Purpose: The purpose of this article is to clear up misconceptions that have propagated in the clinical voice literature that inappropriately cite Talbot ’s law (1834) and the theory of persistence of vision as the scientific principles that underlie laryngeal stroboscopy. Method: After initial research into Talbot ’s (1834) original studies, it became clear that his experiments were not design...

We propose that turning on the light can turn on the hot emotional system. Across six studies we show that ambient brightness makes people feel warmer, which increases the intensity of their affective response, including sensation seeking from spicy-hot foods, perception of aggression and sexiness (“hotness”) in others, and generating more extreme affective reactions toward positive and negativ...

Perception of biological motions plays a major adaptive role in identifying, interpreting, and predicting the actions of others. It may therefore be hypothesized that the perception of biological motions is subserved by a specific neural network. Here we used fMRI to verify this hypothesis. In a group of 10 healthy volunteers, we explored the hemodynamic responses to seven types of visual motio...

The accurate representation of the motion of external objects is one of the more important tasks of the visual areas of the brain because motion by itself can provide sufficient information for discriminating visual forms and hence breaking camouflage. Whereas the analysis of the motion of single small elements can occur in primary visual cortex (V1), the perception of a common direction of glo...

The apparent relief of monocularly viewed surfaces reversed when the order of light and shade was reversed relative to the position of a lamp observed the moment earlier. The pattern of shading was reversed either by illuminating from a direction opposite to that of the apparent direction of illumination or by inverting the illuminating image relative to the light source. The combination of bot...

Webster’s asserts that color is “a phenomenon of light or visual perception that enables one to differentiate otherwise identical objects,” and then goes on to say that the Latin root is celare, “to conceal.” It’s a fine definition, because human perception of color is seamless to the extent that it conceals from us almost every causal detail. This talk will discuss common sources of light, the...

Chromatic assimilation is a shift toward the color of nearby light. Several studies conclude that a neural process contributes to assimilation but the neural locus remains in question. Some studies posit a peripheral process, such as retinal receptive-field organization, while others claim the neural mechanism follows depth perception, figure/ground segregation, or perceptual grouping. The expe...