Rhythmic motion regulates spontaneous perceptual alternation

Perceptual alternation induced by visual transients.

When our visual system is confronted with ambiguous stimuli, the perceptual interpretation spontaneously alternates between the competing incompatible interpretations. The timing of such perceptual alternations is highly stochastic and the underlying neural mechanisms are poorly understood. We show that perceptual alternations can be triggered by a transient stimulus presented nearby. The induc...

Serotonin Regulates Rhythmic Whisking

Many rodents explore their environment by rhythmically palpating objects with their mystacial whiskers. These rhythmic whisker movements ("whisking"; 5-9 Hz) are thought to be regulated by an unknown brainstem central pattern generator (CPG). We tested the hypothesis that serotonin (5-HT) inputs to whisking facial motoneurons (wFMNs) are part of this CPG. In response to exogenous serotonin, wFM...

Spontaneous Alternation Behavior in Human Neutrophils

Bistable Alternation of Point-Light Biological Motion

The facing-in-depth of point-light biological motion is ambiguous: the frontal and back view look the same. However, since earlier studies found a very strong perceptual bias in point-light biological motion, it is unknown whether it evokes an alternating (bistable) percept. In the present study, naive, untrained observers viewed point-light stimuli in half-profile view. All participants experi...

Spontaneous rhythmic motion of a polymer chain in a continuous-wave laser field.

Recently, it has been found that a giant DNA molecule exhibits a repetitive change in conformation between an elongated coil and folded compact states under irradiation by a continuous IR laser. We report here a theoretical model to explain such spontaneous rhythmic motion. The generation of the rhythm can be attributed to the competition between optical attraction in the compact state and the ...