http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. (Medical Xpress) -- We all know that our pupils contract when our eyes are exposed to increases in the brightness of light. The reason is to both protect the delicate inner workings of our eyes and to help provide for optimum viewing based on available light. But we also know that our pupils dilate, or become larger when we are aroused, regardless of the reason, which means that pupil size is not always just a reaction to lighting conditions. Now, new research by Bruno Laeng and Tor Endestad from the Department of Psychology at the University of Oslo, shows that our pupils also react based on what we think we see sometimes, rather than what is actually there. In their paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the two show that pupil constriction occurs when viewing an optical illusion that at first makes us believe one image is brighter than another, when in reality, they are the same. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-01-optical-illusion-higher-brain-functions.html Neuroscience Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:00:01 EST news246702278 Whether it's investing in stocks, bungee jumping or public speaking, why do we often plan to take risks but then "chicken out" when the moment of truth arrives? http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-01-illusion-courage-people-mispredict-behavior.html Psychology & Psychiatry Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:07:51 EST news246020854 A new visual illusion has shed light on a long-standing mystery about how the brain works out the 3-D shapes of objects. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-12-insights-brain-reconstructs-dimension.html Neuroscience Wed, 07 Dec 2011 12:18:49 EST news242482717 New research by psychologists at Queen Mary, University of London has revealed that the way we see the world might depend on reflexes in the brain. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-12-optical-illusion-reveals-reflexes-brain.html Psychology & Psychiatry Wed, 07 Dec 2011 10:59:55 EST news242477964 (Medical Xpress) -- When we gaze at a shape and then the shape disappears, a strange thing happens: We see an afterimage in the complementary color. Now a Japanese study has observed for the first time an equally strange illusion: The afterimage appears in a “complementary” shape—circles as hexagons, and vice-versa. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-brain-eye.html Psychology & Psychiatry Tue, 08 Nov 2011 06:10:01 EST news239953245 A study using a procedure called the rubber hand illusion has found striking new evidence that people experiencing schizophrenia have a weakened sense of body ownership and has produced the first case of a spontaneous, out-of-body experience in the laboratory. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-10-body-mind-schizophrenia.html Psychology & Psychiatry Mon, 31 Oct 2011 17:00:05 EST news239289360 More than 90 per cent of the world’s population exhibit a strong preference for using their right hand, as opposed to their left, for grasping and lifting everything from car keys to coffee mugs. The cause of this near-global singularity is poorly understood scientifically but new research from The University of Western Ontario proves the perceived weight of an object is not a deciding factor. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-10-weight-issue-left-right-handedness.html Psychology & Psychiatry Fri, 21 Oct 2011 09:01:43 EST news238406495 (PhysOrg.com) -- Flies like watching computer screens as much as the next animal. Set them on a trackball in front of a monitor, and they'll follow the action – if the images in front of them move in one direction, the flies will try to move the same way. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-09-optical-illusion-reverse-phi-motion-view.html Medical research Mon, 12 Sep 2011 17:53:10 EST news235067905 (Medical Xpress) -- A study into depression is shedding new light on a fascinating facet of human psychology - that we can readily delude ourselves into thinking we control events, even when we know we do not. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-09-depression-reveals-sides-illusion.html Psychology & Psychiatry Fri, 09 Sep 2011 09:04:58 EST news234777867 Just back from holiday? The chances are you felt that the journey home by plane, car or train went much quicker than the outward journey, even though in fact both distances and journey times are usually the same. So why the difference? Now it has been scientifically demonstrated why the return journey appears to be shorter than the outward one. Our expectation about the duration of the journey was found to be the determining factor. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-08-false-journey-shorter-outward.html Psychology & Psychiatry Thu, 25 Aug 2011 11:10:01 EST news233486863 (Medical Xpress) -- Scientists have come up with new insight into the brain processes that cause the following optical illusion: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-06-neuroscientists-famous-optical-illusion-surprisingly.html Neuroscience Mon, 27 Jun 2011 17:10:38 EST news228413405 (Medical Xpress) -- We experience an interesting phenomenon when the contrast of an image flickers as it moves across our visual field – namely, an illusory reversal in the direction of motion. Moreover, this reverse-phi illusion occurs in a surprisingly wide range of species, indicating that this is a common evolutionary adaptation. Recently, researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Farm Research Campus demonstrated that motion-sensitive neurons in the brain of the ubiquitous fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster respond to the reverse-phi illusion and generate a change in its flight behavior. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-06-ghosts-machine-neural-basis-visual.html Neuroscience Wed, 22 Jun 2011 08:00:02 EST news227895068 (Medical Xpress) -- Imagine shrinking to the size of a doll in your sleep. When you wake up, will you perceive yourself as tiny or the world as being populated by giants? Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden may have found the answer. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-05-scientists-brain-barbie-doll-size.html Psychology & Psychiatry Wed, 25 May 2011 17:00:01 EST news225547262 (PhysOrg.com) -- After discovering by accident through a quirk in his laptop that random dots arranged in a circle and constantly changing color, appeared to stop changing color if they began to move, Jordan Suchow a grad student at Harvard, in conjunction with his advisor George Alvarez, produced a video of the effect and wound up winning first prize in this year’s "Best Illusion of the Year" contest held by the Vision Sciences Society every year in Naples, Florida. The illusion showed that there exists a form of change blindness that until this example arose, no one knew about. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-05-animation-captures-illusion-prize.html Neuroscience Thu, 19 May 2011 09:32:20 EST news225016105 (PhysOrg.com) -- A serendipitous discovery by academics at The University of Nottingham has shown that a simple illusion can significantly reduce -- and in some cases even temporarily eradicate -- arthritic pain in the hand. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-04-illusion-halve-pain-osteoarthritis-scientists.html Psychology & Psychiatry Thu, 14 Apr 2011 07:29:48 EST news221984976