Tag: senses
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Deep in the abyss… Do you feel wet?
Does [a:] as in ‘baa’ sound greener or more red? And is [i:] as in ‘beet’ light or dark in color? Even though we perceive speech and color are perceived with different sensory organs, nearly everyone has an idea about what colors and vowels fit with each other. And a large number of us have…
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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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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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Touching. You.
Researchers found that gently stroking a baby seems to reduce activity in the infant brain associated with painful experiences. Their results suggest that lightly brushing an infant at a certain speed – of approximately 3 centimeters per second – could provide effective pain relief before clinically necessary medical procedures. (1) Touch. The most cryptic of…
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