Aerospace medicine and biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes (supplement 326)

This bibliography lists 108 reports, articles and other documents introduced into the NASA Scientific and Technical Information System during July, 1989. Subject coverage includes: aerospace medicine and psychology, life support systems and controlled environments, safety equipment, exobiology and extraterrestrial life, and flight crew behavior and performance

Aerospace Medicine and Biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes (supplement 133)

This special bibliography lists 276 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA Scientific and Technical Information System in September 1974

Bayesian modeling of biological motion perception in sport

La perception d’un mouvement biologique correspond à l’aptitude à recueillir des informations (comme par exemple, le type d’activité) issues d’un objet animé en mouvement à partir d’indices visuels restreints. Cette méthode a été élaborée et instaurée par Johansson en 1973, à l’aide de simples points lumineux placés sur des individus, à des endroits stratégiques de leurs articulations. Il a été démontré que la perception, ou reconnaissance, du mouvement biologique joue un rôle déterminant dans des activités cruciales pour la survie et la vie sociale des humains et des primates. Par conséquent, l’étude de l’analyse visuelle de l’action chez l’Homme a retenu l’attention des scientifiques pendant plusieurs décennies. Ces études sont essentiellement axées sur informations cinématiques en provenance de différents mouvements (comme le type d’activité ou les états émotionnels), le rôle moteur dans la perception des actions ainsi que les mécanismes sous-jacents et les substrats neurobiologiques associés. Ces derniers constituent le principal centre d’intérêt de la présente étude, dans laquelle nous proposons un nouveau modèle descriptif de simulation bayésienne avec minimisation du risque. Ce modèle est capable de distinguer la direction d’un ballon à partir d’un mouvement biologique complexe correspondant à un tir de soccer. Ce modèle de simulation est inspiré de précédents modèles, neurophysiologiquement possibles, de la perception du mouvement biologique ainsi que de récentes études. De ce fait, le modèle présenté ici ne s’intéresse qu’à la voie dorsale qui traite les informations visuelles relatives au mouvement, conformément à la théorie des deux voies visuelles. Les stimuli visuels utilisés, quant à eux, proviennent d’une précédente étude psychophysique menée dans notre laboratoire chez des athlètes. En utilisant les données psychophysiques de cette étude antérieure 3 et en ajustant une série de paramètres, le modèle proposé a été capable de simuler la fonction psychométrique ainsi que le temps de réaction moyen mesurés expérimentalement chez les athlètes. Bien qu’il ait été établi que le système visuel intègre de manière optimale l’ensemble des indices visuels pendant le processus de prise de décision, les résultats obtenus sont en lien avec l’hypothèse selon laquelle les indices de mouvement sont plus importants que la forme dynamique dans le traitement des informations relatives au mouvement. Les simulations étant concluantes, le présent modèle permet non seulement de mieux comprendre le sujet en question, mais s’avère également prometteur pour le secteur de l’industrie. Il permettrait, par exemple, de prédire l’impact des distorsions optiques, induites par la conception de verres progressifs, sur la prise de décision chez l’Homme. Mots-clés : Mouvement biologique, Bayésien, Voie dorsale, Modèle de simulation hiérarchique, Fonction psychométrique, Temps de réactionThe ability to recover information (e.g., identity or type of activity) about a moving living object from a sparse input is known as Biological Motion perception. This sparse input has been created and introduced by Johansson in 1973, using only light points placed on an individual's strategic joints. Biological motion perception/recognition proves to play a significant role in activities that are critical to the survival and social life of humans and primates. In this regard, the study of visual analysis of human action had the attention of scientists for decades. These studies are mainly focused on: kinematics information of the different movements (such as type of activity, emotional states), motor role in the perception of actions and underlying mechanisms, and associated neurobiological substrates. The latter being the main focus of the present study, a new descriptive risk-averse Bayesian simulation model, capable of discerning the ball’s direction from a set of complex biological motion soccer-kick stimuli is proposed. Inspired by the previous, neurophysiologically plausible, biological motion perception models and recent studies, the simulation model only represents the dorsal pathway as a motion information processing section of the visual system according to the two-stream theory, while the stimuli used have been obtained from a previous psychophysical study on athletes. Moreover, using the psychophysical data from the same study and tuning a set of parameters, the model could successfully simulate the psychometric function and average reaction time of the athlete participants of the aforementioned study. 5 Although it is established that the visual system optimally integrates all available visual cues in the decision-making process, the results conform to the speculations favouring motion cue importance over dynamic form by only depending on motion information processing. As a functioning simulator, the present simulation model not only introduces some insight into the subject at hand but also shows promise for industry use. For example, predicting the impact of the lens-induced distortions, caused by various lens designs, on human decision-making. Keywords: Biological motion, Bayesian, Dorsal pathway, Hierarchical simulation model, Psychometric function, Reaction tim

Individual differences in face-looking behavior generalize from the lab to the world

Recent laboratory studies have found large, stable individual differences in the location people first fixate when identifying faces, ranging from the brows to the mouth. Importantly, this variation is strongly associated with differences in fixation-specific identification performance such that individuals' recognition ability is maximized when looking at their preferred location (Mehoudar, Arizpe, Baker, & Yovel, 2014; Peterson & Eckstein, 2013). This finding suggests that face representations are retinotopic and individuals enact gaze strategies that optimize identification, yet the extent to which this behavior reflects real-world gaze behavior is unknown. Here, we used mobile eye trackers to test whether individual differences in face gaze generalize from lab to real-world vision. In-lab fixations were measured with a speeded face identification task, while real-world behavior was measured as subjects freely walked around the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus. We found a strong correlation between the patterns of individual differences in face gaze in the lab and real-world settings. Our findings support the hypothesis that individuals optimize realworld face identification by consistently fixating the same location and thus strongly constraining the space of retinotopic input. The methods developed for this study entailed collecting a large set of high-definition, wide field-of-view natural videos from head-mounted cameras and the viewer's fixation position, allowing us to characterize subjects' actually experienced real-world retinotopic images. These images enable us to ask how vision is optimized not just for the statistics of the ''natural images'' found in web databases, but of the truly natural, retinotopic images that have landed on actual human retinae during real-world experience

Characterisation of the Superior Colliculus in a Rat Model of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurobehavioural disorder of childhood onset. Core symptoms include hyperactivity, impulsivity and inattention. Despite high prevalence and effective pharmacological treatment, the pathophysiology is poorly understood. Present theories of the etiology of ADHD suggest a crucial influence of dopamine. To date, little investigation has focussed on structures upstream of dopamine neurons which could cause these abnormalities. The midbrain superior colliculus (SC) is conserved across species and plays a role in saccade generation, visual saliency and attention. Evidence suggests that the SC could be dysfunctional in ADHD, and may explain core symptoms of ADHD, providing a site for action of therapeutic treatments. The spontaneous hypertensive rat (SHR), an animal model for ADHD has shown face validity, construct validity and predictive validity, and is the most commonly used animal model of ADHD. Understanding the etiology of the ADHD-like behaviours in the SHR is important in improving our understanding of the etiology of ADHD itself. This thesis presents work that demonstrates that the SHR responds to visual and auditory stimuli in a different way behaviourally and physiologically compared to two control strains, with these differences likely to be mediated by alterations within and upstream of the SC, respectively, resulting in altered saliency of sensory stimuli. These results are compatible with the two unifying theories of ADHD, but suggest that the dysregulation of dopamine is secondary to changes upstream in the SC and structures projecting to it. The findings of slower onset latency in the SHR are also in line with ADHD and the ADHD-like behaviours seen in the SHR and support ADHD being a development disorder. ADHD treatments such as amphetamine and fluoxetine may have a mechanism of action within the SC, and therefore normalise the exaggerated response, yet the results from the current experiment on drug effects are inconclusive

Aerospace medicine and biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes, supplement 118

This special bibliography lists 338 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in July 1973

Aerospace medicine and biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes, supplement 128, May 1974

This special bibliography lists 282 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in April 1974

Humanoid Robots

For many years, the human being has been trying, in all ways, to recreate the complex mechanisms that form the human body. Such task is extremely complicated and the results are not totally satisfactory. However, with increasing technological advances based on theoretical and experimental researches, man gets, in a way, to copy or to imitate some systems of the human body. These researches not only intended to create humanoid robots, great part of them constituting autonomous systems, but also, in some way, to offer a higher knowledge of the systems that form the human body, objectifying possible applications in the technology of rehabilitation of human beings, gathering in a whole studies related not only to Robotics, but also to Biomechanics, Biomimmetics, Cybernetics, among other areas. This book presents a series of researches inspired by this ideal, carried through by various researchers worldwide, looking for to analyze and to discuss diverse subjects related to humanoid robots. The presented contributions explore aspects about robotic hands, learning, language, vision and locomotion