http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. The irony of getting away to a remote place is you usually have to fight traffic to get there. After hours of dodging dangerous drivers, you finally arrive at that quiet mountain retreat, stare at the gentle waters of a pristine lake, and congratulate your tired self on having "turned off your brain." http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-brain-mathematical-genius.html Neuroscience Thu, 11 Apr 2013 10:49:11 EST news284896135 Professor of neurology, physician, and author Oliver Sacks M.D. has outlined case studies of hallucinations of musical notation, and commented on the neural basis of such hallucinations, in a new paper for the neurology journal Brain. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-hallucinations-musical-notation.html Neuroscience Thu, 04 Apr 2013 11:05:27 EST news284292321 We rely on our visual system more heavily than previously thought in determining the causality of events. A team of researchers has shown that, in making judgments about causality, we don't always need to use cognitive reasoning. In some cases, our visual brain—the brain areas that process what the eyes sense—can make these judgments rapidly and automatically. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-causality-eye.html Neuroscience Thu, 10 Jan 2013 12:00:09 EST news277026947 (Medical Xpress)—A sudden and mysterious burst of activity originating in the retina of a developing fetus spurs brain connections that are essential to development of finely-tuned sight, Yale researchers report in the journal Nature. Interference with this spontaneous wave of activity could play a role in neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism, the scientists speculate. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-fetal-neural-vision.html Neuroscience Thu, 11 Oct 2012 07:06:30 EST news269157982 Structures in the midbrain that developed early in evolution can be responsible for functions in newborns which in adults are taken over by the cerebral cortex. New evidence for this theory has been found in the visual system of monkeys by a team of researchers from the RUB. The scientists studied a reflex that stabilizes the image of a moving scene on the retina to prevent blur, the so-termed optokinetic nystagmus. They found that nuclei in the midbrain initially control this reflex and that signals from the cerebral cortex (neocortex) are only added later on. PD Dr. Claudia Distler-Hoffmann from the Department of General Zoology and Neurobiology and Prof. Dr. Klaus-Peter Hoffmann from the Department of Animal Physiology report in the Journal of Neuroscience. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-evolutionarily-ancient-brain-areas-important.html Neuroscience Wed, 30 Nov 2011 09:19:08 EST news241867138 (Medical Xpress) -- We don’t see only what meets the eye. The visual system constantly takes in ambiguous stimuli, weighs its options, and decides what it perceives. This normally happens effortlessly. Sometimes, however, an ambiguity is persistent, and the visual system waffles on which perception is right. Such instances interest scientists because they help us understand how the eyes and the brain make sense of what we see. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-evidence-unrecognized-visual.html Neuroscience Thu, 24 Nov 2011 05:52:34 EST news241336328 Vision is amazing because it seems so mundane. Peoples' eyes, nerves and brains translate light into electrochemical signals and then into an experience of the world around them. A close look at the physics of just the first part of this process shows that even seemingly simple tasks, like keeping a stable perception of an object's color in different lighting conditions or distinguishing black and white objects, is, in fact, very challenging. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-psychologists-brain-gray.html Psychology & Psychiatry Thu, 10 Nov 2011 12:28:57 EST news240150519 (Medical Xpress) -- Selecting matching shoes and gloves before you go to work is relatively easy for most of us. Within a single glance, it’s obvious that, say, the brown gloves chosen match as do the red shoes. That's because your visual system groups areas of the world with similar characteristics (red with red, brown with brown). http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-08-evidence-visual-ability-group.html Psychology & Psychiatry Fri, 12 Aug 2011 07:17:43 EST news232352248 (Medical Xpress) -- "Our visual system is tuned towards perceiving other people. We spend so much time doing that—seeing who they are, what they are doing, what they intend to do," says psychology professor Nikolaus F. Troje of Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-07-left-visual-cues-bodily.html Psychology & Psychiatry Wed, 06 Jul 2011 04:15:22 EST news229144509 The precise wiring of our visual system depends upon the pattern of spontaneous activity within the brain that occurs well before birth, a new study by Yale researchers shows. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-06-sight-requires-exact-pattern-neural.html Neuroscience Wed, 22 Jun 2011 12:34:42 EST news227964867 (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