which would have hampered our ability to assess their spatial structure of connectivity. CONCLUSIONS Despite the prolonged loss of visual input due to MD, the cortico-cortical connections of input-deprived visual cortex remain largely intact. This suggests that the restoration of sight in macular degeneration can rely on a largely unchanged retinotopic representation in early visual cortex following loss of central retinal function.
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The superior colliculus is sensitive to gestalt-like stimulus configuration in hemispherectomy patients.
Georgy, L, Celeghin, A, Marzi, CA, Tamietto, M, Ptito, A
Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior. 2016;:151-61
Abstract
Patients with cortical blindness following a lesion to the primary visual cortex (V1) may retain nonconscious visual abilities (blindsight). One intriguing, though largely unexplored question, is whether nonconscious vision in the blind hemifield of hemianopic patients can be sensitive to higher-order perceptual organization, and which V1-independent structure underlies such effect. To answer this question, we tested two rare hemianopic patients who had undergone hemispherectomy, and in whom the only post-chiasmatic visual structure left intact in the same side of the otherwise damaged hemisphere was the superior colliculus (SC). By using a variant of the redundant target effect (RTE), we presented single dots, patterns composed by the same dots organized in quadruple gestalt-like configurations, or patterns of four dots arranged in random configurations, either singly to the intact visual hemifield or bilaterally to both hemifields. As reported in a number of prior studies on blindsight patients, we found that bilateral stimulation yielded faster reaction times (RTs) than single stimulation of the intact field for all conditions (i.e., there was an implicit RTE). In addition to this effect, both patients showed a further speeding up of RTs when the gestalt-like, but not the random shape, quadruple patterns were projected to their blind hemifield during bilateral stimulation. Because other retino-recipient subcortical and cortical structures in the damaged hemisphere are absent, the SC on the lesioned side seems solely responsible for such an effect. The present results provide initial support to the notion that nonconscious vision might be sensitive to perceptual organization and stimulus configuration through the pivotal contribution of the SC, which can enhance the processing of gestalt-like or structured stimuli over meaningless or randomly assembled ones and translate them into facilitatory motor outputs.
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10.
Attention induced neural response trade-off in retinotopic cortex under load.
Torralbo, A, Kelley, TA, Rees, G, Lavie, N
Scientific reports. 2016;:33041
Abstract
The effects of perceptual load on visual cortex response to distractors are well established and various phenomena of 'inattentional blindness' associated with elimination of visual cortex response to unattended distractors, have been documented in tasks of high load. Here we tested an account for these effects in terms of a load-induced trade-off between target and distractor processing in retinotopic visual cortex. Participants were scanned using fMRI while performing a visual-search task and ignoring distractor checkerboards in the periphery. Retinotopic responses to target and distractors were assessed as a function of search load (comparing search set-sizes two, three and five). We found that increased load not only increased activity in frontoparietal network, but also had opposite effects on retinotopic responses to target and distractors. Target-related signals in areas V2-V3 linearly increased, while distractor response linearly decreased, with increased load. Critically, the slopes were equivalent for both load functions, thus demonstrating resource trade-off. Load effects were also found in displays with the same item number in the distractor hemisphere across different set sizes, thus ruling out local intrahemispheric interactions as the cause. Our findings provide new evidence for load theory proposals of attention resource sharing between target and distractor leading to inattentional blindness.