A study examining visual processing in the brain found that men have greater sensitivity to detail and rapidly moving stimuli, while women are better at discriminating between colors. The findings, from researchers at the City University of New York, appear in the latest edition of Biology of Sex Differences. In one experiment, volunteers with normal […]
There are no significant gender-related differences in the eye’s ability to focus at near distances, so scientists have been looking for other reasons why women need higher power reading glasses than men of an equivalent age. Their paper, in Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, suggests that factors such as arm length and reading distance may […]
Deaf people often report enhanced abilities in their remaining senses, but up until now no one has explained how this occurs. Now, researchers at The University of Western Ontario have discovered there is a causal link between enhanced visual abilities and reorganization of the part of the brain that usually handles auditory input in congenitally […]
In work that could lead to much-improved computer vision systems, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) neuroscientists have tricked the visual cortex into confusing one object with another, thereby demonstrating that time teaches us how to recognize objects. Because an object such as a cat can produce innumerable different impressions on the retina – depending on […]
Humans and other animals are able to visually judge depth because we have two eyes and the brain compares the images from each. But we can also judge depth with only one eye, and scientists have been searching for how the brain accomplishes this feat. Now, neuroscientists at the University of Rochester have identified a […]
Primates that can distinguish red hues from green ones (trichromatic color vision) have been the cause of much debate among evolutionary biologists over the years. Evolutionary dogma holds that primates evolved trichromatic color vision to assist them in food foraging, by allowing them to detect red/orange food items from green leaf backgrounds. But results from […]
Gene therapy has been successfully used to restore sight in mice with a form of hereditary blindness; possibly leading to new treatments for common blinding diseases. Writing about their work in Nature Medicine, the University of Florida (UF) scientists described how they used a harmless virus to deliver corrective genes to mice with a genetic […]
Using dragonflies and houseflies as models, bioengineers at the University of California, Berkeley, have created a series of artificial compound eyes. The key benefit provided by a compound-type eye is the wide field of vision it makes possible. Writing in Science, the researchers say the eyes could be used in surveillance, motion detection, environmental sensing […]
The latest issue of the journal Neuron details how scientists at the Wayne State University School of Medicine and the Pennsylvania College of Optometry have used gene-transfer technology to partially restore vision in otherwise blind mice. The mice in the experiment had been genetically bred to lose rods and cones, the light-sensitive cells in the […]
