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How is it possible that we perceive our world in 3D when our eyes only register 2D images? And how do we decide in a millisecond if something in front of us is a bouquet of flowers or a painting? Researchers from Johns Hopkins University think they know how our brain is analyzing pictures. They say that their research “answers the century-old question of the basis of subconscious processes in visual perception.” According to the researchers, we’re capable to “process visual information automatically and independently of what we know, think or expect.” This research might lead to future treatments of human brain disorders. Read more…

Here is the introduction of the Johns Hopkins University news release.

The figure is famous: a deceptively simple line drawing that at first glance resembles a vase and, at the next, a pair of human faces in profile. When you look at this figure, your brain must rapidly decide what the various lines denote. Are they the outlines of the vase or the borders of two faces? How does your brain decide?

Below is an illustration describing the problem of interpreting 2D images in terms of objects in a 3D world (Credit: Johns Hopkins University).

Images are composed of regions that correspond to objects in space (A). The boundaries of these regions are generally the contours of objects that occlude more distant parts of the scene (occluding contours). To interpret images successfully, the visual system has to detect these contours and link them to the occluding regions. (B) The light textured region is generally perceived as a tilted square on a dark background, and the light-dark border as the contour of the square. But the display is ambiguous: the square could be a window. (C) The concept of border ownership. The interpretation of a 2D display depends on how the contrast borders are assigned (top). Consider the border marked by a black dot: if the border is assigned left, the square is an object in front of a dark background; if the border is assigned right, the square becomes a piece of background that is seen through a window. Given flat displays without depth cues, the visual system assumes the object interpretation.

The above image and legend come from a paper recently published by Neuron, “Figure and Ground in the Visual Cortex: V2 Combines Stereoscopic Cues with Gestalt Rules.” Here is a link to the full paper (PDF format, 12 pages, 323 KB).

Now, let’s return to the original news release for more explanations.

“Our paper answers the century-old question of the basis of subconscious processes in visual perception, specifically, the phenomenon of figure-ground organization,” said Rudiger von der Heydt, a professor in the Zanvyl Krieger Mind/Brain Institute.

The report, based on recordings of nerve cells in the visual cortex of macaque monkeys, suggests that this automatic processing of images is repeated each time an individual looks at something new, usually three to four times per second. What’s more, the brain provides what von der Heydt calls “a sophisticated program” to select and process the information that is relevant at any given moment.

But the researchers recognize that there are still lots of work to do before treating human brain disorders. Their current research needs to be “complemented by new brain imaging techniques, traditional psychophysics, psychology and computational and theoretical neuroscience.”

Sources: Johns Hopkins University news release, August 9, 2005; and various web sites

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Penn State researchers have developed software agents which can help human teams to react more accurately and quickly in time-stressed situations than human teams acting alone. According to this news release, the software was tested in a military command-and-control simulation. “When time pressures were normal, the human teams functioned well, sharing information and making correct decisions about the potential threat.” But when the pressure increased, the human teams made errors who would have cost lives in real situations. The decisions taken by agent-supported human teams were much better. Now, it remains to be seen if this software can be used in other stressful situations, such as for emergency management operations. Read more…

Here is a description of the simulation experiment.

In the simulation, team members had to protect an airbase and supply route which were under attack by enemy aircraft. The scenarios were configured with different patterns of attack and at different tempos. The situation was complicated because team members had to determine at first if the aircraft were neutral or hostile. Furthermore, two team members were dependent on the third whose role was to gather information and communicate it to them.

“When the teams don’t know if the incoming aircraft is the enemy, the defense team can’t attack, and the supply team takes action to avoid the incoming threat which causes a delay in delivery,” said Shuang Sun[, one of the researchers.] “These decisions lower the performance of the whole team.”

When the information gatherer was supported by the researchers’ R-CAST software system, the information was gathered and shared more quickly. As a result, the human-agent teams were better able to defend themselves from enemy attack and deliver supplies without delay, Sun said.

The illustration below shows the structure of the two teams used for testing, with human teams on the left, and agent-supported human teams on the right (Credit: Penn State).

And the diagram below shows how these different teams were able to destroy enemies when stress increased (Credit: Penn State).

It seems pretty obvious that software agents helped humans to better react in this stressful situation.

The researchers, Xiaocong Fan, Shuang Sun, John Yen, and Michael McNeese, have presented the results of their experiments at the Fourth International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, which was held in Amsterdam on July 25-29, 2005 (AAMAS 2005).

Here is a link to their full paper named “Extending the Recognition-Primed Decision Model to Support Human-Agent Collaboration” (PDF format, 8 pages, 413 KB). Here are some selected excerpts from the introduction.

The aim of this research is to support human decision making teams using cognitive agents empowered by a collaborative Recognition-Primed Decision (RPD) model. In this paper, we ¯rst describe an RPD-enabled agent architecture (R-CAST), in which we have implemented an internal mechanism of decision-making adaptation based on collaborative expectancy monitoring, and an information exchange mechanism driven by relevant cue analysis.

We have evaluated R-CAST agents in a real-time simulation environment, feeding teams with frequent decision-making tasks under different tempo situations. While the result conforms to psychological findings that human team members are extremely sensitive to their workload in high-tempo situations, it clearly indicates that human teams, when supported by R-CAST agents, can perform better in the sense that they can maintain team performance at acceptable levels in high time pressure situations.

The illustrations above come from this pretty interesting paper.

And if you still need more information about this project, you can check this page from the Laboratory for Intelligent Agents at Penn State.

Sources: Penn State news release, July 29, 2005; and various web sites

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Alex is a 28-year-old grey parrot who lives in a lab at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., and can count, identify objects, shapes, colors and materials. And now, Alex has grasped the concept of zero, according to World Science. In fact, Alex can describe the absence of a numerical quantity on a tray containing colored cubes. When a color is missing, Alex consistently identified this “zero quantity” by saying “none.” You might think that this is just a parrot trick, but this research about ‘bird intelligence’ might also help autistic and other learning-disabled children “who have trouble learning language and counting skills.” Read more…

One of the really interesting things about Alex is that it had learned in the past that “none” meant a lack of information. And without any training, when Alex was asked to say how many green or red cubes were on a tray in front of him, he spontaneously said “none” when there was no cubes with this color. In fact, he was able to connect two different concepts, a lack of information and the absence of a quantity. Pretty brilliant parrot, isn’t?

Before going further, below is a picture of Alex in front of his counting blocks (Credit: Brandeis University). And here is a link to a larger version (193 KB).

Now, let’s look at how the researchers made the discovery that Alex possessed a “zero-like concept.”

The story began when researchers started testing Alex to see whether he understood small numbers, between one and six. Zero wasn’t expected of him. The researchers would lay out an array of objects of different colors and sizes, and asked questions such as “what color four?” — meaning which color are the objects of which there are four.

Apparently, Alex was pretty good on these tests, until he got bored. So the researchers “found some more interesting toys to give as rewards.” And here came the decisive experiment.

One of these apparent lapses occurred one day when an experimenter asked Alex “what color three?” Laid out before Alex were sets of two, three and six objects, each set differently colored. Alex insisted on responding: “five.” This made no sense given that the answer was supposed to be a color.

After several tries the experimenter gave up and said: “OK, Alex, tell me: what color five?” “None,” the bird replied. This was correct, in that there was no color that graced exactly five of the objects. The researchers went on to incorporate “none” into future trials, and Alex consistently used the word correctly, they said.

A few days after this article was published, Brandeis University decided to issue a press release adding that Alex was the “first bird to comprehend numerical concept akin to zero.”

“It is doubtful that Alex’s achievement, or those of some other animals such as chimps, can be completely trained; rather, it seems likely that these skills are based on simpler cognitive abilities they need for survival, such as recognition of more versus less,” explained comparative psychologist and cognitive scientist Dr. Irene Pepperberg.

Dr. Pepperberg’s research, which uses a training method called the model-rival technique, also holds promise for teaching autistic and other learning-disabled children who have difficulty learning language, numerical concepts and even empathy.

So far, results using this learning technique with small groups of autistic children have been very promising.

The latest research work about Alex and his comprehension of zero has been published by the Journal of Comparative Psychology in its May 2005 issue (Volume 119, Issue 2) under the name “Number Comprehension by a Grey Parrot (Psittacus erithacus), Including a Zero-Like Concept.” You’ll get to the abstract from this page (scroll to number #8).

A Grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus) that was able to quantify 6 item sets (including subsets of heterogeneous groups, e.g., blue blocks within groupings of blue and green blocks and balls) using English labels was tested on comprehension of these labels, which is crucial for numerical competence . He was, without training, asked “What color/object [number]?” for collections of various simultaneously presented quantities (e.g., subsets of 4, 5, and 6 blocks of 3 different colors; subsets of 2, 4, and 6 keys, corks, and sticks). Accuracy was greater than 80% and was unaffected by array quantity, mass, or contour. His results demonstrated numerical comprehension competence comparable to that of chimpanzees and very young children. He also demonstrated knowledge of absence of quantity, using “none” to designate zero.

For more information, you can buy this article for $11.95.

Finally, if you still want to know more about Irene Pepperberg’s work with gray parrots, you can visit the Alex Foundation, where you’ll find that someday, Alex may be able to read. Amazing…

Sources: World Science, July 2, 2005; and various web sites

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We’re using computers for so long now that I guess that many of you think that our brains are working like clusters of computers. Like them, we can do several things ’simultaneously’ with our ‘processors.’ But each of these processors, in our brain or in a cluster of computers, is supposed to act sequentially. Not so fast! According to a new study from Cornell University, this is not true, and our mental processing is continuous. By tracking mouse movements of students working with their computers, the researchers found that our learning process was similar to other biological organisms: we’re not learning through a series of 0’s and 1’s. Instead, our brain is cascading through shades of grey. Read more…

According to this study, learning — at least language comprehension — is a continuous process.

“For decades, the cognitive and neural sciences have treated mental processes as though they involved passing discrete packets of information in a strictly feed-forward fashion from one cognitive module to the next or in a string of individuated binary symbols — like a digital computer,” said Michael Spivey, a psycholinguist and associate professor of psychology at Cornell.

His experiments are somewhat fascinating — even if limited.

In his study, 42 students listened to instructions to click on pictures of different objects on a computer screen. When the students heard a word, such as “candle,” and were presented with two pictures whose names did not sound alike, such as a candle and a jacket, the trajectories of their mouse movements were quite straight and directly to the candle.

The picture below shows Michael Spivey with one of his students looking at two objects on her screen.

[He asked her] to listen for a word and then to click on its picture. By studying the curvature of the trajectory of the mouse, he can analyze language comprehension processes (Credit: Kevin Stearns, Cornell University).

But when the students heard “candle” and were presented with two pictures with similarly sounding names, such as candle and candy, they were slower to click on the correct object, and their mouse trajectories were much more curved. Spivey said that the listeners started processing what they heard even before the entire word was spoken.

Spivey concludes that our brains can handle ambiguities.

“When there was ambiguity, the participants briefly didn’t know which picture was correct and so for several dozen milliseconds, they were in multiple states at once. They didn’t move all the way to one picture and then correct their movement if they realized they were wrong, but instead they traveled through an intermediate gray area,” explained Spivey.

For more information, the research work has been published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences under the name “Continuous attraction toward phonological competitors.” Here is a link to the abstract.

Certain models of spoken-language processing, like those for many other perceptual and cognitive processes, posit continuous uptake of sensory input and dynamic competition between simultaneously active representations. Here, we provide compelling evidence for this continuity assumption by using a continuous response, hand movements, to track the temporal dynamics of lexical activations during real-time spoken-word recognition in a visual context. By recording the streaming x, y coordinates of continuous goal-directed hand movement in a spoken-language task, online accrual of acoustic-phonetic input and competition between partially active lexical representations are revealed in the shape of the movement trajectories. This hand-movement paradigm allows one to project the internal processing of spoken-word recognition onto a two-dimensional layout of continuous motor output, providing a concrete visualization of the attractor dynamics involved in language processing.

The access to the full article will cost you $10.

Now, I have a question for you. Even if this new study is right, what will it change for us? Will you wake up differently tomorrow morning? I don’t think so.

Sources: Susan S. Lang, Cornell News Service, June 27, 2005; and various web sites

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Last year, the United States decided to send humans on Mars within thirty years. This sounds possible to me, but in this article, The Scientist warns that besides technical barriers, NASA will need to work to avoid biomedical risks to the human crews. First, crew members will have to live together for almost three years in a small spacecraft, and this promiscuity can lead to possible conflicts or depressions. Bone and muscle losses are another serious issue for such a long mission. Finally, the crew will be exposed to cosmic radiation and will need to be protected from such damages as the destruction of their brain cells. Fortunately, the author thinks that there are solutions to these three problems and offers us his vision. Read more…

Let’s briefly look at the psychological factors. Jay Buckey Jr., the author, who flew aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia in 1998, thinks that conflicts between crew members can be avoided either by sending large crews or big spacecrafts. But he also notes that human are pretty adaptable, especially when faced with tough conditions. He gives a couple of examples.

Fridtjof Nansen spent nine months above the Arctic Circle in a two-person hut with colleague Hjalmar Johansen. Nansen returned and later received the Nobel Prize for other work. He not only survived, he flourished. The crew on Sir Ernest Shackleton’s unsuccessful trip across Antarctica survived two years lost in the Antarctic ice.

So even if a three-year mission could be difficult, it’s still possible to be a successful one with proper training and crew selection.

NASA will have to face the even more serious issue of bone loss.

Crew members in space can lose approximately 1.5% of bone mass per month in certain load-bearing areas such as the hip. This loss occurs despite an aggressive, exercise-based countermeasure program.

According to Buckey, this problem can be solved by using two approaches. The first one implies more effective exercise and use of drugs. The second one would be to build a spaceship with an artificial gravity. Of course, NASA would have to test a series of inhabited rotating spacecrafts before.

The biggest health problem for a human crew going to Mars is the exposure to cosmic radiation, and mainly because it’s invisible and almost impossible to quantify. Here is a description of the problem.

Galactic cosmic radiation consists of atomic nuclei traveling at high speed with high energy. Earth’s magnetic field and atmosphere deflect or block most of it terrestrially, but a spacecraft in interplanetary space would not have this protection. Modeling studies have shown that with typical shielding, ions with an atomic number (z) ¡Ý 15 would hit approximately 6%-12% of the entire population of neuronal nuclei (depending on size and location) in the brain. Hits would occur outside of the nucleus as well. Many of these strikes are likely to be lethal to the cells.

So what’s the solution to this problem? The answer is to build a shield around the spaceship.

Again, there are two solutions. A passive shield, made of lead for instance, would have to be very thick to successfully protect the crew, and the weight of such a protected spacecraft would probably be too high to send it in space anyway.

But there is another solution: active shielding.

Just as a magnetic field protects Earth, it might be possible to put a magnetic field around a spacecraft. A coil of a superconducting material could produce a substantial magnetic field, which could, in turn, deflect the energetic galactic cosmic radiation. For a small-coil radius, the magnetic field would have to be quite strong (several Tesla) to be effective. A field of this size presents major structural and safety issues.

The larger the coil, however, the weaker the magnetic field needs to be. A wire wrapped on a spool could be unwound in space into a large coil. As the radius of the coil approaches a kilometer or so, the field strength and current that is needed will drop to reasonable levels. This approach to shielding, called active shielding, potentially could keep radiation levels within the spacecraft at any desired level.

In his conclusion, Buckey says that Mars is an achievable goal, and delivers his vision.

We solve most of the physiologic problems such as bone loss through biomedical research; address the psychological stresses with proper training and selection; and devote our engineering efforts to making an active radiation shield.

Even if technical or medical hurdles remain, wouldn’t you be happy to go to Mars?

Source: Jay C. Buckey, for The Scientist, Volume 19, Issue 6, 20, March 28, 2005

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According to some studies, one of every six Army soldiers returning from the war zone in Iraq experiences major depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder. Military scientists have launched several efforts to help them, including therapy based on a virtual reality program. The Washington Post, in “Recalling Iraq’s Terrors Through Virtual Reality” (free registration), and the San Diego Union-Tribune, in “Military to try virtual combat stress remedy,” are both reporting on the progress of this initiative. Read more…

Here are some selected excerpts from the Washington Post article.

As the fighting in Iraq enters its third year, the U.S. military is grappling with what threatens to become a mental-health crisis in the armed forces. A New England Journal of Medicine study published this year estimated that one of every six Army soldiers returning from the war zone experiences major depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder.

The virtual-reality experiment is among the most innovative efforts the government is launching. Among others: military-sponsored support groups for returning fighters, a mock house at a rehabilitation center to teach wounded troops to care for themselves before going home, combat-stress units to counsel personnel on the ground, and psychological questionnaires to earlier identify problems among returning troops.

But let’s go back to the virtual reality program, which will cost about $4 million over three years.

“The events keep coming back. They have nightmares, flashbacks. They can’t get away, and they want to get away,” said James L. Spira, a staff psychologist at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego who is a lead investigator in the virtual-reality study. Some turn to alcohol or drugs to block out the experiences, he said.

Within a few months, the virtual-reality treatments will begin to be offered to troops at three locations: the Naval Medical Center and Camp Pendleton Naval Hospital in California — which together hope to enroll roughly 180 patients — and Tripler Army Medical Center in Hawaii, which hopes to enroll about 75.

The system used in California, which is based on the video game Full Spectrum Warrior, puts the patient in the middle of a city. Therapists will gradually expose the patient to more radical scenarios. In the first session, the scene might be an empty street. In the second, other troops or civilians might be added. Near the end of the treatment — which could last weeks or months, depending on the person — the patient may be put through a full-scale attack. Researchers say they also plan to introduce smells and to superheat the treatment room to the 100-degree-plus temperatures the patients experienced in Iraq.

“A virtual reality program transported Navy Cmdr. Paul Hammer back to the streets of Iraq. A study will test the technology as a treatment for post traumatic stress disorder.” (Credits: Earnie Grafton for the picture, Rick Rogers for the legend, The San Diego Union-Tribune).

Of course, this program has its detractors.

The researchers worry that the technology may turn out to be just a distraction, a gimmicky, new-age twist on traditional therapies that may not work as well — or, worse, that it could end up aggravating some patients’ conditions by re-exposing them to their traumas too quickly if it is not used by a skilled therapist.

To avoid that, the therapists will make use of biofeedback sensors, measuring heartbeat, breathing, temperature and moisture on the skin. These statistics will help doctors determine the patients’ reaction to certain stimuli — such as the sounds of Arabic-accented voices yelling at them, helicopters landing and mortar shells striking — and whether they are nearing the edge of what they can tolerate.

“We are not developing a self-help tool. This is something that needs to be used hand in hand with the help of a good clinician,” said Albert Rizzo III, an assistant professor at the University of Southern California who is collaborating with Spira.

Anyway, it’s not the first time that virtual reality has been used for years to cure phobia. For example, read “Virtual Reality Therapy Cures Spider Phobia” or “A (Virtual) Therapist’s Dream.”

Sources: Ariana Eunjung Cha, Washington Post, March 23, 2005; Rick Rogers, The San Diego Union-Tribune, March 17, 2005

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Cars able to sense our emotions and to take corrective actions if we feel too angry, frustrated or sleepy, could be on the market in two years. These cars will probably not be named HAL-9000, so we should be able to stop them if they’re bothering us. But according to this article from the Scotsman, “So are you in the mood for a drive?” such cars could be built by Toyota with the help of Affective Media, a Scottish company. Many modern cars already have voice-animated systems allowing the driver to control a CD-player, fans or heaters. With the addition of this new voice recognition software, our cars will detect when we’re too quiet and try to wake us up. If we start to be too excited, for any reason, like because we’re stuck in a traffic jam or listening to great rock music, the car will automatically switch the stereo to ‘calming’ music. Would you like to drive such a car, or do you hate the concept?

Here are the opening paragraphs from the Scotsman article.

Machines which respond to their owners’ emotions may seem like science fiction fantasy

But, while the ‘living’ androids portrayed in the blockbuster film I, Robot may never be built, one Lothians firm has developed an “emotion sensor” which could help cars of the future make better drivers out of us.

The computer software — which could soon be used in Toyota cars — can take steps to tackle potential road rage and drowsiness. The system works by monitoring the driver’s speech for signs of certain types of behaviour and taking appropriate action.

If it detects drowsiness, for instance, through signs such as quiet, flat speech, it can trigger an alarm or bring up another suitable prompt to rouse the driver. Alternatively, if the voice shows signs of stress, it can take steps to calm the driver down, by over-riding the car’s air-conditioning or playing soothing music.

But why putting such systems in a car? A prime reason appears to be safety.

Vehicles using it could hit the road within two years. Affective Media chief executive Christian Jones said prototypes were being fitted to trial vehicles and claimed the system could be a life-saver. “Studies show unhappy or angry drivers are more prone to accidents than drivers who are relaxed,” he said.

[And] a spokesman for the AA said that, while the organisation had some reservations, any technology which improved safety on the road was to be welcomed.

The Scottish company which developed the technology is also looking at other markets.

The in-car system is just one of the applications the company is exploring. Call-centre operators are also working with Affective Media on a system to monitor the emotions of callers and Mr Jones says a system that is 100 per cent accurate could be used to help emergency services screen bogus callers.

You can try by yourself Affective Media’s technology by loading this emotion recognition demo. It analyses a 4-second sample of your voice and tells you what is your mood. I repeated the test half a dozen times, whispering, yelling or laughing. I always got the same answer: your voice expresses 100% sadness. Needless to say, I’m not impressed with this demo. But it doesn’t mean that the real technology is not working fine.

Of course, the real technology can run just fine. Anyway, an in-car system which would start to change the music I’m listening to without asking me would probably have a limited life span.

Sources: Gareth Edwards, The Scotsman, January 17, 2005; and Affective Media website

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