Games to Improve Lazy Eye and Depth Perception

Scientists have created video games that add an important element of fun to the repetitive training needed to improve vision in people (including adults) with a lazy eye and poor depth perception. The training tools, including a Pac-Man-style ‘cat and mouse’ game and a ‘search for oddball’ game, have produced results in pilot testing: Weak-eye vision improved to 20/20 and 20/50 in two adult research participants with lazy eyes whose vision was 20/25 and 20/63, respectively, before the training began. Unlike the common use of eye patches on dominant eyes to make lazy eyes stronger, this type of testing uses a ‘push-pull’ method by making both eyes work during the training. Patching is push-only training because the dominant eye remains completely unused. With push-pull, both eyes are stimulated but with the weaker eye exposed to more complex images that create a stronger stimulus. In this way, both eyes are encouraged to interact as they should, but the dominant eye's power in the relationship is suppressed. This technique targets important pathways in the brain that must be active to produce balanced vision.

Lazy eye, or amblyopia, affects an estimated 2 to 3% of the population. The childhood disorder results when the neural pathway from one eye to the brain does not develop because the eye is sending blurry and/or incompatible images. This lack of balance in the eyes typically leads to poor depth perception. Researchers designed the push-pull training as a way to tap into brain networks responsible for both inhibition and excitation signals that govern binocular vision. They determined that the training can work not only for patients with a lazy eye, but in people with normal vision who have more subtle eye dominance that affects their depth perception. The improvements lasted for at least eight months after the training was completed. The new computer games improve upon the initial design by ensuring these pathways are adequately stimulated in each eye, and even in lazy eyes caused by an eye turn. The games feature groups of lines with differing orientation, and players wear red-green 3D glasses that filter the images to each eye. The weak eye sees bordered disks that contain vertical, horizontal or diagonal lines imposed against a background of those same horizontal lines.

More information:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141119174736.htm

Robotic Fish Swimming

Recently, Sweden called off the hunt for a submarine after a week-long underwater search in the Stockholm archipelago. Triggered by a reported sighting of a Russian submarine, the alleged 'invasion' had been widely anticipated by military specialists and the media. Work by the Russian and the Allied militaries to develop underwater devices for information gathering are currently underway. Their aim is to reach areas which are difficult or even impossible for divers to reach; to inspect and clear mines on the sea floor, or even combat enemy scuba divers. The existing effort undertaken trains guard-dolphins; however, animal-rights-activists have opined that using dolphins for military reasons is inhumane, and may harm the world's ecology as rivals might seek to eliminate the threat by killing off the species. Hence, alternative strategies have been put in place to develop unmanned underwater systems as the replacement for military-trained dolphins.

To be able to be operable remotely, small, sophisticated and intelligent enough to operate autonomously underwater, these devices must be flexible, and able to operate in narrow spaces like a snake. Inspired by Anguilliform fish, due to their superior flexibility compared to the other fish forms, a team in Singapore has developed and built a prototype for an eel-like robotic fish. A snake-like form also gives the Anguilliform Robot amphibious potential, owing to the similarity in undulatory locomotion in water and on solid ground. Mechanically, this robotic fish consists of N-links and N−1 joints, and is controlled by the torques applied to the joints. It was designed to move forward, and backward, as well as turnaround through different reference inputs driven by a 3D coupled Andronov-Hopf oscillators, an artificial neural network, and an outer amplitude modulator. Results validate the effectiveness of the proposed controllers was able to swim forward and backward as predicted.

More information:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141126103903.htm

VR Self Compassion

Self-compassion can be learned using avatars in an immersive virtual reality, finds new research led by UCL. This innovative approach reduced self-criticism and increased self-compassion and feelings of contentment in naturally self-critical individuals. The scientists behind the MRC-funded study say it could be applied to treat a range of clinical conditions including depression. The team of psychologists and computer scientists from UCL, University of Barcelona and University of Derby designed a method to improve people's compassion to themselves, by creating a unique self-to-self situation using avatars and computer gaming technology. Virtual reality has previously been used to treat psychological disorders including phobias and post-traumatic stress disorder but this research focused on a new application for promoting emotional well-being

In the study, 43 healthy but self-critical women experienced a life-size virtual body substituting their own, giving a first person perspective of a virtual room through the eyes of the avatar. The participants were all trained to express compassion towards a distressed virtual child while in their adult virtual body. As they talked to the crying child, it appeared to listen and respond positively to the compassion. After a few minutes, 22 of the participants were then transferred to the virtual child body and from this perspective they saw their original virtual adult body deliver their own compassionate words and gestures to them. The remaining 21 participants observed their original virtual adult body express compassion to the child from a third person perspective. The participants were surveyed for mood, state and personality traits before and after the experiment using verified tests.

More information:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141112144823.htm

Brain Reaction to VR

UCLA neurophysicists have found that space-mapping neurons in the brain react differently to virtual reality than they do to real-world environments. Their findings could be significant for people who use virtual reality for gaming, military, commercial, scientific or other purposes. The pattern of activity in a brain region involved in spatial learning in the virtual world is completely different than when it processes activity in the real world. Since so many people are using virtual reality, it is important to understand why there are such big differences. The scientists were studying the hippocampus, a region of the brain involved in diseases such as Alzheimer's, stroke, depression, schizophrenia, epilepsy and post-traumatic stress disorder. The hippocampus also plays an important role in forming new memories and creating mental maps of space. For example, when a person explores a room, hippocampal neurons become selectively active, providing a cognitive map of the environment. The mechanisms by which the brain makes those cognitive maps remains a mystery, but neuroscientists have surmised that the hippocampus computes distances between the subject and surrounding landmarks, such as buildings and mountains. But in a real maze, other cues, such as smells and sounds, can also help the brain determine spaces and distances

To test whether the hippocampus could actually form spatial maps using only visual landmarks, researchers devised a non-invasive virtual reality environment and studied how the hippocampal neurons in the brains of rats reacted in the virtual world without the ability to use smells and sounds as cues. They placed a small harness around rats and put them on a treadmill surrounded by a virtual world on large video screens in an otherwise dark, quiet room. The scientists measured the rats' behavior and the activity of hundreds of neurons in their hippocampi. They also measured the rats' behavior and neural activity when they walked in a real room designed to look exactly like the virtual reality room. The scientists were surprised to find that the results from the virtual and real environments were entirely different. In the virtual world, the rats' hippocampal neurons seemed to fire completely randomly, as if the neurons had no idea where the rat was -- even though the rats seemed to behave perfectly normally in the real and virtual worlds. Mathematical analysis showed that neurons in the virtual world were calculating the amount of distance the rat had walked, regardless of where he was in the virtual space. They also found that although the rats' hippocampal neurons were highly active in the real-world environment, more than half of those neurons shut down in the virtual space.

More information:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141124162926.htm

Magic Tricks Created Using AI

Researchers working on artificial intelligence at Queen Mary University of London have taught a computer to create magic tricks. The researchers gave a computer program the outline of how a magic jigsaw puzzle and a mind reading card trick work, as well the results of experiments into how humans understand magic tricks, and the system created completely new variants on those tricks which can be delivered by a magician. The magic tricks created were of the type that use mathematical techniques rather than sleight of hand or other theatrics, and are a core part of many magicians' repertoires.

 

The tricks, proved popular with audiences and the magic puzzle was put on sale in a London magic shop. The card trick is available as an app called Phoney in the Google Play Store. Computer intelligence can process much larger amounts of information and run through all the possible outcomes in a way that is almost impossible for a person to do on their own. So while, a member of the audience might have seen a variation on this trick before, the AI can now use psychological and mathematical principles to create lots of different versions and keep audiences guessing.

More information:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141116211014.htm

'Local' Clock in the Brain

All animals, from ants to humans, have internal 'circadian' clocks that respond to changes in light and tell the body to rest and go to sleep, or wake up and become active. A master clock found in part of the brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) is thought to synchronise lots of 'local' clocks that regulate many aspects of our metabolism, for example in the liver. But until now scientists have not had sufficient evidence to demonstrate the existence of these local clocks in the brain or how they operate. In a new study looking at mice, at Imperial College London and at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge have investigated a local clock found in another part of the brain, outside the SCN, known as the tuberomamillary nucleus (TMN).

 

This is made up of histaminergic neurons, which are inactive during sleep, but release a compound called histamine during waking hours, which awakens the body. The researchers deleted a well-known 'clock' gene, Bmal1, from the histaminergic neurons and found that the mice produced higher levels of the enzyme that makes histamine and were awake for much longer periods than usual. The mice also experienced a more fragmented sleep, a shallower depth of sleep, and much slower recovery after a period of sleeplessness. This work with mice suggests that local body clocks play a key role in ensuring their sleeping and waking processes work properly. When a local clock was disrupted, their whole sleep and wake system malfunctioned.

More information:

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-11-scientists-evidence-local-clock-brain.html