Category: Senses
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Filling in memories…
When looking at a picture of a sunny day at the beach, we can almost smell the scent of sun screen. Our brain often completes memories and automatically brings back to mind the different elements of the original experience. A new study now reveals the underlying mechanisms of this auto-complete function. The researchers made an…
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Invisible table…
Making objects invisible is no longer the stuff of fantasy but a fast-evolving science. 'Invisibility cloaks' using metamaterials now exist, and are beginning to be used to improve the performance of satellite antennas and sensors. Many of the proposed metamaterials, however, only work at limited wavelength ranges such as microwave frequencies. Now, scientists report a…
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Colour where there is no colour… A cosmos where there is no cosmos…
Engineers have found that under the right conditions, ordinary clear water droplets on a transparent surface can produce brilliant colors, without the addition of inks or dyes. By tuning size, illumination angle, and curvature, MIT engineers can produce brilliant colors, in patterns they can predict, in otherwise transparent droplets. (1) Under the right angle, everything…
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See your face… Move your hand… Break the mirror…
Given the limited capacity of our attention, we only process a small amount of the sights, sounds, and sensations that reach our senses at any given moment. Research suggests that certain stimuli - specifically, your own face - can influence how you respond without you being aware of it. In an experiment, participants looked at…
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Listen. So that you touch…
Our eyes, ears and skin are responsible for different senses. Moreover, our brain assigns these senses to different regions: the visual cortex, auditory cortex and somatosensory cortex. However, it is clear that there are anatomical connections between these different cortices such that brain activation to one sense can influence brain activation to another. A study…
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