Tag Archives: vision

October 29

What can your tongue see?

posted by

Picture this: you’re riding your bike on a cool fall afternoon. You’re blind but have no difficulty navigating through the streets without the aid of your eyes. Rather, the world comes into view through waves of sound bouncing off nearby objects in response to the bursts of clicking noises you create with your tongue. Since […]

»»
April 09

You Do Have a Sixth Sense – and More!

posted by

Ever wish you had more than just five senses? Sure, it’s cool to see, hear, touch, smell, and taste the world, but wouldn’t it be great to be able to sense other things? Perhaps you would prefer X-ray vision, telepathy, the ability to tell the future, or maybe you want to see dead people (or […]

»»
July 24

Lucy’s Brain: Use it or lose it

posted by

With the Lucy movie coming out, we’ve been really curious here at NeuWrite about what marvelous new life skills Scarlett Johansson will accrue, now that she can use more than 10% of her brain. As forward-thinking neuroscientists, we’ve been speculating: what would Lucy be able to do with such incredible and unprecedented brain power? The […]

»»
May 12

Wiring Eyes

posted by

We can probably all agree that eyes would just be useless bags of vitreous humor if not for their wiring to the brain.  It’s the highly precise connections between specialized cell types within the eye and their specific target cells within the brain that allow us to visually experience our world.  But how do these […]

»»

Retinal Direction Selectivity… Reversed!!!

posted by

In a recent paper, “Visual Stimulation Reverses the Directional Preference of Direction-Selective Retinal Ganglion Cells” (2012), the lab of Dr. Marla Feller demonstrated direction reversal of a subgroup of  Direction Selective Ganglion Cells in the mouse retina.  The finding is contrary to the predominant dogma that direction selectivity is endowed by circuity that is hard-wired.  […]

»»