Restoring Vision through “Project Prakash”: The Opportunities for Merging Science and Service

“So how does this help society?” is a question we are often asked as scientists. The lack of immediate and tangible results cannot be held against a scientific project but statements of future promise in broad and inchoate terms can sometimes pass the benefit-buck indefinitely. There is no incentive against over-stating the benefits, especially when they are hypothetical and lie in the distant future. Few scientists will say their science is not designed to serve society. Yet the proliferation of “potential benefits” in grant proposals and the Discussion sections of research papers, in the absence of tangible translations, can make the service element of science seem like a cliched ritual. Its repetition hollows out its meaning, breeding cynicism about the idea that basic science can be of service

Developmental Prosopagnosia and Super-Recognition: No Special Role for Surface Reflectance Processing

Face recognition by normal subjects depends in roughly equal proportions on shape and surface reflectance cues, while object recognition depends predominantly on shape cues. It is possible that developmental prosopagnosics are deficient not in their ability to recognize faces per se, but rather in their ability to use reflectance cues. Similarly, super-recognizers\u27 exceptional ability with face recognition may be a result of superior surface reflectance perception and memory. We tested this possibility by administering tests of face perception and face recognition in which only shape or reflectance cues are available to developmental prosopagnosics, super-recognizers, and control subjects. Face recognition ability and the relative use of shape and pigmentation were unrelated in all the tests. Subjects who were better at using shape or reflectance cues were also better at using the other type of cue. These results do not support the proposal that variation in surface reflectance perception ability is the underlying cause of variation in face recognition ability. Instead, these findings support the idea that face recognition ability is related to neural circuits using representations that integrate shape and pigmentation information

Fair Heroes and Heroines, Dark Commoners-Colourism in Bangla Films

In human society there exists colour-based variation. In many ethnicities, colour variation is associated with beauty and attractiveness prevails in society. In dominant endogamous societies within an ethnicity, these characteristics are preserved and highly prioritized as markers of physical attractiveness in that ethnicity. Such dominant groups within an ethnicity dominate others, among other things, in terms of public portrayal, places, spaces and various opportunities on the basis of characteristics largely possessed and hence prized by dominant groups and are held up as aspirational goals to the rest. People who have fairer skin tone as compared to the darker skin tone tries to dominate other in terms of public portrayal. These public portrayals are clearly seen in the case of visual mass media like cinema and advertisement. This paper explores whether such skin colour tone based bias exists in case of Bangali ethnicity. The skin tone of heroes and heroines of popular Bangla films produced in West Bengal was taken as a proxy to explore the nature of skin colour tone based bias (if any), in case of the Bangla mother tongue population – the 5th largest mother tongue population in the world. We found that the heroes and heroines have significantly lighter skin tones than other males and females of same ethnicity who are portrayed in a film. The results suggest that there exists significant skin colour based bias in the selection of heroes and heroines in Bangla films

Fair Heroes and Heroines, Dark Commoners-Colorism in Bangla Films

In human society there exists colour based variation. In many ethnicities, colour variation is associated with beauty and attractiveness prevails in society. In dominant endogamous societies within an ethnicity, these characteristics are preserved and highly prioritized as markers of physical attractiveness in that ethnicity. Such dominant groups within an ethnicity dominate others, among other things, in terms of public portrayal, places, spaces and various opportunities on the basis of characteristics largely possessed and hence prized by dominant groups and are held up as aspiration goals to the rest. People who have fairer skin tone as compared to the darker skin tone tries to dominate other in terms of public portrayal. These public portrayals are clearly seen in the case of visual mass media like cinema and advertisement. This paper explores whether such skin colour tone based bias exists in case of Bangali ethnicity. The skin tone of heroes and heroines of popular Bangla films produced in West Bengal was taken as a proxy to explore the nature of skin colour tone based bias (if any), in case of the Bangla mother tongue population, the 5th largest mother tongue population in the world. We found that the heroes and heroines have significantly lighter skin tones than other males and females of same ethnicity who are portrayed in a film. The results suggest that there exists significant skin colour based bias in the selection of heroes and heroines in Bangla films

Chronic-stress induced modulation of different states of anxiety-like behavior in female rats

Stress facilitates emotionality and consolidation of aversive memories in male rodents. In addition, considerable sexual dimorphism has been observed in animal and clinical literature, both in response to stress and predisposition to anxiety disorders thought to be exacerbated by stress. In view of this, we investigated effects of chronic immobilization stress and chronic unpredictable stress on anxiety-like behavior exhibited by female Wistar rats, using the elevated plus-maze. Neither of the stress paradigms employed in this study significantly influenced anxiety, as manifested by similar open-arm exploration in control and treated animals. Previous studies have reported that in males, exposure to elevated plus-maze during an initial trial significantly reduces open-arm exploration in subsequent retesting, an effect attributed to consolidation of aversive experience of the initial exposure. Control female animals, during a second exposure to the maze 72 h after the first trial, displayed a similar shift to a state of enhanced anxiety. Furthermore, exposure to stress did not affect such consolidation of anxiety, as evidenced by similar reduction in open-arm exploration between control and stressed animals during retesting. We conclude that female rats are insensitive to chronic stress in terms of facilitation and consolidation of anxiety

Top row: Two major kinds of childhood blindness in India.

<p>The left panel shows cataracts, and the right shows corneal opacities. Many cases of pediatric cataracts are congenital. The lower row shows, from left to right, cataract surgery in progress, a dilated pupil revealing a dense cataract, and the eye after excision of the cataract and implantation of an intra-ocular lens.</p

Capturing specific abilities as a window into human individuality: The example of face recognition

Proper characterization of each individual's unique pattern of strengths and weaknesses requires good measures of diverse abilities. Here, we advocate combining our growing understanding of neural and cognitive mechanisms with modern psychometric methods in a renewed effort to capture human individuality through a consideration of specific abilities. We articulate five criteria for the isolation and measurement of specific abilities, then apply these criteria to face recognition. We cleanly dissociate face recognition from more general visual and verbal recognition. This dissociation stretches across ability as well as disability, suggesting that specific developmental face recognition deficits are a special case of a broader specificity that spans the entire spectrum of human face recognition performance. Item-by-item results from 1,471 web-tested participants, included as supplementary information, fuel item analyses, validation, norming, and item response theory (IRT) analyses of our three tests: (a) the widely used Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT); (b) an Abstract Art Memory Test (AAMT), and (c) a Verbal Paired-Associates Memory Test (VPMT). The availability of this data set provides a solid foundation for interpreting future scores on these tests. We argue that the allied fields of experimental psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and vision science could fuel the discovery of additional specific abilities to add to face recognition, thereby providing new perspectives on human individuality

Is the web as good as the lab? Comparable performance from web and lab in cognitive/perceptual experiments

Abstract With the increasing sophistication and ubiquity of the Internet, behavioral research is on the cusp of a revolution that will do for population sampling what the computer did for stimulus control and measurement. It remains a common assumption, however, that data from self-selected Web samples must involve a trade-off between participant numbers and data quality. Concerns about data quality are heightened for performance-based cognitive and perceptual measures, particularly those that are timed or that involve complex stimuli. In experiments run with uncompensated, anonymous participants whose motivation for participation is unknown, reduced conscientiousness or lack of focus could produce results that would be difficult to interpret due to decreased overall performance, increased variability of performance, or increased measurement noise. Here, we addressed the question of data quality across a range of cognitive and perceptual tests. For three key performance metrics-mean performance, performance variance, and internal reliability-the results from selfselected Web samples did not differ systematically from those obtained from traditionally recruited and/or lab-tested samples. These findings demonstrate that collecting data from uncompensated, anonymous, unsupervised, self-selected participants need not reduce data quality, even for demanding cognitive and perceptual experiments

Longitudinal cognitive and brain changes associated with one-month of increased Internet access.

Internet technologies have profoundly changed the way we access information, manage our tasks, consume media, and our social interactions. The present work aims to provide insights into the long-term, causal influence of Internet exposure on our cognitive systems via an unprecedented, intervention-based experiment where we investigated the potential brain and cognitive changes that occurred in a rare sample of 35 young Indian adults who had minimal prior contact with Internet-related technologies, after being provided with unlimited Internet access for a month. Additionally, we performed cross-sectional comparisons of brain structure and cognitive measures between these subjects and a control group that consisted individuals who are frequent users of the Internet. Our key findings indicated that one month of increased Internet access resulted in increased media-multitasking behaviors and decreased abilities to process emotional content in faces. Critically, contrary to previous reports, our cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses found no significant effects of Internet exposure on brain structure and across a range of executive functions (impulse inhibition, attention control, task-switching and fluid intelligence) and social-cognitive measures (social network sizes, loneliness and face perception ability)

Results of late surgical intervention in children with early-onset bilateral cataracts

Background Cataracts are a major cause of childhood blindness globally. Although surgically treatable, it is unclear whether children would benefit from such interventions beyond the first few years of life, which are believed to constitute ‘critical’ periods for visual development. Aims To study visual acuity outcomes after late treatment of early-onset cataracts and also to determine whether there are longitudinal changes in postoperative acuity. Methods We identified 53 children with dense cataracts with an onset within the first half-year after birth through a survey of over 20 000 rural children in India. All had accompanying nystagmus and were older than 8 years of age at the time of treatment. They underwent bilateral cataract surgery and intraocular lens implantation. We then assessed their best-corrected visual acuity 6 weeks and 6 months after surgery. Results 48 children from the pool of 53 showed improvement in their visual acuity after surgery. Our longitudinal assessments demonstrated further improvements in visual acuity for the majority of these children proceeding from the 6-week to 6-month assessment. Interestingly, older children in our subject pool did not differ significantly from the younger ones in the extent of improvement they exhibit. Conclusions and relevance Our results demonstrate that not only can significant vision be acquired until late in childhood, but that neural processes underlying even basic aspects of vision like resolution acuity remain malleable until at least adolescence. These data argue for the provision of cataract treatment to all children, irrespective of their age.National Eye Institute (Grant R01EY020517)James S. McDonnell Foundatio