Vision

If you wear glasses, and they have been created recently, you are reading this article by looking through a tiny, transparent layer of nanomaterial. Anti-reflective coatings based on nanomaterials that reduce the amount of reflected light are used in most optical devices, including glasses, photo lenses, TV screens, solar cells and LED lights. They could get better in the future. Some of the most efficient ARCs are made by mother nature and are found in the eyes of insects, like moths. The eyes of moths are covered with a layer of tiny bumps which are smaller than the wavelength of incoming…

People with Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) have an obsession relating to their body image, where they believe that they have a defect in their appearance. BDD is estimated to affect one to two per cent of the population. Individuals with BDD engage with time-consuming compulsive behaviors such as mirror-checking, applying make-up to camouflage and seeking reassurance about their appearance. Professor Keith Laws, Professor of Cognitive Neuropsychology at the University of Hertfordshire said of people with BDD; "often they are attractive individuals who focus negatively on specific…

Everyone has heard of hindsight - where the context of past events is much clearer in memory than they were at the time - but a new study of the blindsight phenomenon, where a person is cortically blind yet they can still discriminate visual information without any awareness, could make the architecture of the brain a lot clearer.  Toward that end, Tony Ro, a neuroscientist at the City College of New York, is artificially recreating blindsight in his lab. Sound scary? Just wait. Injury or damage to the brain's visual cortex causes blindness but it may be possible to train the brain to…

A new study says it has ended the long-lasting debate on the causes of dyslexia and also opened the way to a new approach for early identification and interventions for the 10 percent of children for whom reading is extremely difficult.  For children with dyslexia, the trouble begins even before they start reading and for reasons that don't necessarily reflect other language skills. Researchers say their new report reveals a causal connection between early problems with visual attention and a later diagnosis of dyslexia. The researchers studied Italian-speaking children for a period…

What is actually happening in the brain when one person looks at another?  For people with prosopagnosia, an inability to recognize faces, information processing - the stages that our brains go through to recognize a face - is breaking down.  "We refer to prosopagnosia as a 'selective' deficit of face recognition, in that other cognitive process do not seem to be affected," explains Bradley Duchaine, an associate professor of psychological and brain sciences at Dartmouth. "[People with the condition] might be able to recognize voices perfectly, which demonstrates that it is…

Corporate media likes to shock or enrage people so when it comes to science stories, the ridiculous - life on other planets, billions 'wasted' on curing cancer, Republicans hate science - often takes precedent over the quiet wins. Age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the most frequent cause of blindness in the Western World, has been one of those quiet wins that won't get much attention in traditional consumer media but luckily you are reading Science 2.0.  A report published today in the American Journal of Ophthalmology shows the number of new cases of blindness and severe visual…

One of the biggest difficulties in understanding and acceptance of evolutionary biology is the eye.  It isn't just detractors who are trying to protect a sectarian viewpoint, it is genuinely curious people, smart people, who don't get it because it isn't easy. Science is difficult and, inside science, evolution is difficult. We've even had prominent biologists here submit the idea that perhaps, given its difficulty, evolution might be better reserved for college students, the same way quantum mechanics is reserved in physics and surgery is reserved for actual doctors even though high…

Researchers are saying that the perception of nude bodies is boosted at an early stage of visual processing.  So it may be an overlap with the culturally forbidden nature of scantily clad or nude figures as the driving force behind its appeal in areas as diverse as sexual arousal, art and advertising.  Brain imaging studies have localized areas in the brain which are specialized in detecting human bodies in the environment, but it was unknown whether the brain processes nude and clothed bodies in different ways.  Researchers at the University of Tampere and the Aalto University…

Physical activity is always good for you but a new analysis says it may patients reduce their risk of developing glaucoma. Higher levels of physical exercise appear to have a long-term beneficial impact on low ocular perfusion pressure (OPP), an important risk factor for glaucoma. The analysis examined the relationship between physical activity and current OPP in 5,650 men and women aged 48-90 who live in the U.K. and were part of initial cohort from 1993-1997. Using a detailed self-administered health and lifestyle questionnaire, participants were assessed for combined physical activity at…

(Dr.) Greg Homer (real name), a representative of Stroma Medical, a California equipment company, claims his new "Lumineyes" treatment could be an alternative to colored contact lenses. The treatment uses a laser to remove melanin from the upper layer of the iris, leaving the blue color free to replace it within two to three weeks of the procedure. But the process is irreversible. In brown eyes, melanin is located at the front of their eye. whereas in blue eyes it is concentrated at the back of the iris, resulting in reflection of shorter …