Tag: reality
-
Virtual ‘universe machine’. Galaxy evolution. Understanding unicorns.
By creating millions of virtual universes and comparing them to observations of actual galaxies, researchers have made discoveries that present a powerful new approach for studying galaxy formation. (1) A cosmos full of phenomena. Phenomena we try to understand. Because we imagine we can. A cosmos full of laws. Laws we expect to decipher because…
-
Hallucinations…
Hallucinations are spooky and, fortunately, fairly rare. But, a new study suggests, the real question isn’t so much why some people occasionally experience them. It’s why all of us aren’t hallucinating all the time. In the study, Stanford University School of Medicine neuroscientists stimulated nerve cells in the visual cortex of mice to induce an…
-
Natural. Unnatural. How natural…
To find out which sights specific neurons in monkeys ‘like’ best, researchers designed an algorithm, called XDREAM, that generated images that made neurons fire more than any natural images the researchers tested. As the images evolved, they started to look like distorted versions of real-world stimuli. (1) Round and round we go. Trying to understand…
-
Yawning…
By studying the phenomenon of contagious yawning, the researchers learned that people’s reactions in virtual reality (VR) can be quite different from what they are in actual reality. They found that contagious yawning happens in VR, but people’s tendency to suppress yawns when they have company or feel they’re being watched don’t apply in the…
-
Unsocial brain…
Columbia scientists have identified a brain region that helps tell an animal when to attack an intruder and when to accept it into its home. This brain area, called CA2, is part of the hippocampus, a larger brain structure known to be critical for our memory of people, places, things and events. CA2 was already…
You must be logged in to post a comment.