Search results for "psychophysics"
showing 10 items of 90 documents
Colour Constancy in Goldfish and Man: Influence of Surround Size and Lightness
2002
Colour constancy was investigated by using a series of 10 simultaneously presented surface colours ranging in small steps from green through gray to red – purple. Goldfish were trained to select one medium test field when the entire setup was illuminated with white light. In the tests, either red or green illumination was used. Colour constancy, as inferred from the choice behaviour, was perfect under green illumination when the test fields were presented on a gray or a white background, but imperfect on a black background. Under red illumination and a white background, however, colour constancy was overcompensated. Here, a colour contrast effect was observed. The influence of background l…
Dopamine in amygdala gates limbic processing of aversive stimuli in humans
2008
Dopamine is known to contribute to the amygdala-mediated aversive response, where increased dopamine release can augment amygdala function. Combining fMRI and PET imaging techniques, Kienast et al. present findings that suggest a functional link between anxiety temperament, dopamine storage capacity and emotional processing in the amygdala. Dopamine is released under stress and modulates processing of aversive stimuli. We found that dopamine storage capacity in human amygdala, measured with 6-[18F]fluoro-L-DOPA positron emission tomography, was positively correlated with functional magnetic resonance imaging blood oxygen level–dependent signal changes in amygdala and dorsal anterior cingula…
Inward currents in primary nociceptive neurons of the rat and pain sensations in humans elicited by infrared diode laser pulses
2002
Radiant heat is often used to study nociception in vivo. We now used infrared radiation generated by a diode laser stimulator (wavelength 980 nm) to investigate transduction mechanisms for noxious heat stimuli in acutely dissociated dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons of rats in vitro. The laser stimulator offered the unique opportunity to test whether the same stimuli also elicit pain sensations in humans. A specific heat-induced current (I(heat)) was elicited in six of 13 small DRG neurons (diameteror =30 microm) tested in the whole-cell configuration of the patch-clamp mode. Current responses in the seven heat-insensitive neurons were within the range explainable by the temperature depend…
Visual illusions and the control of children arm movements.
2001
The aim of the present study was to determine whether children like adults (Gentilucci M, Chieffi S, Daprati E, Saetti MC, Toni I. Visual illusion and action. Neuropsychologia 1996;34:369-76; Gentilucci M, Daprati E, Gangitano M, Toni I. Eye position tunes the contribution of allocentric and egocentric information to target localisation in human goal directed arm movements. Neurosci Lett 1997;222:123-6) are influenced by visual illusions when they transform visual information in motor command. Children and adults pointed to a shaft extremity of the Müller-Lyer configurations, as well as to an extremity of a control configuration. Movements were executed in two experimental conditions. In th…
Changes in pattern induced flicker colors are mediated by the blue-yellow opponent process.
1992
The colors of Benham's Top [pattern induced flicker colors (PIFCs)] were matched with color stimuli provided by a computer aided color mixer. Subjects viewed a series of specifically modified black and white disks and matched the resulting subjective color with a comparison field containing the color generated by additive mixing. Different phase relations between the apparently colored ring and the surround were tested. The color loci of all PIFCs were found to lie on a plane in receptor three-space which is given by the axis of the shortwave receptor excitation and a vector given by combining the middle and long wave receptor excitation directions in a fixed ratio of nearly 1:1. From the o…
Surface Lightness Influences Perceived Room Height
2010
Surprisingly little scientific research has been conducted on the effects of colour and lightness on the perception of spaciousness. Practitioners and architects typically suggest that a room's ceiling appears higher when it is painted lighter than the walls, while darker ceilings appear lower. Employing a virtual reality setting, we studied the effects of the lightness of different room surfaces on perceived height in two psychophysical experiments. Observers judged the height of rooms varying in physical height as well as in the lightness of ceiling, floor, and walls. Experiment 1 showed the expected increase of perceived height with increases in ceiling lightness. Unexpectedly, the perce…
Sequential grouping modulates the effect of non-simultaneous masking on auditory intensity resolution.
2012
The presence of non-simultaneous maskers can result in strong impairment in auditory intensity resolution relative to a condition without maskers, and causes a complex pattern of effects that is difficult to explain on the basis of peripheral processing. We suggest that the failure of selective attention to the target tones is a useful framework for understanding these effects. Two experiments tested the hypothesis that the sequential grouping of the targets and the maskers into separate auditory objects facilitates selective attention and therefore reduces the masker-induced impairment in intensity resolution. In Experiment 1, a condition favoring the processing of the maskers and the targ…
Illusion of Pain: Pre-existing Knowledge Determines Brain Activation of ‘Imagined Allodynia’
2007
Abstract Allodynia means that innocuous tactile stimulation is felt as pain. Accordingly, cerebral activations during allodynia or touch should markedly differ. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the imagination of allodynia affects brain processing of touch in healthy subjects. Seventeen healthy subjects divided into 2 subgroups were investigated: The first group (n = 7) was familiar with allodynia, based on previous pain studies, whereas the second group (n = 10) had never knowingly experienced allodynia. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, 2 experimental conditions were investigated. In one condition the subjects were simply touched at their left hand, whereas duri…
The pattern and time course of somatosensory changes in the human UVB sunburn model reveal the presence of peripheral and central sensitization.
2013
The ultraviolet B (UVB) sunburn model was characterized with a comprehensive battery of quantitative sensory testing (QST). Primary hyperalgesia in UVB-irradiated skin and secondary hyperalgesia in adjacent nonirradiated skin were studied in 22 healthy subjects 24h after irradiation with UVB at 3-fold minimal erythema dose of a skin area 5 cm in diameter at the thigh and compared to mirror-image contralateral control areas. The time course of hyperalgesia over 96 h was studied in a subgroup of 12 subjects. Within the sunburn area, cold hyperesthesia (P=.01), profound generalized hyperalgesia to heat (P.001), cold (P.05), pinprick and pressure (P.001), and mild dynamic mechanical allodynia (…
Persistent antinociception through repeated self-injury in patients with borderline personality disorder.
2012
Abstract Patients with borderline personality disorder, mostly female, exhibit severe autoaggressive behavior, namely an intentionally performed, nonsuicidal self-injury and severe blunting of pain perception, the mechanism of which is hitherto not understood. Because the nociceptive system displays a high degree of plasticity, the aim of this study was to analyze the relationship of pain perception to self-injurious behavior. Pain perception of mechanical and chemical noxious stimuli was studied by quantitative sensory testing in 22 patients (15 female, 7 male) with borderline personality disorder (BPD) according to DSM-IV and 22 age- and gender-matched controls. BPD patients exhibited a s…