And now for something completely different : inattentional blindness during a Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (http://www.uk.sagepub.com/aboutus/openaccess.htm)Perceptual science has frequently benefited from studying illusions created outside of academia. Here, we describe a striking, but little-known, example of inattentional blindness from the British comedy series “Monty Python's Flying Circus.” Viewers fail to attend to several highly incongruous characters in the sketch, despite these characters being clearly visible onscreen. The sketch has the potential to be a valuable research and teaching resource, as well as providing a vivid illustration of how people often fail to see something completely differentPeer reviewedFinal Published versio

Seeing motion and apparent motion

In apparent motion experiments, participants are presented with what is in fact a succession of two brief stationary stimuli at two different locations, but they report an impression of movement. Philosophers have recently debated whether apparent motion provides evidence in favour of a particular account of the nature of temporal experience. I argue that the existing discussion in this area is premised on a mistaken view of the phenomenology of apparent motion and, as a result, the space of possible philosophical positions has not yet been fully explored. In particular, I argue that the existence of apparent motion is compatible with an account of the nature of temporal experience that involves a version of direct realism. In doing so, I also argue against two other claims often made about apparent motion, viz. that apparent motion is the psychological phenomenon that underlies motion experience in the cinema, and that apparent motion is subjectively indistinguishable from real motion

Sprouty2 mediated tuning of signalling is essential for somite myogenesis

Background: Negative regulators of signal transduction cascades play critical roles in controlling different aspects of normal embryonic development. Sprouty2 (Spry2) negatively regulates receptor tyrosine kinases (RTK) and FGF signalling and is important in differentiation, cell migration and proliferation. In vertebrate embryos, Spry2 is expressed in paraxial mesoderm and in forming somites. Expression is maintained in the myotome until late stages of somite differentiation. However, its role and mode of action during somite myogenesis is still unclear. Results: Here, we analysed chick Spry2 expression and showed that it overlaps with that of myogenic regulatory factors MyoD and Mgn. Targeted mis-expression of Spry2 led to inhibition of myogenesis, whilst its C-terminal domain led to an increased number of myogenic cells by stimulating cell proliferation. Conclusions: Spry2 is expressed in somite myotomes and its expression overlaps with myogenic regulatory factors. Overexpression and dominant-negative interference showed that Spry2 plays a crucial role in regulating chick myogenesis by fine tuning of FGF signaling through a negative feedback loop. We also propose that mir-23, mir-27 and mir-128 could be part of the negative feedback loop mechanism. Our analysis is the first to shed some light on in vivo Spry2 function during chick somite myogenesis

A database of microRNA expression patterns in Xenopus laevis

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are short, non-coding RNAs around 22 nucleotides long. They inhibit gene expression either by translational repression or by causing the degradation of the mRNAs they bind to. Many are highly conserved amongst diverse organisms and have restricted spatio-temporal expression patterns during embryonic development where they are thought to be involved in generating accuracy of developmental timing and in supporting cell fate decisions and tissue identity. We determined the expression patterns of 180 miRNAs in Xenopus laevis embryos using LNA oligonucleotides. In addition we carried out small RNA-seq on different stages of early Xenopus development, identified 44 miRNAs belonging to 29 new families and characterized the expression of 5 of these. Our analyses identified miRNA expression in many organs of the developing embryo. In particular a large number were expressed in neural tissue and in the somites. Surprisingly none of the miRNAs we have looked at show expression in the heart. Our results have been made freely available as a resource in both XenMARK and Xenbase

A window on reality: perceiving edited moving images

Edited moving images entertain, inform, and coerce us throughout our daily lives, yet until recently, the way people perceive movies has received little psychological attention. We review the history of empirical investigations into movie perception and the recent explosion of new research on the subject using methods such as behavioral experiments, functional magnetic resonance imagery (fMRI) eye tracking, and statistical corpus analysis. The Hollywood style of moviemaking, which permeates a wide range of visual media, has evolved formal conventions that are compatible with the natural dynamics of attention and humans’ assumptions about continuity of space, time, and action. Identifying how people overcome the sensory differences between movies and reality provides an insight into how the same cognitive processes are used to perceive continuity in the real world

Characterising open chromatin in chick embryos identifies cis-regulatory elements important for paraxial mesoderm formation and axis extension

Somites arising from paraxial mesoderm are a hallmark of the segmented vertebrate body plan. They form sequentially during axis extension and generate musculoskeletal cell lineages. How paraxial mesoderm becomes regionalised along the axis and how this correlates with dynamic changes of chromatin accessibility and the transcriptome remains unknown. Here, we report a spatiotemporal series of ATAC-seq and RNA-seq along the chick embryonic axis. Footprint analysis shows differential coverage of binding sites for several key transcription factors, including CDX2, LEF1 and members of HOX clusters. Associating accessible chromatin with nearby expressed genes identifies cis-regulatory elements (CRE) for TCF15 and MEOX1. We determine their spatiotemporal activity and evolutionary conservation in Xenopus and human. Epigenome silencing of endogenous CREs disrupts TCF15 and MEOX1 gene expression and recapitulates phenotypic abnormalities of anterior–posterior axis extension. Our integrated approach allows dissection of paraxial mesoderm regulatory circuits in vivo and has implications for investigating gene regulatory networks

Compression of Auditory Space during Forward Self-Motion

<div><h3>Background</h3><p>Spatial inputs from the auditory periphery can be changed with movements of the head or whole body relative to the sound source. Nevertheless, humans can perceive a stable auditory environment and appropriately react to a sound source. This suggests that the inputs are reinterpreted in the brain, while being integrated with information on the movements. Little is known, however, about how these movements modulate auditory perceptual processing. Here, we investigate the effect of the linear acceleration on auditory space representation.</p> <h3>Methodology/Principal Findings</h3><p>Participants were passively transported forward/backward at constant accelerations using a robotic wheelchair. An array of loudspeakers was aligned parallel to the motion direction along a wall to the right of the listener. A short noise burst was presented during the self-motion from one of the loudspeakers when the listener’s physical coronal plane reached the location of one of the speakers (null point). In Experiments 1 and 2, the participants indicated which direction the sound was presented, forward or backward relative to their subjective coronal plane. The results showed that the sound position aligned with the subjective coronal plane was displaced ahead of the null point only during forward self-motion and that the magnitude of the displacement increased with increasing the acceleration. Experiment 3 investigated the structure of the auditory space in the traveling direction during forward self-motion. The sounds were presented at various distances from the null point. The participants indicated the perceived sound location by pointing a rod. All the sounds that were actually located in the traveling direction were perceived as being biased towards the null point.</p> <h3>Conclusions/Significance</h3><p>These results suggest a distortion of the auditory space in the direction of movement during forward self-motion. The underlying mechanism might involve anticipatory spatial shifts in the auditory receptive field locations driven by afferent signals from vestibular system.</p> </div

Third Report on Chicken Genes and Chromosomes 2015

Following on from the First Report on Chicken Genes and Chromosomes [Schmid et al., 2000] and the Second Report in 2005 [Schmid et al., 2005], we are pleased to publish this long-awaited Third Report on the latest developments in chicken genomics. The First Report highlighted the availability of genetic and physical maps, while the Second Report was published as the chicken genome sequence was released. This report comes at a time of huge technological advances (particularly in sequencing methodologies) which have allowed us to examine the chicken genome in detail not possible until now. This has also heralded an explosion in avian genomics, with the current availability of more than 48 bird genomes [Zhang G et al., 2014b; Eöry et al., 2015], with many more planned

Atg7-Mediated Autophagy Is Involved in the Neural Crest Cell Generation in Chick Embryo

Autophagy plays a very important role in numerous physiological and pathological events. However, it still remains unclear whether Atg7-induced autophagy is involved in the regulation of neural crest cell production. In this study, we found the co-location of Atg7 and Pax7+ neural crest cells in early chick embryo development. Upregulation of Atg7 with unilateral transfection of full-length Atg7 increased Pax7+ and HNK-1+ cephalic and trunk neural crest cell numbers compared to either Control-GFP transfection or opposite neural tubes, suggesting that Atg7 over-expression in neural tubes could enhance the production of neural crest cells. BMP4 in situ hybridization and p-Smad1/5/8 immunofluorescent staining demonstrated that upregulation of Atg7 in neural tubes suppressed the BMP4/Smad signaling, which is considered to promote the delamination of neural crest cells. Interestingly, upregulation of Atg7 in neural tubes could significantly accelerate cell progression into the S phase, implying that Atg7 modulates cell cycle progression. However, β-catenin expression was not significantly altered. Finally, we demonstrated that upregulation of the Atg7 gene could activate autophagy as did Atg8. We have also observed that similar phenotypes, such as more HNK-1+ neural crest cells in the unilateral Atg8 transfection side of neural tubes, and the transfection with full-length Atg8-GFP certainly promote the numbers of BrdU+ neural crest cells in comparison to the GFP control. Taken together, we reveal that Atg7-induced autophagy is involved in regulating the production of neural crest cells in early chick embryos through the modification of the cell cycle