1,721,160 research outputs found
Action for perception: A motor-visual attentional effect.
No full textFive experiments investigated whether preparation of a grasping movement affects detection and discrimination of visual stimuli. Normal human participants were required to prepare to grasp a bar and then to grasp it as fast as possible on presentation of a visual stimulus. On the basis of the degree of sharing of their intrinsic properties with those of the to-be-grasped bar, visual stimuli were categorized as "congruent" or "incongruent." Results showed that grasping reaction times to congruent visual stimuli were faster than reaction times to incongruent ones. These data indicate that preparation to act on an object produces faster processing of stimuli congruent with that object. The same facilitation was present also when, after the preparation of hand grasping, participants were suddenly instructed to inhibit the prepared grasping movement and to respond with a different motor effector. The authors suggest that these findings could represent an extension of the premotor theory of attention, from orienting of attention to spatial locations to orienting of attention to graspable objects
Neuromania
No full textNeuroeconomia, neuromarketing, neuroestetica, neuroteologia: si affacciano oggi sulla scena nuove e sempre più fantasiose discipline frutto del cortocircuito tra saperi antichi e scoperte recenti sul funzionamento del cervello. Questo volume discute di alcuni luoghi comuni associati alla relazione mente - corpo, cervello - psiche, natura - cultura, mettendoci in guardia dalle ricadute culturali che un uso distorto delle possibilità aperte dalle nuove e potenti tecnologie di neuroimmagine può comportare
Face preference at birth: The role of an orienting mechanism
No full textIt has been proposed that newborns' preferential orienting to faces is solely controlled by a subcortically mediated orienting mechanism (i.e. Conspec). In contrast, preferential-looking tasks show that face preference at birth manifests itself also with measures that index fixation duration. It is possible, however, that orienting and fixation duration are confounded and only orienting matters. The present study used a revised version of the preferential-looking technique, in which the same stimulus (i.e. a facelike or a non-facelike pattern) was simultaneously presented to both sides of the visual field. Results showed that longer total fixation times on the facelike stimuli resulted from the sum of a greater number of brief fixations, rather than from the sum of a small number of long fixations. These findings support the hypothesis that, for facelike patterns, the duration of infant's fixation on the stimulus is determined by the nature of the pattern that impinges on the periphery of the visual field, more than by the nature of the pattern that is being looked at
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