Lie detecting Brain scans
Someday soon, we might be seeing the development of small or portable functional magnetic imagery machines that could be used by the police instead of
lie detecting polygraph tests. While you might be able to fool a lie detector, your brain won't lie about which areas are active when you are lying. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have shown that lying when answering a yes/no question activates an area of the brain that is involved in the inhibition of responses, the anterior cingulate. Could it be that when we lie, our brain has to suppress a natural instinct to tell the truth?
Trigonometric Vision
How do we know how far away things are? The main theory to explain this ability of
vision has been floating around since before the eleventh century. Only recently has there been experimental evidence to support it. Optometry researchers from around the US collaborated on a study in which they hypothesized that people judge distance by measuring the angle between the ground and the object in question... Trigonometry!!! To test the hypothesis, they made people wear prisms over their eyes and then try to catch tossed objects or navigate around objects in a room. The prisms increased the observed angle, which made the objects appear closer than they actually were. Even though subjects had a difficult time judging distance with the prisms on, they began to acclimate after about 20 minutes. This demonstrates a plasticity of the brain to adjust to changes in our perception of our environment.
Eye-ris
Researchers at Kyoto University in Japan have demonstrated that cells taken from the iris of an adult rat eye can be turned into retinal cell imitations. It is hoped that this new concept will lead to
retinal autografts (within one person) instead of transplants (between people). They used a virus to insert the gene responsible for rhodopsin expression into iris cells. Rhodopsin is the pigment in the eye that is sensitive to light. It is found in the rod cells of the retina. Retinal cell degeneration can lead to blindness. Hopefully, someday we will be able to transplant cells from the healthy iris to the damaged retina in order to help people to see. Current retinal transplants are difficult to perform due to the high risk of rejection by the recipient.
current science news posted by Kirsten at 11/14/2001 11:12:00 AM
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