Effects of Symmetry and Apparent Distance in a Parasagittal-Mirror Variant of the Rubber Hand Illusion Paradigm

When I see my face in a mirror, its apparent position (behind the glass) is not one that my own face could be in. I accept the face I see as my own because I have an implicit understanding of how mirrors work. The situation is different if I look at the reflection of my right hand in a parasagittal mirror (parallel to body midline) when my left hand is hidden behind the mirror. It is as if I were looking through a window at my own left hand. The experience of body ownership has been investigated using rubber hand illusion (RHI) paradigms, and several studies have demonstrated ownership of a rubber hand viewed in a frontal mirror. Our “proof of concept” study was the first to combine use of a parasagittal mirror and synchronous stroking of both a prosthetic hand (viewed in the mirror) and the participant’s hand, with a manipulation of distance between the hands. The strength of the RHI elicited by our parasagittal-mirror paradigm depended not on physical distance between the hands (30, 45, or 60 cm) but on apparent distance between the prosthetic hand (viewed in the mirror) and the participant’s hand. This apparent distance was reduced to zero when the prosthetic hand and participant’s hand were arranged symmetrically (e.g., 30 cm in front of and behind the mirror). Thus, the parasagittal-mirror paradigm may provide a distinctive way to assess whether competition for ownership depends on spatial separation between the prosthetic hand and the participant’s hand.

Scale Ambiguities in Material Recognition

Many natural materials have complex, multi-scale structures. Consequently, the apparent identity of a surface can vary with the assumed spatial scale of the scene: a plowed field seen from afar can resemble corduroy seen up close. We investigated this ‘material-scale ambiguity’ using 87 photographs of diverse materials (e.g., water, sand, stone, metal, wood). Across two experiments, separate groups of participants (N = 72 adults) provided judgements of the material depicted in each image, either with or without manipulations of apparent distance (by verbal instructions, or adding objects of familiar size). Our results demonstrate that these manipulations can cause identical images to appear to belong to completely different material categories, depending on the perceived scale. Under challenging conditions, therefore, the perception of materials is susceptible to simple manipulations of apparent distance, revealing a striking example of top-down effects in the interpretation of image features.

Bob Wilber, the Westchester Kid: White Privilege and Perspectives on Jazz Belonging

In Bob Wilber’s Music Was Not Enough, the multi-instrumentalist and bandleader offers a detailed account of his experience in New York during the mid-1940s as a student and protégé of the renowned New Orleans musician Sidney Bechet and the effect of that experience on his life and career. While Wilber’s description of his jazz education with Bechet and his subsequent professional career reveals his rich immersion in New Orleans and East Coast traditional and swing jazz communities, the colorblind lens through which he filters these experiences serves to deemphasize, or even negate, the significance of race in them. This chapter contrasts Wilber’s privilege and apparent distance from New Orleans’ jazz culture with Bechet’s insistence on the significance of his Creole identity to the shaping of his musical and cultural persona.

Genetic Adjuvants in Replicating Single-Cycle Adenovirus Vectors Amplify Systemic and Mucosal Immune Responses against HIV-1 Envelope

Most infections occur at mucosal surfaces. Providing a barrier of protection at these surfaces may be a useful strategy to combat the earliest events in infection when there are relatively few pathogens to address. The majority of vaccines are delivered systemically by the intramuscular (IM) route. While IM vaccination can drive mucosal immune responses, mucosal immunization at intranasal (IN) or oral sites can lead to better immune responses at mucosal sites of viral entry. In macaques, IN immunization with replicating single-cycle adenovirus (SC-Ads) and protein boosts generated favorable mucosal immune responses. However, there was an apparent “distance effect” in generating mucosal immune responses. IN immunization generated antibodies against HIV envelope (env) nearby in the saliva, but weaker responses in samples collected from the distant vaginal samples. To improve on this, we tested here if SC-Ads expressing genetic adjuvants could be used to amplify antibody responses in distant vaginal samples when they are codelivered with SC-Ads expressing clade C HIV env immunogen. SC-Ads env 1157 was coadministered with SC-Ads expressing 4-1BBL, granulocyte macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GMCSF), IL-21, or Clostridoides difficile (C. diff.) toxin fragments by IN or IM routes. These data show that vaginal antibody responses were markedly amplified after a single immunization by the IN or IM routes, with SC-Ad expressing HIV env if this vaccine is complemented with SC-Ads expressing genetic adjuvants. Furthermore, the site and combination of adjuvants appear to “tune” these antibody responses towards an IgA or IgG isotype bias. Boosting these priming SC-Ad responses with another SC-Ad or with SOSIP native-like env proteins markedly amplifies env antibody levels in vaginal washes. Together, this data may be useful in informing the choice of route of delivery adenovirus and peptide vaccines against HIV-1.

A Robust Neural Fingerprint of Cinematic Shot-Scale

This article provides evidence for the existence of a robust “brainprint” of cinematic shot-scales that generalizes across movies, genres, and viewers. We applied a machine-learning method on a dataset of 234 fMRI scans taken during the viewing of a movie excerpt. Based on a manual annotation of shot-scales in five movies, we generated a computational model that predicts time series of this feature. The model was then applied on fMRI data obtained from new participants who either watched excerpts from the movies or clips from new movies. The predicted shot-scale time series that were based on our model significantly correlated with the original annotation in all nine cases. The spatial structure of the model indicates that the empirical experience of cinematic close-ups correlates with the activation of the ventral visual stream, the centromedial amygdala, and components of the mentalization network, while the experience of long shots correlates with the activation of the dorsal visual pathway and the parahippocampus. The shot-scale brainprint is also in line with the notion that this feature is informed among other factors by perceived apparent distance. Based on related theoretical and empirical findings we suggest that the empirical experience of close and far shots implicates different mental models: concrete and contextualized perception dominated by recognition and visual and semantic memory on the one hand, and action-related processing supporting orientation and movement monitoring on the other.

Use of Ultrasonic and Audio Signals to Monitor Temperature in Stratospheric Balloons

For gas temperature measurements in stratospheric balloons, traditional methods of measuring gas temperature do not work well due to radiant heating and insufficient heat transfer. To measure the gas temperature several methods of acoustic temperature measurement are being developed. One of these methods is the pitch catch method. A perceived distance pitch catch method using an ultrasonic distance sensor was proposed and tested. However, at low pressures the density of air is too low to allow sound to propagate well. This means that at a certain pressure, the ultrasonic distance sensor will not receive a reflected sound with sufficient amplitude to calculate the apparent distance accurately. Tests were conducted in a high altitude chamber to determine the accuracy of temperature measurements and the fail pressure. It was determined that the optimum configuration for this device would not allow it to function at a sufficient altitude nor give the temperature accuracy required. An alternative timing method using a piezo speaker, electret microphone, and time of flight measurements was explored. The timing method achieved a detectable signal down to 1.0kPa. Further work is being done on the timing method to increase the accuracy of the device.

How much do visual cues help listeners in perceiving accented speech?

It has been documented that lipreading facilitates the understanding of difficult speech, such as noisy speech and time-compressed speech. However, relatively little work has addressed the role of visual information in perceiving accented speech, another type of difficult speech. In this study, we specifically focus on accented word recognition. One hundred forty-two native English speakers made lexical decision judgments on English words or nonwords produced by speakers with Mandarin Chinese accents. The stimuli were presented as either as videos that were of a relatively far speaker or as videos in which we zoomed in on the speaker’s head. Consistent with studies of degraded speech, listeners were more accurate at recognizing accented words when they saw lip movements from the closer apparent distance. The effect of apparent distance tended to be larger under nonoptimal conditions: when stimuli were nonwords than words, and when stimuli were produced by a speaker who had a relatively strong accent. However, we did not find any influence of listeners’ prior experience with Chinese accented speech, suggesting that cross-talker generalization is limited. The current study provides practical suggestions for effective communication between native and nonnative speakers: visual information is useful, and it is more useful in some circumstances than others.