The eye contact effect: mechanisms and development

The ‘eye contact effect’ is the phenomenon that perceived eye contact with another human face modulates certain aspects of the concurrent and/or immediately following cognitive processing. In addition, functional imaging studies in adults have revealed that eye contact can modulate activity in structures in the social brain network, and developmental studies show evidence for preferential orienting towards, and processing of, faces with direct gaze from early in life. We review different theories of the eye contact effect and advance a ‘fast-track modulator’ model. Specifically, we hypothesize that perceived eye contact is initially detected by a subcortical route, which then modulates the activation of the social brain as it processes the accompanying detailed sensory information

RUNX oncoproteins and miRNA networks

News on: An AML1-ETO/miR-29b-1 regulatory circuit modulates phenotypic properties of acute myeloid leukemia cells by Zaidi et al. Oncotarget. 2017; 8:39994-40005. https://doi.org/10.18632/oncotarget.18127

Digital phase-modulation/multiplex system

System combines and modulates subcarriers and pulse code modulation data entirely with digital logic, and phase modulates an RF carrier with a digital representation of the composite subcarrier signal. It permits programmed control and modification of the modulation indices

Object knowledge modulates colour appearance

We investigated the memory colour effect for colour diagnostic artificial objects. Since knowledge about these objects and their colours has been learned in everyday life, these stimuli allow the investigation of the influence of acquired object knowledge on colour appearance. These investigations are relevant for questions about how object and colour information in high-level vision interact as well as for research about the influence of learning and experience on perception in general. In order to identify suitable artificial objects, we developed a reaction time paradigm that measures (subjective) colour diagnosticity. In the main experiment, participants adjusted sixteen such objects to their typical colour as well as to grey. If the achromatic object appears in its typical colour, then participants should adjust it to the opponent colour in order to subjectively perceive it as grey. We found that knowledge about the typical colour influences the colour appearance of artificial objects. This effect was particularly strong along the daylight axis

General anesthesia reduces complexity and temporal asymmetry of the informational structures derived from neural recordings in Drosophila

We apply techniques from the field of computational mechanics to evaluate the statistical complexity of neural recording data from fruit flies. First, we connect statistical complexity to the flies' level of conscious arousal, which is manipulated by general anesthesia (isoflurane). We show that the complexity of even single channel time series data decreases under anesthesia. The observed difference in complexity between the two states of conscious arousal increases as higher orders of temporal correlations are taken into account. We then go on to show that, in addition to reducing complexity, anesthesia also modulates the informational structure between the forward- and reverse-time neural signals. Specifically, using three distinct notions of temporal asymmetry we show that anesthesia reduces temporal asymmetry on information-theoretic and information-geometric grounds. In contrast to prior work, our results show that: (1) Complexity differences can emerge at very short timescales and across broad regions of the fly brain, thus heralding the macroscopic state of anesthesia in a previously unforeseen manner, and (2) that general anesthesia also modulates the temporal asymmetry of neural signals. Together, our results demonstrate that anesthetized brains become both less structured and more reversible.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures. Comments welcome; Added time-reversal analysis, updated discussion, new figures (Fig. 5 & Fig. 6) and Tables (Tab. 1

Lattice Distortion and Resonant X-Ray Scattering in DyB2C2

We study the resonant x-ray scattering (RXS) spectra at the Dy $L_{\rm III}$ absorption edge in the quadrupole ordering phase of DyB$_2$C$_2$. Analyzing the buckling of sheets of B and C atoms, we construct an effective model that the crystal field is acting on the $5d$ and $4f$ states with the principal axes different for different sublattices. Treating the $5d$ states as a band and the $4f$ states as localized states, we calculate the spectra within the dipole transition. We take account of processes that (1) the lattice distortion directly modulates the $5d$ states and (2) the charge anisotropy of the quadrupole ordering $4f$ states modulates the $5d$ states through the $5d$-$4f$ Coulomb interaction. Both processes give rise to the RXS intensities on $(00\frac{\ell}{2})$ and $(h0\frac{\ell}{2})$ spots. Both give similar photon-energy dependences and the same azimuthal-angle dependences for the main peak, in agreement with the experiment. The first process is found to give the intensities much larger than the second one in a wide parameter range of crystal field. This suggests that the main-peak of the RXS spectra is not a direct reflection of the quadrupole order but mainly controlled by the lattice distortion.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, Latex, To be published in J. Phys. Soc. Jp