Rats and humans paying attention: Cross-species task development for translational research.

Phenotype Ontologies and Cross-Species Analysis for Translational Research

The use of model organisms as tools for the investigation of human genetic variation has significantly and rapidly advanced our understanding of the aetiologies underlying hereditary traits. However, while equivalences in the DNA sequence of two species may be readily inferred through evolutionary models, the identification of equivalence in the phenotypic consequences resulting from comparable...

Paying Attention to Memory

Paying attention to meaning.

Several paradigms show that responses to one event compromise responses to a second event for around 500 ms. Such effects are generally attributed to attentional capacity limitations associated with processing information in the first event. In a task in which targets could be distinguished only by their meaning, we varied the semantic relationship between distractors and targets following at d...

Is anyone paying attention?

W ork force studies often reflect common prejudices , cost-saving philosophies, rumor and innuendo , but little data. An exception to this rule exists in the recently published Committee on Manpower of Pulmonary and Critical Care Societies (COMPACCs) study. 1 As I read it, there is a shortage of pulmonary and critical care specialists now and this shortage will get worse in the future. These co...

Paying Attention to Symmetry

Humans are very sensitive to symmetry in visual patterns. Symmetry is detected and recognized very rapidly, and eye fixations are concentrated along the axis of symmetry or the symmetrical center of the patterns. This suggests that symmetry is a highly salient feature. Existing computational models of saliency, however, have mainly focused on contrast as a measure of saliency. These models do n...