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Objective: describe the results obtained in the operational tests of the Olfactory Measurement Instrument (OMI) prototype. Method: the study it was quantitative, it was not experimental and descriptive. 60 people participated, men and women aged between 18 and 61 years, in Facatativá and Madrid, Colombia. The instrument was designed by the NEURPSICDEC seedbed team. Participants responses before the perception of change, brand recognition or category, and fragrances intensity were recorded in a virtual questionnaire conducted on Google Forms. The Letrap 5 program was used for data analysis. Results: 83% of the participants perceived the change of smell; it was found that aproximaltely six out of 13 fragrances tested were identified. In terms of intensity, average score in the test was 2.2 in which moderate odors were identified. Conclusion: the prototype seems to work in relation to the characteristics proposed for the perception to the change of fragrance and the recognition of fragrances. However, difficulty was evident in the perception of the intensity of the fragrance., Objetivo: describir los resultados obtenidos en las pruebas de funcionamiento del prototipo Instrumento de Medición Olfatoria. Método: estudio cuantitativo, no experimental y con alcance descriptivo. Participaron 60 personas, hombres y mujeres con edades entre 18 a 61 años, en Facatativá y Madrid, Colombia. Las respuestas de los participantes frente a la percepción que tuvieron del cambio, el reconocimiento del nombre o la categoría y la intensidad de las fragancias se registraron en un cuestionario virtual hecho en Google Forms. Para el análisis de datos se utilizó el programa Letrap 5. Resultados: un 83 % de la muestra percibió el cambio de olor; para el reconocimiento se encontró que, en promedio, se identificaron 6 de las 13 fragancias presentadas, y en cuanto a la intensidad la puntuación promedio en toda la prueba fue 2,2 que se identificaron como olores moderados. Conclusiones: el prototipo parece funcionar en relación con las características propuestas para la percepción al cambio de fragancia y el reconocimiento de las fragancias. No obstante, se evidenció dificultad en la percepción de la intensidad de la fragancia.

Objective: describe the results obtained in the operational tests of the Olfactory Measurement Instrument (OMI) prototype. Method: the study it was quantitative, it was not experimental and descriptive. 60 people participated, men and women aged between 18 and 61 years, in Facatativá and Madrid, Colombia. The instrument was designed by the NEURPSICDEC seedbed team. Participants responses before the perception of change, brand recognition or category, and fragrances intensity were recorded in a virtual questionnaire conducted on Google Forms. The Letrap 5 program was used for data analysis. Results: 83% of the participants perceived the change of smell; it was found that aproximaltely six out of 13 fragrances tested were identified. In terms of intensity, average score in the test was 2.2 in which moderate odors were identified. Conclusion: the prototype seems to work in relation to the characteristics proposed for the perception to the change of fragrance and the recognition of fragrances. However, difficulty was evident in the perception of the intensity of the fragrance., Objetivo: describir los resultados obtenidos en las pruebas de funcionamiento del prototipo Instrumento de Medición Olfatoria. Método: estudio cuantitativo, no experimental y con alcance descriptivo. Participaron 60 personas, hombres y mujeres con edades entre 18 a 61 años, en Facatativá y Madrid, Colombia. Las respuestas de los participantes frente a la percepción que tuvieron del cambio, el reconocimiento del nombre o la categoría y la intensidad de las fragancias se registraron en un cuestionario virtual hecho en Google Forms. Para el análisis de datos se utilizó el programa Letrap 5. Resultados: un 83 % de la muestra percibió el cambio de olor; para el reconocimiento se encontró que, en promedio, se identificaron 6 de las 13 fragancias presentadas, y en cuanto a la intensidad la puntuación promedio en toda la prueba fue 2,2 que se identificaron como olores moderados. Conclusiones: el prototipo parece funcionar en relación con las características propuestas para la percepción al cambio de fragancia y el reconocimiento de las fragancias. No obstante, se evidenció dificultad en la percepción de la intensidad de la fragancia.

Objective: describe the results obtained in the operational tests of the Olfactory Measurement Instrument (OMI) prototype. Method: the study it was quantitative, it was not experimental and descriptive. 60 people participated, men and women aged between 18 and 61 years, in Facatativá and Madrid, Colombia. The instrument was designed by the NEURPSICDEC seedbed team. Participants responses before the perception of change, brand recognition or category, and fragrances intensity were recorded in a virtual questionnaire conducted on Google Forms. The Letrap 5 program was used for data analysis. Results: 83% of the participants perceived the change of smell; it was found that aproximaltely six out of 13 fragrances tested were identified. In terms of intensity, average score in the test was 2.2 in which moderate odors were identified. Conclusion: the prototype seems to work in relation to the characteristics proposed for the perception to the change of fragrance and the recognition of fragrances. However, difficulty was evident in the perception of the intensity of the fragrance., Objetivo: describir los resultados obtenidos en las pruebas de funcionamiento del prototipo Instrumento de Medición Olfatoria. Método: estudio cuantitativo, no experimental y con alcance descriptivo. Participaron 60 personas, hombres y mujeres con edades entre 18 a 61 años, en Facatativá y Madrid, Colombia. Las respuestas de los participantes frente a la percepción que tuvieron del cambio, el reconocimiento del nombre o la categoría y la intensidad de las fragancias se registraron en un cuestionario virtual hecho en Google Forms. Para el análisis de datos se utilizó el programa Letrap 5. Resultados: un 83 % de la muestra percibió el cambio de olor; para el reconocimiento se encontró que, en promedio, se identificaron 6 de las 13 fragancias presentadas, y en cuanto a la intensidad la puntuación promedio en toda la prueba fue 2,2 que se identificaron como olores moderados. Conclusiones: el prototipo parece funcionar en relación con las características propuestas para la percepción al cambio de fragancia y el reconocimiento de las fragancias. No obstante, se evidenció dificultad en la percepción de la intensidad de la fragancia.

Objective: describe the results obtained in the operational tests of the Olfactory Measurement Instrument (OMI) prototype. Method: the study it was quantitative, it was not experimental and descriptive. 60 people participated, men and women aged between 18 and 61 years, in Facatativá and Madrid, Colombia. The instrument was designed by the NEURPSICDEC seedbed team. Participants responses before the perception of change, brand recognition or category, and fragrances intensity were recorded in a virtual questionnaire conducted on Google Forms. The Letrap 5 program was used for data analysis. Results: 83% of the participants perceived the change of smell; it was found that aproximaltely six out of 13 fragrances tested were identified. In terms of intensity, average score in the test was 2.2 in which moderate odors were identified. Conclusion: the prototype seems to work in relation to the characteristics proposed for the perception to the change of fragrance and the recognition of fragrances. However, difficulty was evident in the perception of the intensity of the fragrance., Objetivo: describir los resultados obtenidos en las pruebas de funcionamiento del prototipo Instrumento de Medición Olfatoria. Método: estudio cuantitativo, no experimental y con alcance descriptivo. Participaron 60 personas, hombres y mujeres con edades entre 18 a 61 años, en Facatativá y Madrid, Colombia. Las respuestas de los participantes frente a la percepción que tuvieron del cambio, el reconocimiento del nombre o la categoría y la intensidad de las fragancias se registraron en un cuestionario virtual hecho en Google Forms. Para el análisis de datos se utilizó el programa Letrap 5. Resultados: un 83 % de la muestra percibió el cambio de olor; para el reconocimiento se encontró que, en promedio, se identificaron 6 de las 13 fragancias presentadas, y en cuanto a la intensidad la puntuación promedio en toda la prueba fue 2,2 que se identificaron como olores moderados. Conclusiones: el prototipo parece funcionar en relación con las características propuestas para la percepción al cambio de fragancia y el reconocimiento de las fragancias. No obstante, se evidenció dificultad en la percepción de la intensidad de la fragancia.

The movements of the eye play an integral part in constructing a smooth perception of the world around us. The fact that our eyes are foveal, with a high resolution center and a radial decrease in resolution as we move away from this center, necessitates a constant shifting of our gaze around our environment. Although our eyes are in constant motion we do not perceive the world as a series of static snapshots and constant jitter, instead our visual system is able to effectively integrate information over time to render the world veridically; a complex array of color, depth, and motion. These eye movements are essential to vision for a wide variety of reasons. In fact, movement is such a key aspect of vision that if the projection of the world onto the retina is rendered perfectly still, our vision will slowly fade. Our brain relies on a constantly fluctuating signal in order to generate a visual percept, and without this temporal variation, vision is impossible. Even when fixating on a point, our eyes are still engaging in a series of small movements to examine and enhance the fine details of the foveated stimuli. Collectively, these small movements are referred to as fixational eye motion (FEM). In order to truly understand how these small temporal variations will contribute to vision, it is necessary to understand how these movements interact with the photoreceptors in the retina. To this end we utilized an Adaptive Optics Scanning Laser Ophthalmoscope to project stimuli onto the photoreceptor mosaic and simultaneously recover an unambiguous trace of the motion of these stimuli as the eye engages in fixational eye movements.

PURPOSE. Retinitis pigmentosa is a family of genetic diseases inducing progressive photoreceptor degeneration. There is no cure for retinitis pigmentosa, but prospective therapeutic strategies are aimed at restoring or substituting retinal input. Yet, it is unclear whether the visual cortex of retinitis pigmentosa patients retains plasticity to react to the restored visual input. METHODS. To investigate short-term visual cortical plasticity in retinitis pigmentosa, we tested the effect of short-term (2 hours) monocular deprivation on sensory ocular dominance (measured with binocular rivalry) in a group of 14 patients diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa with a central visual field sparing greater than 208 in diameter. RESULTS. After deprivation most patients showed a perceptual shift in ocular dominance in favor of the deprived eye (P < 0.001), as did control subjects, indicating a level of visual cortical plasticity in the normal range. The deprivation effect correlated negatively with visual acuity (r = 0.63, P = 0.015), and with the amplitude of the central 188 focal electroretinogram (r = 0.68, P = 0.015) of the deprived eye, revealing that in retinitis pigmentosa stronger visual impairment is associated with higher plasticity. CONCLUSIONS. Our results provide a new tool to assess the ability of retinitis pigmentosa patients to adapt to altered visual inputs, and suggest that in retinitis pigmentosa the adult brain has sufficient short-term plasticity to benefit from prospective therapies.

PURPOSE. Retinitis pigmentosa is a family of genetic diseases inducing progressive photoreceptor degeneration. There is no cure for retinitis pigmentosa, but prospective therapeutic strategies are aimed at restoring or substituting retinal input. Yet, it is unclear whether the visual cortex of retinitis pigmentosa patients retains plasticity to react to the restored visual input. METHODS. To investigate short-term visual cortical plasticity in retinitis pigmentosa, we tested the effect of short-term (2 hours) monocular deprivation on sensory ocular dominance (measured with binocular rivalry) in a group of 14 patients diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa with a central visual field sparing greater than 208 in diameter. RESULTS. After deprivation most patients showed a perceptual shift in ocular dominance in favor of the deprived eye (P < 0.001), as did control subjects, indicating a level of visual cortical plasticity in the normal range. The deprivation effect correlated negatively with visual acuity (r = 0.63, P = 0.015), and with the amplitude of the central 188 focal electroretinogram (r = 0.68, P = 0.015) of the deprived eye, revealing that in retinitis pigmentosa stronger visual impairment is associated with higher plasticity. CONCLUSIONS. Our results provide a new tool to assess the ability of retinitis pigmentosa patients to adapt to altered visual inputs, and suggest that in retinitis pigmentosa the adult brain has sufficient short-term plasticity to benefit from prospective therapies.

Vibration applied to muscle tendons induces an illusory perception of movement by activating spindle receptors and Ia afferent fibers. While neural structures supporting such illusions are quite defined, functional and psychophysical correlates of their perception have not been deeply investigated. The authors aimed at exploring subjective perception of illusory movements thanks to a repeated-stimulation multimodal approach. The integrated analysis of electroencephalography, source data (standardized low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography–sLORETA), and psychophysical evaluation pointed at the activation of a frontoparietal sensorimotor network, with prefrontal-medial regions mainly involved in supporting the awareness for illusory movements. Further, illusions showed consistency in terms of presence, vividness, and duration. Finally, superior parietal structures seemed to play an important role in self-attribution of agency and ownership during such experiences.

In a series of experiments using ambiguous stimuli, we investigate the effects of displaying ordered, discrete series of images on the dynamics of figure-ground segregation. For low frame presentation speeds, the series were perceived as a sequence of discontinuous, static images, while for high speeds they were perceived as continuous. We conclude that using stimuli varying continuously along one parameter results in stronger hysteresis and reduces spontaneous switching compared to matched static stimuli with discontinuous parameter changes. The additional evidence that the size of the hysteresis effects depended on trial duration is consistent with the stochastic nature of the dynamics governing figure-ground segregation. The results showed that for continuously changing stimuli, alternative figure-ground organizations are resolved via low-level, dynamical competition. A second series of experiments confirmed these results with an ambiguous stimulus based on Petter's effect

We found that a moving target line, more-vertical than 45 deg-oriented background lines, pops-out (d'=1.2) although it moves at the same speed of background elements and although it is invisible in static presentation (d'=.7). We suggest that the moving more-vertical target is more salient because the motion system responds to the orthogonal-velocity-component (V(perpendicular)=Delta d/Delta t sin theta) that is larger for the more-vertical target than for distracters. However, motion does not produce high d' when the target is more horizontal than background (d'=.6). This result is not expected if saliency resulted from the sum of saliency of orientation and motion independently coded but is instead predicted by visual search asymmetry. A line length effect on the moving target saliency also suggests that V(perpendicular) is extracted on the whole line and this operation is facilitated by line length in the same way for more-vertical and more-horizontal targets. Altogether, these results demonstrate that speed-based segmentation operating on V(perpendicular) not only affects speed and direction of motion discrimination, as previously demonstrated, but accounts for high saliency of image features that would otherwise prove undetectable of the basis of orientation-contrast