Vision

Avoid Buffets When Dieting- Variety Makes Us 'See' Smaller Quantities

Here's another reason why dieters should avoid all-you-can-eat buffets: When faced with a large variety of items, consumers tend to underestimate how much of each item is present, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. Authors J ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 31 2009 - 11:41am

Jackdaw Eyes Can Interpret Human Gaze

We all know that people sometimes change their behavior when someone is looking their way.   A new study in Current Biology shows that jackdaws, birds related to crows and ravens with eyes that appear similar to human eyes, can do the same.  "Jackdaws ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 2 2009 - 11:37am

Violent Video Games- A Replacement For Eye Surgery?

Video may have killed the radio star(*) but violent video games may save the vision of teens who play them, according to a new Tel Aviv University study. Dr. Uri Polat of Tel Aviv University's Goldschlager Eye Institute and his collaborators compared ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 7 2009 - 2:21pm

Secret To Night Vision- Rod Cell Nuclei Become Light Collecting Lenses

What's different about nocturnal mammals that have 'night vision'?  According to a Cell report, the DNA within the photoreceptor rod cells responsible for low light vision is packaged in a very unconventional way.   That special DNA architec ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 16 2009 - 1:03pm

Facial Recognition- Holistic Processing And Left-Side Bias

Facial recognition is not as automatic as it may seem, according to researchers who 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 critic ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 28 2009 - 1:04pm

BrainPort: Helping Blind People See- Using Their Tongue

Erik Weihenmayer wears sunglasses often. He was wearing them to protect his eyes when he reached the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in 1997. He had them on when he completed the 2003 Primal Quest, the world's toughest multi-sport adventure race. And, he ...

Article - Allyson Collins - May 21 2009 - 4:28pm

Mood And The Visual System- Optimists Literally See Better

Seeing the world through 'rose-colored glasses'  may be more biological reality than metaphor, according to a University of Toronto study that provides the first direct evidence that our mood literally changes the way our visual system filters ou ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 3 2009 - 9:49am

Dual Vision System: How President George Bush Could Duck Flying Shoes

Who says politics and science can't mix?   Well, we say they shouldn't mix but we're rare in science media.  Yet sometimes political events can make for great science studies too. Case in point, the value neuroscientists at the University of ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 11 2009 - 12:24pm

CCR3 Receptor Discovery May Be Breakthrough In Macular Degeneration Research

A team of researchershas discovered a biological marker for neovascular age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of blindness in older adults.  The marker, a receptor known as CCR3, shows strong potential as a means for both the early dete ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 14 2009 - 10:03pm

Binocular Rivalry- Neural Noise And Why We Sometimes Miss Important Details

When you are concentrating on something, neural "noise" may cause you to miss important changes in your environment, new research indicates, and this binocular rivalry which occurs when the two eyes view radically different images means the brain ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 19 2009 - 9:48am