Colin Blakemore

Augmented Reality can induce illusory perceptions of heat when users experience virtual flames rendered on their hands. In this exploratory study, we used high-density electroencephalography to investigate the neural correlates associated with this experience. We recorded neural activity in a within-subjects design during three key audiovisual conditions: (A) lifelike virtual flames on the hand paired with a burning sound; (B) a non-fire-like control stimulus (green, downward-flowing visuals with a synthetic sound) on the hand; and (C) realistic flames presented between the hands. Our preliminary analyses revealed distinct electroencephalography signatures between the Fire-on-Hand condition and both control conditions. Our findings suggest that AR-induced thermal illusions may engage brain networks involved in somatosensation, multisensory body representation, and spatial attention. This top-down, predictive mechanism appears to recruit neural systems that overlap with those involved in the higher-order cortical processing of actual thermal stimuli.

In recent years, the role of top-down expectations on perception has been extensively researched within the framework of predictive coding. However, less attention has been given to the different sources of expectations, how they differ, and how they interact. In this article, we examined the effects of informative hints on perceptual experience and how these interact with repetition-based expectations to create a long-lasting effect. Over 7 experiments, we used verbal hints and multiple presentations of ambiguous 2-tone images. We found that vividness ratings increased from I presentation to the next, even after the object in the image had been identified. In addition, vividness ratings significantly increased when images were introduced with a hint, and this boost was greater for more detailed hints. However, the initial increase in vividness did not always carry over to the next presentation. When recognition of the image in the presentation was hard because of memory load, inconsistent presentation. or noise level of the image, the initial advantage in vividness was attenuated. This was most apparent when participants were primed with a grayscale version of the 2-tone image. A computational model based on evidence accumulation was able to recover these patterns of perceptual experience. suggesting that the effect of hints is short lived if it cannot be encoded in memory for future presentations. This notion highlights the different contributions of attention, memory, and their interactions on forming expectations for perception.

In June 2019, the UK Government took a step forward towards making a decision on the mandatory fortification of flour with folic acid (vitamin B 9) in the prevention of neural tube defects (NTDs). It issued an open public consultation on the proposal in the form of a set of questions. The questions covered a range of issues including efficacy, safety, feasibility and cost. This review sets out the nine main questions and our answers. The aim is to present the rationale for mandatory fortification, what products should be fortified and the mean daily folic acid intake increase fortification should achieve across the population. do you agree or disagree with the proposal for mandatory fortification of non-wholemeal wheat flour in the UK with folic acid to help prevent ntds?

Visiting a museum and seeing an original artwork can be a special experience. We use a survey and a set of hypothetical questions to explore how such experience would be affected by changes in how the artwork is seen. In a first study, participants imagined that they had traveled to see a painting that they particularly like. They discover that it is impossible to directly see the original painting. Three alternatives are offered: seeing an optical reflection (using a mirror), seeing a video screening (a closed-circuit camera), or seeing a reproduction. In all cases, it is made clear that the size, brightness, and resolution will match that of the original. In addition, these options could be within the same room as the original, in the room next door, or in a different building. Results show that physical distance did not affect significantly the responses. However, there was an overall preference for seeing a reproduction as opposed to an optical or digital image. Contrary to the idea that the original is always superior to a copy, many people felt that a direct view of a copy is a preferable experience than an indirect view. The second study was focused directly on the comparison between a mirror and a monitor. Here we highlighted the fact that for the mirror light coming from the mirror originated from the painting. Data were collected in Britain and in China. In both cases, there was a clear preference for the mirror over the monitor.

The neural tube defects anencephaly and spina bifida are two of the most common serious congenital malformations. Most cases can be prevented by consuming sufficient folic acid immediately before pregnancy and in early pregnancy. Fortification of flour with folic acid to prevent these defects has been implemented in 81 countries without public objection or indication of harm. An obstacle to the wider adoption of fortification arises from the creation of a “tolerable upper intake level” for folate (which includes natural food folate as well as synthetic folic acid), and which has been set at 1 mg/day, thereby proscribing higher folate intakes. Increasing the intake of folic acid in a population will necessarily increase the number of people with a folate intake greater than 1 mg per day, and this concern is obstructing folic acid fortification. This paper shows that the scientific basis for setting any upper limit, let alone one at 1 mg/day, is flawed. An upper intake level is therefore unnecessary and should be removed, thus allaying unjustified concerns about folic acid fortification. As a result, the full global opportunity to prevent two serious fatal or disabling disorders can and should be realized.

Theoretical and methodological difficulties similar to those dealt with previously are also encountered when attempts are made to relate clinical assessments of personality to a unitary concept of “brain damage”. Considerations of the nature, in relation to intellectual functions, have tended to provide the model for subsequent attempts to demonstrate the interrelationship of all forms of inter-individual behavioural variation, the effects of brain damage, and hypothesized neurological processes, thus extending the generalizations to areas of personality and its biological basis. A number of attempts have been made to relate individual differences in behaviour to neural processes theoretically, and in each of these the basic assumption has been that inter-individual behavioural variation is dependent to some extent upon the state or nature of the nervous system which each individual possesses. On the basis of such states of neural inhibition following brain injury, it might also be expected that conditionability would be impaired in subjects suffering from such conditions.

In this chapter, the author show that the brain's plasticity by considering successively the findings relating to vision, audition, touch, motor functions, emotions, and dominance, insofar as they apply to mammals and particularly primates. They deal with selected variables and examine to what extent they can be shown to influence the outcome of commissural section. The authors describe the connections between the left and right halves of the brain. They explore organization approach what would otherwise appear to be discrepant and irreconcilable findings of the behavioural effects of commissure section. "The brain can change after surgery so as to prolong, and perhaps even to increase, the effects of separating the hemispheres, or else it can compensate for them almost completely". Perhaps a clue is provided by J. Semmes and M. Mishkin who studied intermanual transfer in monkeys having section of all the forebrain commissures and employed special apparatus to restrict the use of one or the other hand.

Huntington's disease (HD) is caused by a tandem repeat expansion and involves progressive cognitive decline, psychiatric abnormalities and motor deficits. Disease onset and progression in HD mice can be substantially delayed by a housing environment with enhanced sensorimotor and cognitive stimulation. However, the proposed benefits of environmental enrichment (EE) are always taken in the context of 'deprived' standard housing and investigation is warranted into the graded effects of enrichment. To assess if a higher level of environmental stimulation ('super-enrichment') has additional benefits compared to home-cage EE in HD mice. One group of R6/1 transgenic HD mice and wild-type (WT) littermates were home-cage enriched (EE group). A second group also had enriched home cages, but from 6 weeks of age were exposed to a large 'super-enrichment' arena (SuperE group) three times per week. A range of motor tests (open field, rotarod, clasping) were conducted from 8 weeks of age and, at the end of the experiment, grip strength was assessed and post-mortem measures were taken (brain weight, striatal volume, dopamine receptor activation and aggregate density). SuperE improved the reduction of exploration in the open field, ameliorated impaired grip strength in home-cage enriched HD mice and delayed, but did not abolish, the onset of rear-paw clasping compared to EE. SuperE increased brain weight compared to EE in HD mice and reduced striatal dopamine D1 receptor agonist-induced c-fos expression, regardless of genotype. Body weight, rotarod performance, aggregate formation and striatal volume in SuperE groups were no different compared to EE groups. The beneficial effects of sensorimotor and cognitive stimulation are graded and extend beyond merely compensating for the deprivation of standard home cages in specific motor-related phenotypes in HD. Our findings highlight the importance of environmental enrichment quality and quantity and the translational value of stimulating living conditions as experience-dependent modulators of pathogenesis in HD and other brain disorders.

What synaesthesia isn't. Synaesthesia eludes not only an agreed explanation but even a clear definition. Here we examine critically some of the common assumptions about synaesthesia: that it is best defined by the consistency of the sensory associations evoked by the inducing stimulus; that it is rare and always inherited; that it is categorically different from normal cross-modal sensory integration or implicit sensory association; that synaesthetic associations are formed only very early in life; that they are simply an exaggerated form of sensory 'binding'; that synaesthetes fall into distinct classes of 'associators' and 'projectors'; that synaesthetic colours convey a distinct advantage in perceptual segregation; and that the condition is adequately explained by and correlates with hyperconnectivity of the cerebral hemispheres. We question or qualify all these assumptions. We argue that the 'synaesthetic brain', characterized by hyperconnectivity, is likely to give rise to alterations in function beyond the idiosyncratic associations of synaesthesia. We end by trying to clarify the definition of synaesthesia through a set of statements about what it is not.