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2013 Archive

'Seeing' in the Dark

October 31, 2013

Study participant Lindsay Bronnenkant demonstrates a task used in a new study on vision and movement.

Find a space with total darkness and slowly move your hand from side to side in front of your face. What do you see? If the answer is a shadowy shape moving past, you are probably not imagining things.

What’s Your Motion Quotient

June 19, 2013

credit: J. Adam Fenster, University of Rochester

A brief visual task can predict IQ, according to a new study.

Autistic Kids Detect Motion Faster

May 8, 2013

Children with autism see simple movement twice as quickly as other children their age, and this hypersensitivity to motion may provide clues to a fundamental cause of the developmental disorder, according to a new study.

Making Sense of Monkey Math

May 3, 2013

J. Adam Fenster, University of Rochester Peanut Games In this University of Rochester cognitive science study, research assistant Steve Ferrigno places treats into each of two cups, varying the numbers in each container.

Opposing thumbs, expressive faces, complex social systems: it’s hard to miss the similarities between apes and humans. Now a new study with a troop of zoo baboons and lots of peanuts shows that a less obvious trait—the ability to understand numbers—also is shared by man and his primate cousins.

Your Brain on Big Bird

January 3, 2013

The fMRI scan represents correlations in neural activity between children and adults, in the middle between children and other children, and on the right between adults and other adults. Such neural maps, says University of Rochester cognitive scientist Jessica Cantlon, reveal how the brain’s neural structure develops along predictable pathways as we mature.

Using brain scans of children and adults watching Sesame Street, cognitive scientists are learning how children’s brains change as they develop intellectual abilities like reading and math.