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Marketers have long used celebrity endorsement to help viewers build strong brand‐product associations. Celebrity endorsements increase brand awareness and recall, but how celebrity endorsements shape the decision process remains unclear. A wealth of research indicates that people tend to follow someone else's gaze, yet its effects in advertisements have been largely unexplored. We recruited 77 participants to investigate the effect of celebrities and gaze‐cueing in advertisements on both gaze behavior and binary choices. We combined computational modeling with eye‐tracking and pupillometry to identify which internal components of processing are affected by celebrity endorsement. We found that gaze‐cueing and celebrity endorsement influence gaze allocation and option selection. Further, results from computational modeling, eye‐tracking, and pupillometry revealed that the effect of celebrity endorsement on decisions can be explained as an offset in the starting point of an evidence accumulation process as well as changes in the rate of accumulation, thereby biasing choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context: Little is known about how educating runners may correct common misconceptions surrounding heat safety and hydration strategies. Objective: To investigate (1) beliefs and knowledge about heat safety and hydration strategies among recreational runners and (2) the effectiveness of an educational video in optimizing performance in the heat. Design: Cross-sectional study. Setting: Survey. Patients or Other Participants: A total of 2091 (25.1%) of 8319 runners registered for the 2017 Falmouth Road Race completed at least 1 of the 3 administered surveys. Intervention(s): A 5.3-minute video and an 11-question survey regarding heat safety and hydration strategies were developed, validated, and implemented. The survey was emailed to registrants 9 weeks before the race (PRERACE), after they viewed the video (POSTEDU), and the afternoon of the race (POSTRACE). Main Outcome Measure(s): The total score for responses to 2 multiple choice questions and nine 5-point (response range = strongly agree to strongly disagree) Likert-scale questions. Results: The PRERACE results showed that more than 90% of respondents recognized the importance of staying hydrated beginning the day before the planned activity, correctly identified that dark color urine is not a sign of euhydration, and believed that dehydration may increase the risk for heat syncope. Conversely, fewer than 50% of respondents knew the number of days required to achieve heat acclimatization, the role of sweat-rate calculation in optimizing one's hydration strategy, or the risk of water intoxication from drinking too much water. An improvement in survey score from PRERACE to POSTEDU was observed (mean difference = 2.00; 95% confidence interval = 1.68, 2.33; P < .001) among runners who watched the video, and 73% of the improvement in their scores was retained from POSTEDU to POSTRACE (mean difference = -0.54; 95% confidence interval =-0.86, -0.21; P < .001). Conclusions: The video successfully shifted runners' beliefs and knowledge to enable them to better optimize their performance in the heat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental condition that presents with a tendency to experience sensory overload as well as deficits in social cognition and communication which may be associated with differences in facial processing strategies. Previous studies have shown that, when viewing a facial image, participants with ASD spend less time on the eyes and lips--which contain more emotional and social information than other areas of the face. This study investigates whether individuals with an autism-related phenotype avoid the eyes of facial images in order to reduce their risk of experiencing sensory overload. Neurotypical participants, either possessing or lacking an autism-related phenotype, viewed images drawn from two stimuli sets: a control set of color images and an experimental set consisting of grayscale and reduced contrast images. Humans have been shown to use color as a source of social information (e.g. relative health, sex, emotion, etc.); the grayscale images in the experimental set thus contained less socially relevant information than the color images in the control set. The color images also contained more brightness and contrast--both of which are potential triggers of sensory overload--than the reduced contrast images. The results revealed that participants with an autismrelated phenotype spent more time focusing on the eyes of grayscale images than on the eye region in color images. However, this effect was not observed when reduced contrast images were compared to color images. These results, when extrapolated to a population with a true autism phenotype, suggest that individuals with autism may process grayscale images differently than color images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs) mediate the pupillary light reflex, circadian entrainment, and may contribute to luminance and color perception. The diversity of ipRGCs varies from rodents to primates, suggesting differences in their contributions to retinal output. To further understand the variability in their organization and diversity across species, we used immunohistochemical methods to examine ipRGCs in tree shrew (Tupaia belangeri). Tree shrews share membership in the same clade, or evolutionary branch, as rodents and primates. They are highly visual, diurnal animals with a cone‐dominated retina and a geniculo‐cortical organization resembling that of primates. We identified cells with morphological similarities to M1 and M2 cells described previously in rodents and primates. M1‐like cells typically had somas in the ganglion cell layer, with 23% displaced to the inner nuclear layer (INL). However, unlike M1 cells, they had bistratified dendritic fields ramifying in S1 and S5 that collectively tiled space. M2‐like cells had dendritic fields restricted to S5 that were smaller and more densely branching. A novel third type of melanopsin immunopositive cell was identified. These cells had somata exclusively in the INL and monostratified dendritic fields restricted to S1 that tiled space. Surprisingly, these cells immunolabeled for tyrosine hydroxylase, a key component in dopamine synthesis. These cells immunolabeled for an RGC marker, not amacrine cell markers, suggesting that they are dopaminergic ipRGCs. We found no evidence for M4 or M5 ipRGCs, described previously in rodents. These results identify some organizational features of the ipRGC system that are canonical versus species‐specific. We identify and distinguish multiple types of intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells in tree shrew. The tree shrew is a highly visual diurnal mammal with a cone‐dominated retina, and is an evolutionary intermediate between rodents and primates. Thus, these animals provide insight in the evolution of mammalian and primate vision. One population of melanopsin expressing cells (cyan in accompanied image) also expresses tyrosine hydroxylase (yellow). This expression pattern suggests an intrinsically photosensitive ganglion cell that is dopaminergic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Color has become a premier model system for understanding how information is processed by neural circuits, and for investigating the relationships among genes, neural circuits, and perception. Both the physical stimulus for color and the perceptual output experienced as color are quite well characterized, but the neural mechanisms that underlie the transformation from stimulus to perception are incompletely understood. The past several years have seen important scientific and technical advances that are changing our understanding of these mechanisms. Here, and in the accompanying minisymposium, we review the latest findings and hypotheses regarding color computations in the retina, primary visual cortex, and higher-order visual areas, focusing on non-human primates, a model of human color vision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies of middle-wavelength-sensitive and long-wavelength-sensitive cone responses in primate primary visual cortex (V1) have challenged the view that color and form are represented by distinct neuronal populations. Individual V1 neurons exhibit hallmarks of both color and form processing (cone opponency and orientation selectivity), and many display cone interactions that do not fit classic chromatic/achromatic classifications. Comparable analysis of short-wavelength-sensitive (S) cone responses has yet to be achieved and is of considerable interest because S-cones are the basis for the primordial mammalian chromatic pathway. Using intrinsic and two-photon imaging techniques in the tree shrew, we assessed the properties of V1 layer 2/3 neurons responsive to S-cone stimulation. These responses were orientation selective, exhibited distinct spatiotemporal properties, and reflected integration of S-cone inputs via opponent, summing, and intermediate configurations. Our observations support a common framework for the representation of cone signals in V1, one that endows orientation-selective neurons with a range of chromatic, achromatic, and mixed response properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]