Lifeboat Foundation

Visual systems of both humans and animals can detect life motion from the environment at the earliest stage of visual processing, research by scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) uncovered.

Jointly led by scientists from the CAS Institute of Psychology and CAS Institute of Biophysics, the study also highlighted the critical role of the superior colliculus (SC) in the perception of biological motion (BM) signals, suggesting a cross-species mechanism for processing BM early in the visual stream.

Results of the study were published in Nature Communications on Nov. 7, titled “Detecting biological motion signals in human and monkey superior colliculus: a subcortical-cortical pathway for biological motion perception.”

Scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have uncovered a brain circuit in primates that rapidly detects faces. The findings help not only explain how primates sense and recognize faces, but could also have implications for understanding conditions such as autism, where face detection and recognition are often impaired from early childhood.

The newly discovered circuit first engages an evolutionarily ancient part of the brain called the superior colliculus, which can then trigger the eyes and head to turn for a better look. This better view enables different brain areas in the temporal cortex to engage in more complex facial recognition. The study was published in the journal Neuron.

“Quick recognition of faces is a key skill in humans and other primates,” said Richard Krauzlis, Ph.D., of NIH’s National Eye Institute (NEI) and senior author of the study.

Biological motion refers to the kinesthetic information of living beings (i.e., humans and animals). The ability of biological motion perception is crucial for the organism’s survival and social interaction. Biological motion contains multidimensional attributes, including physical, biological and social attributes. How does our brain extract each attribute from multidimensional biological motion stimuli, and what is the relationship between the processing of different attributes?

A research team led by Prof. Jiang Yi from the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying the processing of multidimensional biological motion attributes in the human brain. They used point-light displays as test stimuli, in which only the movement trajectories of a person’s major joints are represented by a set of dots. They systematically manipulated three attributes of biological motion: walking direction, gender, and emotional state.

Using multiple regression representation similarity analysis (RSA), the researchers identified the brain networks involved in the processing of these three attributes. The brain areas that encode the walking direction attribute are mainly located in the dorsal cortical areas, those that represent the gender attribute are located in the frontal and temporal lobes, and the neural representations of the emotional state attribute widely involve the dorsal and ventral cortical areas.

A new study by researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) reveals the areas of the brain where the meanings of words are retrieved from memory and processed during language comprehension. Previous neuroimaging studies had indicated that large portions of the temporal, parietal, and frontal lobes participate in processing language meaning, but it was unknown which regions encoded information about individual word meanings.

“We found that word meaning information was represented in several high-level cortical areas (i.e., areas that are not closely connected to primary sensory or motor areas), including the classical ‘language areas’ known as Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area,” said Dr. Leonardo Fernandino, assistant professor of neurology and biomedical engineering at MCW. “Interestingly, however, some regions not previously considered as important for language processing were among those containing the most information about word meaning.”

Additionally, they also investigated whether the neural representations of word meaning in each of these areas contained information about phenomenological experience (i.e., related to different kinds of perceptual, emotional, and action-related experiences), as several researchers had previously proposed, or whether they contained primarily information about conceptual categories (i.e., natural kinds) or about word co-occurrence statistics, as other researchers have theorized.

Researchers have explained how the regularly structured topographic maps in the visual cortex of the brain could arise spontaneously to efficiently process visual information. This research provides a new framework for understanding functional architectures in the visual cortex during early developmental stages.

A KAIST research team led by Professor Se-Bum Paik from the Department of Bio and Brain Engineering has demonstrated that the orthogonal organization of retinal mosaics in the periphery is mirrored onto the primary visual cortex and initiates the clustered topography of higher visual areas in the brain.

This new finding provides advanced insights into the mechanisms underlying a biological strategy of brain circuitry for the efficient tiling of sensory modules. The study was published in Cell Reports on January 5.

Researchers have explained how visual cortexes develop uniquely across the brains of different mammalian species. A KAIST research team led by Professor Se-Bum Paik from the Department of Bio and Brain Engineering has identified a single biological factor, the retino-cortical mapping ratio, that predicts distinct cortical organizations across mammalian species.

This new finding has resolved a long-standing puzzle in understanding visual neuroscience regarding the origin of functional architectures in the visual cortex. The study, published in Cell Reports on March 10, demonstrates that the evolutionary variation of biological parameters may induce the development of distinct functional circuits in the visual cortex, even without species-specific developmental mechanisms.

In the primary visual cortex (V1) of mammals, neural tuning to visual stimulus orientation is organized into one of two distinct topographic patterns across species. While primates have columnar orientation maps, a salt-and-pepper type organization is observed in rodents.

A recent study in Physical Review Letters explores quantum effects on black hole thermodynamics and geometry, focusing on extending two classical inequalities into the quantum regime.

Black holes have been thoroughly studied through a classical approach based on Einstein’s general theory of relativity. However, this approach does not account for quantum effects like Hawking radiation.

The goal of the study was for the researchers to refine classical theories by including quantum effects, thereby offering an improved understanding of black hole dynamics.

New Curtin University-led research has uncovered what may be the oldest direct evidence of ancient hot water activity on Mars, revealing the planet may have been habitable at some point in its past.

The study analyzed a 4.45 billion-year-old zircon grain from the famous Martian meteorite NWA7034, also known as Black Beauty, and found geochemical “fingerprints” of water-rich fluids.

Study co-author Dr. Aaron Cavosie from Curtin’s School of Earth and Planetary Sciences said the discovery opened up new avenues for understanding ancient Martian hydrothermal systems associated with magmatism, as well as the planet’s past habitability.

A 2023 Review in Science Translational Medicine looks at the complex connections between astrocytes and other types of cells in the nervous system, including neurons, oligodendrocytes, and microglia.