In this paper we describe a method for tracking walking humans in the visual field. Active contour models are used to track moving objects in a sequence of images. The resulting contours are then encoded in a scale-, location-, resolutionand control point rotationinvariant vector. These vectors are used to train and test feedforward error-backpropagation neural networks, which are able to disti...

In our Brief Article (KBW, this issue), we present data showing that 5-month-old infants interpret the movements of inanimate objects according to the constraint of spatiotemporal continuity, but do not interpret peoples’ motion according to this same constraint. We suggest from this finding that infants may possess distinct systems for learning, interpreting, and reasoning about the actions an...

Environmental enrichment (EE) exerts powerful effects on brain physiology, and is widely used as an experimental and therapeutic tool. Typical EE paradigms are multifactorial, incorporating elements of physical exercise, environmental complexity, social interactions and stress, however the specific contributions of these variables have not been separable using conventional housing paradigms. He...

Primates are highly attuned not just to social characteristics of individual agents, but also to social interactions between multiple agents. Here we report a neural correlate of the representation of social interactions in the human brain. Specifically, we observe a strong univariate response in the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) to stimuli depicting social interactions between two ...

Using a rule-based system for growing artificial neural networks, we have evolved controllers for physically simulated robotic "spiders". The controllers take their input from an “artificial retina” that senses other spiders and inanimate barrier objects in the environment, and must provide output to dynamically control the 18 degrees of freedom of the six legs of the robot every time step. We ...

BACKGROUND Hepatitis C virus (HCV) cross-contamination from inanimate surfaces or objects has been implicated in transmission of HCV in health-care settings and among injection drug users. We established HCV-based carrier and drug transmission assays that simulate practical conditions to study inactivation and survival of HCV on inanimate surfaces. METHODS Studies were performed with authenti...

comprises an amazing diversity of living organisms. Early man could easily perceive the difference between inanimate matter and living organisms. Early man deified some of the inanimate matter (wind, sea, fire etc.) and some among the animals and plants. A common feature of all such forms of inanimate and animate objects was the sense of awe or fear that they evoked. The description of living o...

A single, indirect exposure to a novel word provides information that could be used to make a fast mapping between the word and its referent, but it is not known how well this initial mapping specifies the function of the new word. The four studies reported here compare preschoolers' (N = 64) fast mapping of new proper and common names following an indirect exposure requiring inference with the...

The amygdala has been implicated in the processing of emotion and animacy information and to be responsive to novelty. However, the way in which these functions interact is poorly understood. Subjects (N = 30) viewed threatening or neutral images that could be either animate (facial expressions) or inanimate (objects) in the context of a dot probe task. The amygdala showed responses to both emo...

Causal judgments are well-known to be sensitive to violations of both prescriptive moral and descriptive statistical norms. There is ongoing discussion as to whether both effects are best explained through changes in the relevance of counterfactual possibilities, or if moral norm violations should be independently explained through a potential polysemy whereby ‘cause’ may simply mean ‘is morall...