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Abstract Identifying saliency in high dynamic range (HDR) images is a fundamentally important issue in HDR imaging, and plays critical roles towards comprehensive scene understanding. Most of existing studies leverage hand‐crafted features for HDR image saliency prediction, lacking the capabilities of fully exploiting the characteristics of HDR image (i.e. wider luminance range and richer colour gamut). Here, systematical studies are carried out on HDR image saliency prediction by proposing a new framework to single out the contributions from multi‐exposure images. Specifically, inspired by the mechanism of HDR imaging, the method first utilizes graph neural networks to model the relations among multi‐exposure images and the tone‐mapped image obtained from an HDR image, enabling more discriminative saliency‐related feature representations. Subsequently, the saliency features driven by global semantic knowledge are aggregated from the tone‐mapped image through enhancing global context‐aware semantic information. Finally, a fusion module is designed to integrate saliency‐oriented feature representations originated from multi‐exposure images and the tone‐mapped image, producing the saliency maps of HDR images. Moreover, a new challenging HDR eye fixation database (HDR‐EYEFix) is created, expecting to further contribute the research on HDR image saliency prediction. Experiment results show that the method obtains superior performance compared to the state‐of‐the‐art methods.

Abstract Most existing multi‐view stereo (MVS) methods fail to consider global context information in the stage of feature extraction and cost aggregation. As transformers have shown remarkable performance on various vision tasks due to their ability to perceive global contextual information, this paper proposes a transformer‐based feature enhancement network (TF‐MVSNet) to facilitate feature representation learning by combining local features (both 2D and 3D) with long‐range contextual information. To reduce memory consumption of feature matching, the cross‐attention mechanism is leveraged to efficiently construct 3D cost volumes under the epipolar constraint. Additionally, a colour‐guided network is designed to refine depth maps at a coarse stage, hence reducing incorrect depth predictions at a fine stage. Extensive experiments were performed on the DTU dataset and Tanks and Temples (T&T) benchmark and results are reported.

Abstract Traditional artificial vision systems built using separate sensing, computing, and storage units have problems with high power consumption and latency caused by frequent data transmission between functional units. An effective approach is to transfer some memory and computing tasks to the sensor, enabling the simultaneous perception‐storage‐processing of light signals. Here, an optical–electrical coordinately modulated memristor is proposed, which controls the conductivity by means of polarization of the 2D ferroelectric Ruddlesden–Popper perovskite film at room temperature. The residual polarization shows no significant decay after 109‐cycle polarization reversals, indicating that the device has high durability. By adjusting the pulse parameters, the device can simulate the bio‐synaptic long/short‐term plasticity, which enables the control of conductivity with a high linearity of ≈0.997. Based on the device, a two‐layer feedforward neural network is built to recognize handwritten digits, and the recognition accuracy is as high as 97.150%. Meanwhile, building optical–electrical reserve pool system can improve 14.550% for face recognition accuracy, further demonstrating its potential for the field of neural morphological visual systems, with high density and low energy loss.

Abstract Clinical diagnosis has high requirements for the resolution of medical images, but most existing medical images super‐ resolution (SR) methods are performed under a known or specific degradation kernel. However, the difference between the actual degradations and their assumed degradation kernels results in a severe performance drop for the advanced SR methods in real applications. This paper proposes a medical image blind super‐resolution model (Med‐BSR) based on an improved degradation process to handle this issue. The model makes each of the degradation factors in medical image blind SR, such as blur, noise, and downsampling, more complex and practical. Specifically, the authors use the random select/combine strategy to randomly arrange and combine the type and order of each degradation factor, which significantly expands the degradation space. The authors also improved the loss function of the primary enhanced super‐resolution generative adversarial networks (ESRGAN) network. The extensive experimental results demonstrate that the authors’ designed model can accurately restore the natural degradation process, which can reconstruct high‐quality SR medical images. It also has a good generalization ability to realistic images simultaneously.

Abstract Many insects, including several orthopterans, undergo dramatic changes in body coloration during ontogeny. This variation is particularly intriguing in gomphocerine grasshoppers, where the green and brown morphs appear to be genetically determined (Schielzeth & Dieker, 2020, BMC Evolutionary Biology, 20, 63; Winter et al., 2021, Heredity, 127, 66). A better understanding of how these color morphs develop during ontogeny can provide valuable insights into the evolution and ecology of such a widespread color polymorphism. Here, we focus on the color development of two green–brown polymorphic species, the club‐legged grasshopper Gomphocerus sibiricus and the steppe grasshopper Chorthippus dorsatus. By following the color development of individuals from hatching to adulthood, we found that color morph differences begin to develop during the second nymphal stage, are clearly defined by the third nymphal stage, and remain stable throughout the life of an individual. Interestingly, we also observed that shed skins of late nymphal stages are identifiable by color morphs based on their yellowish coloration, rather than the green that marks green body parts. Furthermore, by assessing how these colors are perceived by different visual systems, we found that certain potential predators can chromatically discriminate between morphs, while others may not. These results suggest that the putative genes controlling color morph are active during the early stages of ontogeny, and that green color is likely composed of two components, one present in the cuticle and one not. In addition, the effectiveness of camouflage appears to vary depending on the specific predator involved.

Abstract Objectives It is well known that a good microsurgeon needs eight important factors: a high resolution view, an optimally magnified view, optimal brightness of the working field, optimal working space, fine surgical instruments and devices, fine motor skills, precise hand−eye coordination, and fine visual perceptions. Of these factors, the first five are highly depending on manufacturer development abilities. The remaining factors have a lots of possibilities that microsurgeons can improve by themselves. A microsurgeon needs to identify shape, size, angle, inclination, length, height, depth, spatial position, centering in the optical field, orthogonality, and parallelism in a second. Knowing one's tendency and acuity in perceptions, learning perceptions that one is not good at, and paying selective attention on one's difficult perceptions, will provide better surgical outcome. Aim of this series of research is designing visual targets measuring specific visual perceptions for microsurgeons, achieving mean values of each perceptions, and identifying the tendency on each perceptions. Material and Methods Two hundred and eighty volunteer dentists in Japan and France were tested and multiple comparisons were made among age, gender, visual acuity, three magnification levels, and inclination angles against a standard target. Results and Coclusion There is a tendency that identifying 1° misalignment in parallelism is difficult.

Abstract Newborn infants are exposed to painful experiences, routinely practised clinically, that might increase their short‐ and long‐term morbidity and mortality. Facial expression has been widely used in clinical practice to assess pain in newborns. However, the inherent human visual attention required to make such vital inference is poorly understood. It is also unknown whether this inference occurs differently when comparing health professionals with non‐health ones. To investigate these issues, the authors have recorded and monitored the pupil size signal of 102 subjects (44 experts, 29 parents, and 29 non‐experts) while visually analyzing 20 frontal face images of 10 distinct newborns after a painful procedure (positive stimulus) and at painless rest (negative stimulus). Our experimental results show that neonatal pain assessment is more cognitively demanding when analyzing the presence of pain rather than its absence. In addition, the pupil responses for both positive and negative stimuli and all sample groups of subjects present experimentally a common temporal pattern, disclosing that a 2‐s exposure to a facial expression is sufficient to make this assessment, regardless of whether performed by health professionals or non‐health ones.

Abstract Introduction Early detection of malignant pulmonary nodules through screening has been shown to reduce lung cancer‐related mortality by 20%. However, perceptual and cognitive factors that affect nodule detection are poorly understood. This review examines the cognitive and visual processes of various observers, with a particular focus on radiologists, during lung nodule detection. Methods Four databases (Medline, Embase, Scopus and PubMed) were searched to extract studies on eye‐tracking in pulmonary nodule detection. Studies were included if they used eye‐tracking to assess the search and detection of lung nodules in computed tomography or 2D radiographic imaging. Data were charted according to identified themes and synthesised using a thematic narrative approach. Results The literature search yielded 25 articles and five themes were discovered: 1 – functional visual field and satisfaction of search, 2 – expert search patterns, 3 – error classification through dwell time, 4 – the impact of the viewing environment and 5 – the effect of prevalence expectation on search. Functional visual field reduced to 2.7° in 3D imaging compared to 5° in 2D radiographs. Although greater visual coverage improved nodule detection, incomplete search was not responsible for missed nodules. Most radiological errors during lung nodule detection were decision‐making errors (30%–45%). Dwell times associated with false‐positive (FP) decisions informed feedback systems to improve diagnosis. Interruptions did not influence diagnostic performance; however, it increased viewing time by 8% and produced a 23.1% search continuation accuracy. Comparative scanning was found to increase the detection of low contrast nodules. Prevalence expectation did not directly affect diagnostic accuracy; however, decision‐making time increased by 2.32 seconds with high prevalence expectations. Conclusion Visual and cognitive factors influence pulmonary nodule detection. Insights gained from eye‐tracking can inform advancements in lung screening. Further exploration of eye‐tracking in lung screening, particularly with low‐dose computed tomography (LDCT), will benefit the future of lung cancer screening.

Organic light‐emitting diodes (OLEDs) offer novel and unique possibilities for illumination. The realization of transparent and flexible devices facilitates integration in everyday objects such as windows, clothing, or packaging labels, while posing new challenges to product engineering. Innovative OLED light sources, fulfilling multiple purposes additional to lighting, are likely to be touched and consciously observed far more frequently than conventional illuminants. Herein, a polymer coating used to customize tactile and visual perceptions of OLED substrate surfaces is demonstrated. Tetrapodal zinc oxide particles and color pigments are incorporated in a poly(methyl methacrylate) matrix to modify surface roughness and color impression of the coating. Variation of the particle content and composition yields different combinations of roughness characteristics, thus altering tactile surface perception and light scattering. Utilization of color pigments exhibiting low transmission dispersion allows for changes of the coating color while maintaining the original OLED emission color. The presented coating concept is expected to be a promising approach to adjust haptic and optical device properties to specific application requirements while maintaining spectral OLED emission characteristics.

The objectives of this study were (a) to explore the preliminary cross-cultural validity of a visual-perceptual method to assess body image; (b) to examine potential differences and similarities in body image phenomena between women from two Western countries (i.e., Canada and Spain). 201 self-identified women participated in this cross-sectional study. Ideal, normal, and self-perceived body sizes were assessed using a visual-perceptual method, whereas body dissatisfaction was measured using both a visual-perceptual method and a questionnaire. Visual-perceptual body dissatisfaction was significantly correlated with questionnaire body dissatisfaction, suggesting a preliminary convergent validity between the two assessment methods. Women in both countries were dissatisfied with their bodies. Compared to their self-perceived body, all women chose a significantly thinner visual representation of their "normal" and ideal body. These results may suggest a shift towards the "thin" body as not only ideal, but also normative. This study provides the first evidence for the cross-cultural validity of a visual-perceptual body image assessment tool. The results of the current study confirm the presence of "normative discontent", and suggest more cross-country similarities than differences among women from these two Western societies., (© 2024 The Authors. European Eating Disorders Review published by Eating Disorders Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Abstract The extrastriate body area (EBA) is a body‐selective focal region located in the lateral occipito‐temporal cortex that responds strongly to images of human bodies and body parts in comparison with other classes of stimuli. Whether EBA contributes also to the body recognition of self versus others remains in debate. We investigated whether EBA contributes to self‐other distinction and whether there might be a hemispheric‐side specificity to that contribution using double‐pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in right‐handed participants. Prior to the TMS experiment, all participants underwent an fMRI localizer task to determine individual EBA location. TMS was then applied over either right EBA, left EBA or vertex, while participants performed an identification task in which images of self or others' right, or left hands were presented. TMS over both EBAs slowed responses, with no identity‐specific effect. However, TMS applied over right EBA induced significantly more errors on other's hands than noTMS, TMS over left EBA or over the Vertex, when applied at 100–110 ms after image onset. The last three conditions did not differ, nor was there any difference for self‐hands. These findings suggest that EBA participates in self/other discrimination.

Background: Quantitative evaluation of facial aesthetics is an important but also time-consuming procedure in orthognathic surgery, while existing 2D beauty-scoring models are mainly used for entertainment with less clinical impact., Methods: A deep-learning-based 3D evaluation model DeepBeauty3D was designed and trained using 133 patients' CT images. The customised image preprocessing module extracted the skeleton, soft tissue, and personal physical information from raw DICOM data, and the predicting network module employed 3-input-2-output convolution neural networks (CNN) to receive the aforementioned data and output aesthetic scores automatically., Results: Experiment results showed that this model predicted the skeleton and soft tissue score with 0.231 ± 0.218 (4.62%) and 0.100 ± 0.344 (2.00%) accuracy in 11.203 ± 2.824 s from raw CT images., Conclusion: This study provided an end-to-end solution using real clinical data based on 3D CNN to quantitatively evaluate facial aesthetics by considering three anatomical factors simultaneously, showing promising potential in reducing workload and bridging the surgeon-patient aesthetics perspective gap., (© 2024 The Author(s). The International Journal of Medical Robotics and Computer Assisted Surgery published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Tau pathology accumulates in the perirhinal cortex (PRC) of the medial temporal lobe (MTL) during the earliest stages of the Alzheimer's disease (AD), appearing decades before clinical diagnosis. Here, we leveraged perceptual discrimination tasks that target PRC function to detect subtle cognitive impairment even in nominally healthy older adults. Older adults who did not have a clinical diagnosis or subjective memory complaints were categorized into "at-risk" (score <26; n = 15) and "healthy" (score ≥26; n = 23) groups based on their performance on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment. The task included two conditions known to recruit the PRC: faces and complex objects (greebles). A scene condition, known to recruit the hippocampus, and a size control condition that does not rely on the MTL were also included. Individuals in the at-risk group were less accurate than those in the healthy group for discriminating greebles. Performance on either the face or size control condition did not predict group status above and beyond that of the greeble condition. Visual discrimination tasks that are sensitive to PRC function may detect early cognitive decline associated with AD., (© 2024 The Authors. Hippocampus published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Objective: Critical flicker frequency (CFF) and flicker frequency (FF) are used as indicators for the neurotoxic adverse events of drugs in pharmacology. In this pilot study, we investigated whether patients with epilepsy (PWE) treated with various antiseizure medications (ASM) had significantly different CFFs compared with healthy controls. In addition, we investigated the appropriateness of CFF as an objective measurement tool in PWE who reported adverse events according to the adverse event profile (AEP)., Methods: Patients receiving regular antiseizure treatment at our center, along with healthy controls, were included in this study. Clinical neurotoxic symptoms, AEP scores, and serum ASM levels were assessed in the PWE group. We used a CFF device that produced a red-black, green-black, blue-black, or white-black flicker. CFF and FF were compared between PWE and healthy controls. In PWE, the correlation of alterations in CFF and FF with AEP results and through ASM serum concentrations was calculated., Results: A total of 33 PWE and 20 healthy controls participated in the study. Except for two light modalities, CFF and FF were significantly reduced in PWE compared with controls. CFF and FF did not differ significantly between PWE with AEP scores >44 points and those with lower scores. CFF and FF levels did not correlate with changes in AEP scores, serum concentrations, or doses., Significance: CFF and FF distinguished PWE with ASM from healthy controls. No clinically relevant differentiation was detected in the heterogenous PWE group. To investigate whether CFF and FF may serve as subtle indicators of neurotoxicity or specific modes of action, additional studies are needed in more homogenous PWE groups., (© 2023 International League Against Epilepsy.)

Abstract Introduction Clinical reports describe patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) exhibiting atypical adaptive walking responses to the visual environment; however, there is limited empirical investigation of such behaviors or factors modulating their expression. We aim to evaluate effects of lighting‐based interventions and clinical presentation (visual‐ vs memory‐led) on walking function in participants with posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) and typical AD (tAD). Methods Participants with PCA (n = 10), tAD (n = 9), and healthy controls (n = 12) walked to visible target destinations under different lighting conditions within two pilot repeated‐measures design investigations (Experiment 1: 32 trials per participant; Experiment 2: 36 trials per participant). Participants walked to destinations with the floorpath interrupted by shadows varying in spatial extent (Experiment 1: no, medium, high shadow) or with different localized parts of the environment illuminated (Experiment 2: target, middle, or distractor illuminated). The primary study outcome for both experimental tasks was completion time; secondary kinematic outcomes were proportions of steps identified as outliers (Experiment 1) and walking path directness (Experiment 2). Results In Experiment 1, PCA participants overall demonstrated modest reductions in time taken to reach destinations when walking to destinations uninterrupted by shadows compared to high shadow conditions (7.1% reduction [95% confidence interval 2.5, 11.5; P = .003]). Experiment 2 found no evidence of differences in task performance for different localized lighting conditions in PCA participants overall. Neither experiment found evidence of differences in task performance between conditions in tAD or control participants overall. Completion time in both patient groups was longer relative to controls, and longer in PCA relative to tAD groups. Discussion Findings represent a quantitative characterization of a clinical phenomenon involving patients misperceiving shadows, implicating dementia‐related cortico‐visual impairments. Results contribute to evidence‐based design guidelines for dementia‐friendly environments.

The artistic style transfer of images aims to synthesise novel images by combining the content of one image with the style of another, which is a long-standing research topic and already has been widely applied in real world. However, defining the aesthetic perception from the human visual system is a challenging problem. In this study, the authors propose a novel method for automatic visual perception style transfer. First, they render a novel saliency detection algorithm to automatically perceive the visual attention of an image. Then, different from conventional style transfer algorithm in which style transferring is applied uniformly across all image regions, the authors apply a saliency algorithm to guide the style transferring process, enabling different types of style transferring to occur in different regions. Extensive experiments show that the proposed saliency detection algorithm and the style transfer algorithm are superior in performance and efficiency.

Depth of field is an important image feature, which can be used to enhance observers’ perception of stereopsis. To explore how the depth of field influenced observers’ attention in images, a within-subject experiment including two factors, two scenes and six levels of depth of field, was performed. A remote desktop eye tracker, Tobii X120 was used to record participants' eye movement during the experiment. The results showed that the limited depth of field could direct observers' attention on the sharp area. However, manipulating depth of field in the same scene may not influence the distribution of observers’ attention. In addition, it was concluded that depth from focus object influences observers' attention significantly, which means that the closer the object is, more attention the object obtains.

Abstract Introduction How do multiple sources of information interact to form mental representations of object categories? It is commonly held that object categories reflect the integration of perceptual features and semantic/knowledge‐based features. To explore the relative contributions of these two sources of information, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to identify regions involved in the representation object categories with shared visual and/or semantic features. Methods Participants (N = 20) viewed a series of objects that varied in their degree of visual and semantic overlap in the MRI scanner. We used a blocked adaptation design to identify sensitivity to visual and semantic features in a priori visual processing regions and in a distributed network of object processing regions with an exploratory whole‐brain analysis. Results Somewhat surprisingly, within higher‐order visual processing regions—specifically lateral occipital cortex (LOC)—we did not obtain any difference in neural adaptation for shared visual versus semantic category membership. More broadly, both visual and semantic information affected a distributed network of independently identified category‐selective regions. Adaptation was seen a whole‐brain network of processing regions in response to visual similarity and semantic similarity; specifically, the angular gyrus (AnG) adapted to visual similarity and the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC) adapted to both visual and semantic similarity. Conclusions Our findings suggest that perceptual features help organize mental categories throughout the object processing hierarchy. Most notably, visual similarity also influenced adaptation in nonvisual brain regions (i.e., AnG and DMPFC). We conclude that category‐relevant visual features are maintained in higher‐order conceptual representations and visual information plays an important role in both the acquisition and neural representation of conceptual object categories.

This study investigates the eye movements when detecting changes in the scene with different levels of depth of field. A within-subjects experiment was conducted using a flicker paradigm to create change blindness phenomenon. This experiment investigated two main factors: depth of field and position. The eye-tracker Tobii X120 was used to record participants’ eye movements when looking for changes in the flickering scenes. It was concluded that a small depth of field could indeed direct viewers’ attention into the sharp area. The size of the depth of field could not influence the amount of time for change detection whereas uniform blur could facilitate change detection.

The camera is one of the important sensors to realise the intelligent driving environment. It can realise lane detection and tracking, obstacle detection, traffic sign detection, identification and discrimination and visual simultaneous localisation and mapping. The visual sensor model, quantity and installation location are different on different intelligent driving hardware experimental platform as well as the visual sensor information processing module, thus a number of intelligent driving system software modules and interfaces are different. In this study, the software architecture of the autonomous vehicle based on the driving brain is used to adapt to different types of visual sensors. The target segment is extracted by the image segmentation algorithm, and then the segmentation of the region of interest is carried out. According to the input feature calculation results, the obstacle search is done in the second segmentation region, the output of the accessible road area. As driving information is complete, the authors will increase or reduce one or more visual sensors, change the visual sensor model or installation location, which will no longer directly affect the intelligent driving decision, they make the multi-vision sensors adapted to the requirements of different intelligent driving hardware test platforms.

In this study, the authors study a deep learning model that can convert vision into tactile information, so that different texture images can be fed back to the tactile signal close to the real tactile sensation after training and learning. This study focuses on the classification of different image visual information and its corresponding tactile feedback output mode. A training model of ensembled generative adversarial networks is proposed, which has the characteristics of simple training and stable efficiency of the result. At the same time, compared with the previous methods of judging the tactile output, in addition to subjective human perception, this study also provides an objective and quantitative evaluation system to verify the performance of the model. The experimental results show that the learning model can transform the visual information of the image into the tactile information, which is close to the real tactile sensation, and also verify the scientificity of the tactile evaluation method.

It has been suggested that visual images are memorized across brief periods of time by vividly imagining them as if they were still there. In line with this, the contents of both working memory and visual imagery are known to be encoded already in early visual cortex. If these signals in early visual areas were indeed to reflect a combined imagery and memory code, one would predict them to be weaker for individuals with reduced visual imagery vividness. Here, we systematically investigated this question in two groups of participants. Strong and weak imagers were asked to remember images across brief delay periods. We were able to reliably reconstruct the memorized stimuli from early visual cortex during the delay. Importantly, in contrast to the prediction, the quality of reconstruction was equally accurate for both strong and weak imagers. The decodable information also closely reflected behavioral precision in both groups, suggesting it could contribute to behavioral performance, even in the extreme case of completely aphantasic individuals. Our data thus suggest that working memory signals in early visual cortex can be present even in the (near) absence of phenomenal imagery., (© 2024 The Authors. Human Brain Mapping published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

This paper describes a methodology for the assessment of training simulator-based computer-assisted intervention skills on an AR/VR-guided procedure making use of CT axial slice views for a neurosurgical procedure: external ventricular drain (EVD) placement. The task requires that trainees scroll through a stack of axial slices and form a mental representation of the anatomical structures in order to subsequently target the ventricles to insert an EVD. The process of observing the 2D CT image slices in order to build a mental representation of the 3D anatomical structures is the skill being taught, along with the cognitive control of the subsequent targeting, by planned motor actions, of the EVD tip to the ventricular system to drain cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). Convergence is established towards the validity of this assessment methodology by examining two objective measures of spatial reasoning, along with one subjective expert ranking methodology, and comparing these to AR/VR guidance. These measures have two components: the speed and accuracy of the targeting, which are used to derive the performance metric. Results of these correlations are presented for a population of PGY1 residents attending the Canadian Neurosurgical "Rookie Bootcamp" in 2019., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflicts of interest., (© 2024 The Authors. Healthcare Technology Letters published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of The Institution of Engineering and Technology.)

Congenital sensory deprivation induces significant changes in the structural and functional organisation of the brain. These are well-characterised by cross-modal plasticity, in which deprived cortical areas are recruited to process information from non-affected sensory modalities, as well as by other neuroplastic alterations within regions dedicated to the remaining senses. Here, we analysed visual and auditory networks of congenitally deaf and hearing individuals during different visual tasks to assess changes in network community structure and connectivity patterns due to congenital deafness. In the hearing group, the nodes are clearly divided into three communities (visual, auditory and subcortical), whereas in the deaf group a fourth community consisting mainly of bilateral superior temporal sulcus and temporo-insular regions is present. Perhaps more importantly, the right lateral geniculate body, as well as bilateral thalamus and pulvinar joined the auditory community of the deaf. Moreover, there is stronger connectivity between bilateral thalamic and pulvinar and auditory areas in the deaf group, when compared to the hearing group. No differences were found in the number of connections of these nodes to visual areas. Our findings reveal substantial neuroplastic changes occurring within the auditory and visual networks caused by deafness, emphasising the dynamic nature of the sensory systems in response to congenital deafness. Specifically, these results indicate that in the deaf but not the hearing group, subcortical thalamic nuclei are highly connected to auditory areas during processing of visual information, suggesting that these relay areas may be responsible for rerouting visual information to the auditory cortex under congenital deafness., (© 2023 The Authors. Human Brain Mapping published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

This study explores the use of food texture terms by adults in the northeastern United States. The purpose of the study was to compare the effect of food texture on food liking and texture term usage among age groups via two complementary online surveys that differed in the specific task given to participants. Survey 1 gathered common food items associated with 25 texture terms using open-ended questions from 345 participants (45% men, 55% women; age range = 20-79 years); it also collected liking scores for foods with these textures. Next, a new group of participants (n = 349, 46% men, 54% women; age range = 20-79 years) completed Survey 2, which asked them to match up to three texture terms to 32 different foods drawn from Survey 1, using a provided list of 35 texture terms. "Tough," "Chalky," and "Rubbery" had a negative impact on food liking scores while "Tender," "Juicy," and "Crispy" were associated with higher mean food liking scores. "Soft," "Crunchy," "Crispy," "Juicy," and "Greasy" were commonly used texture terms regardless of age. Within those aged 50-79 years, "Smooth," "Tender," "Crunchy," "Soft," "Moist," "Crispy," and "Creamy" were used more often while "Chalky," "Rough," "Mealy," "Foamy/Airy," "Gritty" were used less often. Our results identified commonly used texture terms and revealed differential usage in older and younger adults. These data deepen our understanding of the texture of foods in the modern food environment, highlighting how texture perception may vary with age., (© 2023 The Authors. Journal of Texture Studies published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Conscious visual motion information follows a cortical pathway from the retina to the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) and on to the primary visual cortex (V1) before arriving at the middle temporal visual area (MT/V5). Alternative subcortical pathways that bypass V1 are thought to convey unconscious visual information. One flows from the retina to the pulvinar (PUL) and on to medial temporal visual area (MT); while the other directly connects the LGN to MT. Evidence for these pathways comes from non-human primates and modest-sized studies in humans with brain lesions. Thus, the aim of the current study was to reconstruct these pathways in a large sample of neurotypical individuals and to determine the degree to which these pathways are myelinated, suggesting information flow is rapid. We used the publicly available 7T (N = 98; 'discovery') and 3T (N = 381; 'validation') diffusion magnetic resonance imaging datasets from the Human Connectome Project to reconstruct the PUL-MT (including all subcompartments of the PUL) and LGN-MT pathways. We found more fibre tracts with greater density in the left hemisphere. Although the left PUL-MT path was denser, the bilateral LGN-MT tracts were more heavily myelinated, suggesting faster signal transduction. We suggest that this apparent discrepancy may be due to 'adaptive myelination' caused by more frequent use of the LGN-MT pathway that leads to greater myelination and faster overall signal transmission., (© 2023 The Authors. Human Brain Mapping published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Deaf individuals may report difficulties in social interactions. However, whether these difficulties depend on deafness affecting social brain circuits is controversial. Here, we report the first meta-analysis comparing brain activations of hearing and (prelingually) deaf individuals during social perception. Our findings showed that deafness does not impact on the functional mechanisms supporting social perception. Indeed, both deaf and hearing control participants recruited regions of the action observation network during performance of different social tasks employing visual stimuli, and including biological motion perception, face identification, action observation, viewing, identification and memory for signs and lip reading. Moreover, we found increased recruitment of the superior-middle temporal cortex in deaf individuals compared with hearing participants, suggesting a preserved and augmented function during social communication based on signs and lip movements. Overall, our meta-analysis suggests that social difficulties experienced by deaf individuals are unlikely to be associated with brain alterations but may rather depend on non-supportive environments., (© 2023 The Authors. Human Brain Mapping published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.)