Neuro News Nanos

Image via Wikipedia

Here are this morning’s:

* More on the robot hand that can feel — this is essentially the “rubber hand illusion” — and the same research group demonstrated exactly this in a recent experiment where they induced touch sensations in a robot hand by stroking it and the stump simultaneously

* Speech and the brain — a rare set of high-resolution readouts taken directly from the wired-in brains of epileptics has provided an unprecedented look at how the brain processes language — though only a glimpse, it was enough to show that part of the brain’s language center handles multiple tasks, rather than one

* Hallucinations from nothingness — sensory deprivation lasting only 15 minutes is enough to trigger hallucinations in healthy members of the public — group with “panic button” reported many more hallucinations

* Does home ownership make you happy? — renters who become homeowners not only experience a significant increase in housing satisfaction — but also after changing their tenure status, they obtain a different utility from the same housing context

* The speed of free will — finding could help explain our natural tendency to search visual scenes via apparently random, haphazard attentional shifts, rather than using our conscious will to search more strategically — our volitional control is simply too slow, rendering a deliberate, ordered approach ineffective

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