Subjective appearance of ambiguous structure-from-motion can be driven by objective switches of a separate less ambiguous context

AbstractTwo ambiguous transparent structure-from-motion (SFM) stimuli often appear to co-rotate. Grossmann and Dobbins (2003) reported breakdown of such perceptual coupling when one stimulus was made unambiguous (by rendering it opaque), leading them to propose that coupling depends generally on differential stimulus ambiguity. In contrast, we demonstrate robust stimulus-driven coupling even when one SFM stimulus is relatively disambiguated, by using relative-luminance and/or binocular-disparity cues. Such context stimuli could induce stimulus-driven coupling by disambiguating the transparent stimulus, though critically only when the context was clearly non-opaque and coaxial with the ambiguous stimulus. This demonstrates long-range information-sharing between separate stimulus representations, subject to specific constraints

Peeling Plaids Apart: Context Counteracts Cross-Orientation Contrast Masking

Background: Contrast discrimination for an image is usually harder if another image is superimposed on top. We asked whether such contrast masking may be enhanced or relieved depending on cues promoting integration of both images as a single pattern, versus segmentation into two independent components. Methodology & Principal Findings: Contrast discrimination thresholds for a foveal test grating were sharply elevated in the presence of a perfectly overlapping orthogonally-oriented mask grating. However thresholds returned to the unmasked baseline when a surround grating was added, having the same orientation and phase of either the test or mask grating. Both such masking and ‘unmasking’ effects were much stronger for moving than static stimuli. Conclusions & Significance: Our results suggest that common-fate motion reinforces the perception of a single coherent plaid pattern, while the surround helps to identify each component independently, thus peeling the plaid apart again. These results challenge current models of early vision, suggesting that higher-level surface organization influences contrast encoding, determining whether the contrast of a grating may be recovered independently from that of its mask

The role of right and left parietal lobes in the conceptual processing of numbers

Neuropsychological and functional imaging studies have associated the conceptual processing of numbers with bilateral parietal regions (including intraparietal sulcus). However, the processes driving these effects remain unclear because both left and right posterior parietal regions are activated by many other conceptual, perceptual, attention, and response-selection processes. To dissociate parietal activation that is number-selective from parietal activation related to other stimulus or response-selection processes, we used fMRI to compare numbers and object names during exactly the same conceptual and perceptual tasks while factoring out activations correlating with response times. We found that right parietal activation was higher for conceptual decisions on numbers relative to the same tasks on object names, even when response time effects were fully factored out. In contrast, left parietal activation for numbers was equally involved in conceptual processing of object names. We suggest that left parietal activation for numbers reflects a range of processes, including the retrieval of learnt facts that are also involved in conceptual decisions on object names. In contrast, number selectivity in right parietal cortex reflects processes that are more involved in conceptual decisions on numbers than object names. Our results generate a new set of hypotheses that have implications for the design of future behavioral and functional imaging studies of patients with left and right parietal damage

Response Efficiency: Behavioural Manifestations of an Emotion-led Subjective Experience of Duration

AbstractNumerous theories have been proposed on the influence of emotion on our perception of time, with recent work favouring attentional mechanisms as opposed to more traditional accounts of an ‘internal clock’ (Lui, Penney, & Schirmer, 2011). For example, the perceived duration of an emotional event may depend on both its behavioural relevance, as well as the stimulus-driven salience of its features (Lambrechts et al., 2011; Bradley & Lang, 2007; Noulhiane et al., 2007; Gil et al., 2007). In the same light, seminal work by Eagleman (2008) focused on subjective duration perception following short and automatic (as opposed to lengthier and more cognitively loaded) events. The literature however, lacks an account of observable differences in response efficiency (i.e., response time and accuracy), which may be related to changes in our perception of an emotional event's duration, specifically in relation to automatic emotionally loaded events. Drawing from behavioural findings from three studies investigating effects of facial emotion on response efficiency (which however do not explicitly measure subjective timing), this theoretical presentation attempts to recast our results from the above perspective of the proposed relation between attentional engagement and subjective duration.Our three experiments were originally designed to investigate rapid spatial attentional engagement to emotional stimuli. We measured the effects of the poser's eye-gaze, concurrent auditory threat, and participant's rated anxiety on the speed and accuracy of responses to facial emotion in three speeded forced-choice studies. In Study 1, 24 right-handed healthy adults viewed bilateral displays of a neutral face paired with either a fearful or angry face, and presented for 50ms; the task was to indicate the left-right location of the emotional face. Stimuli varied in intensity of facial expression, and gaze (left, right, ahead). Study 2 (N=23, all right-handed) increased stimulus exposure time to 100ms with added looming or receding sound unpredictably per trial, to test whether looming sounds selectively enhance emotional face detection. In Study 3 (N=24, all right-handed), participants viewed brief bilateral displays of angry or happy faces paired with their respective neutral expression, and also completed the State Anxiety sub-scale (Y-1) of the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory.Gaze did not lead to a detection advantage for angry faces in Tasks 1 &2 regardless of stimulus exposure time or auditory threat unpredictability. Interestingly though, response efficiency was increased for both anger and fear, and further increased with the addition of looming sounds. Effects were found even for extremely subtle and ambiguous emotional expressions. In Task 3, we observed a speed-accuracy trade off in highly anxious participants particularly for ambiguous faces with emotional intensities near to threshold.By observing the modulation of response efficiency in displays of automatic and ambiguous emotional faces, we propose that these findings and previous results could be explained in terms of attentionally-driven changes in duration perception. Attention appears to modulate response efficiency depending on the emotional salience of a stimulus, with more of our attentional resources being needed when faced with an ambiguous emotional event. Even when considering responses from highly anxious participants, it appears as though it is not the specific nature of the event itself that shapes their responses, but the ambiguity of the stimuli they are presented with. It could therefore be the case that our subjective experience of duration of an emotional event is inherently linked with the level of reflex-like automaticity that the event itself presents. When our attention is ‘grabbed’ by a sudden exposure to an emotional stimulus, our consequently speeded and more efficient response might reflect a dilation of subjective time during response preparation – perhaps especially important when the event is pertaining to threat. Though the present data do not pertain directly to subjective timing, it is possible that the attentional demands posed on participants while deciphering the relevance of ambiguous emotional stimuli could have caused changes in duration perception of the kind previously reported to be associated with emotional stimuli. Our theoretical suggestion could therefore lead to future studies combining reaction times and accuracy with an explicit measure of duration perception

Hearing through your eyes: neural basis of audiovisual cross-activation, revealed by transcranial alternating current stimulation

Some people experience auditory sensations when seeing visual flashes or movements. This prevalent synaesthesia-like ‘visual-evoked auditory response’ (vEAR) could result either from over-exuberant cross-activation between brain areas, and/or reduced inhibition of normally-occurring cross-activation. We have used transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) to test these theories. We applied tACS at 10Hz (alpha-band frequency) or 40Hz (gamma-band), bilaterally either to temporal or occipital sites, while measuring same/different discrimination of paired auditory (A) versus visual (V) 'Morse code' sequences. At debriefing, participants were classified as vEAR or non-vEAR depending on whether they reported 'hearing' the silent flashes. In non-vEAR participants, temporal 10Hz tACS caused impairment of A performance, which correlated with improved V; conversely under occipital tACS, poorer V performance correlated with improved A. This reciprocal pattern suggests that sensory cortices are normally mutually inhibitory, and that alpha-frequency tACS may bias the balance of competition between them. vEAR participants showed no tACS effects, consistent with reduced inhibition, or enhanced cooperation between modalities. In addition, temporal 40Hz tACS impaired V performance, specifically in individuals who showed a performance advantage for V (relative to A). Gamma-frequency tACS may therefore modulate the ability of these individuals to benefit from recoding flashes into the auditory modality, possibly by disrupting cross-activation of auditory areas by visual stimulation. Our results support both theories, suggesting that vEAR may depend on disinhibition of normally-occurring sensory cross-activation, which may be expressed more strongly in some individuals. Furthermore, endogenous alpha and gamma-frequency oscillations may function respectively to inhibit or promote this cross-activation

Time Processing in Dyscalculia

To test whether atypical number development may affect other types of quantity processing, we investigated temporal discrimination in adults with developmental dyscalculia (DD). This also allowed us to test whether number and time may be sub-served by a common quantity system or decision mechanisms: if they do, both should be impaired in dyscalculia, but if number and time are distinct they should dissociate. Participants judged which of two successively presented horizontal lines was longer in duration, the first line being preceded by either a small or a large number prime (“1” or “9”) or by a neutral symbol (“#”), or in a third task participants decided which of two Arabic numbers (either “1,” “5,” “9”) lasted longer. Results showed that (i) DD’s temporal discriminability was normal as long as numbers were not part of the experimental design, even as task-irrelevant stimuli; however (ii) task-irrelevant numbers dramatically disrupted DD’s temporal discriminability the more their salience increased, though the actual magnitude of the numbers had no effect; in contrast (iii) controls’ time perception was robust to the presence of numbers but modulated by numerical quantity: therefore small number primes or numerical stimuli seemed to make durations appear shorter than veridical, but longer for larger numerical prime or numerical stimuli. This study is the first to show spared temporal discrimination – a dimension of continuous quantity – in a population with a congenital number impairment. Our data reinforce the idea of a partially shared quantity system across numerical and temporal dimensions, which supports both dissociations and interactions among dimensions; however, they suggest that impaired number in DD is unlikely to originate from systems initially dedicated to continuous quantity processing like time

fMRI correlates of object-based attentional facilitation versus suppression of irrelevant stimuli, dependent on global grouping and endogenous cueing.

BACKGROUND: Theories of object-based attention often make two assumptions: that attentional resources are facilitatory, and that they spread automatically within grouped objects. Consistent with this, ignored visual stimuli can be easier to process, or more distracting, when perceptually grouped with an attended target stimulus. But in past studies, the ignored stimuli often shared potentially relevant features or locations with the target. In this fMRI study, we measured the effects of attention and grouping on Blood Oxygenation Level Dependent (BOLD) responses in the human brain to entirely task-irrelevant events.Two checkerboards were displayed each in opposite hemifields, while participants responded to check-size changes in one pre-cued hemifield, which varied between blocks. Grouping (or segmentation) between hemifields was manipulated between blocks, using common (versus distinct) motion cues. Task-irrelevant transient events were introduced by randomly changing the colour of either checkerboard, attended or ignored, at unpredictable intervals. The above assumptions predict heightened BOLD signals for irrelevant events in attended versus ignored hemifields for ungrouped contexts, but less such attentional modulation under grouping, due to automatic spreading of facilitation across hemifields. We found the opposite pattern, in primary visual cortex. For ungrouped stimuli, BOLD signals associated with task-irrelevant changes were lower, not higher, in the attended versus ignored hemifield; furthermore, attentional modulation was not reduced but actually inverted under grouping, with higher signals for events in the attended versus ignored hemifield

Direction of visual apparent motion driven solely by timing of a static sound

In temporal ventriloquism, auditory events can illusorily attract perceived timing of a visual onset [1,2,3]. We investigated whether timing of a static sound can also influence spatio-temporal processing of visual apparent motion, induced here by visual bars alternating between opposite hemifields. Perceived direction typically depends on the relative interval in timing between visual left-right and right-left flashes (e.g., rightwards motion dominating when left-to-right interflash intervals are shortest [4]). In our new multisensory condition, interflash intervals were equal, but auditory beeps could slightly lag the right flash, yet slightly lead the left flash, or vice versa. This auditory timing strongly influenced perceived visual motion direction, despite providing no spatial auditory motion signal whatsoever. Moreover, prolonged adaptation to such auditorily driven apparent motion produced a robust visual motion aftereffect in the opposite direction, when measured in subsequent silence. Control experiments argued against accounts in terms of possible auditory grouping, or possible attention capture. We suggest that the motion arises because the sounds change perceived visual timing, as we separately confirmed. Our results provide a new demonstration of multisensory influences on sensory-specific perception [5], with timing of a static sound influencing spatio-temporal processing of visual motion direction

Integrins Form an Expanding Diffusional Barrier that Coordinates Phagocytosis

Phagocytosis is initiated by lateral clustering of receptors, which in turn activates Src-family kinases (SFKs). Activation of SFKs requires depletion of tyrosine phosphatases from the area of particle engagement. We investigated how the major phosphatase CD45 is excluded from contact sites, using single-molecule tracking. The mobility of CD45 increased markedly upon engagement of Fcγ receptors. While individual CD45 molecules moved randomly, they were displaced from the advancing phagocytic cup by an expanding diffusional barrier. By micropatterning IgG, the ligand of Fcγ receptors, we found that the barrier extended well beyond the perimeter of the receptor-ligand engagement zone. Second messengers generated by Fcγ receptors activated integrins, which formed an actin-tethered diffusion barrier that excluded CD45. The expanding integrin wave facilitates the “zippering” of Fcγ receptors onto the target and integrates the information from sparse receptor-ligand complexes, coordinating the progression and ultimate closure of the phagocytic cup