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Friday Illusion: Ghostly images change shape
NewScientist: Think hard: you can transform a circle into a hexagon using the power of your mind. New animations created by Hiroyuki Ito from Kyushu University show how staring at coloured shapes can produce an afterimage that varies in form as well as hue. "This is the first study to show systematic shape changes in after-images involving shape processing mechanisms in the brain," says Ito. The first version of the illusion uses solid, stationary shapes. After focusing on yellow circles, blue hexagons typically appear and vice versa. The same effect also occurs with outlines of the shapes. In another variation, hexagons and circles rotate.
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Why some people never seem to forget a face
MSN India: Face recognition is an important social skill but not many of us are equally good at it, reveals a study. Researcher Jia Liu along with colleagues from Beijing Normal University have demonstrated how this skill is rooted in the unique way in which the mind perceives faces. 'Individuals who process faces more holistically - that is, as an integrated whole - are better at face recognition,' said Jia, the journal Psychological Science reported. In daily life, we recognize faces both holistically and also analytically - that is, picking out individual parts, such as eyes or nose, according to a university statement.
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How finding beauty in ordinary life can make you happy
The Globe and Mail: I have a friend who is next to impossible to go for walk with in the spring or summer. “Look,” she will instruct, stopping dead in her running shoes. “See how beautiful this gladiolus is?” And of course, you have to stop alongside her and admire the texture and the colour and the height of the flowers. What are you, anyway? Some power-walking obsessive who doesn’t know how to smell the proverbial roses? It turns out that identifying and appreciating beauty in the everyday is a happiness strategy. Some spiritual leaders advocate it as a way to feel divine energy.
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Where Is the Accurate Memory? The Eyes Have It
The witness points out the criminal in a police lineup. She swears she’d remember that face forever. Then DNA evidence shows she’s got the wrong guy. It happens so frequently that many courts are looking with extreme skepticism at eyewitness testimony. Is there a way to get a more accurate reading of memory? A new study says yes. “Eye movements are drawn quickly to remembered objects,” says Deborah Hannula, assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, who conducted the study with Carol L. Baym and Neal J. Cohen of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and David E. Warren of the University of Iowa College of Medicine.
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Subway Ups Ante in Fast Food Dollar Menu War
ABC News: Subway is offering a $2 subs in December, which may excite frugal fans and still keep franchisees happy. The sandwich chain announced this week it was only selling its 6-inch meatball marinara and cold cut combo sandwiches at the discounted prices of $2 during its Customer Appreciation Month. “It’s a magical price point,” consumer psychologist Kit Yarrow told USA Today. “What it communicates to consumers is that Subway is on their side.” Subway did not immediately return a request for comment. The company already has a rotating $5 foot-long submarine sandwich menu.
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How can musicians keep playing despite amnesia?
BBC News: When British conductor and musician Clive Wearing contracted a brain infection in 1985 he was left with a memory span of only 10 seconds. The infection - herpes encephalitis - left him unable to recognise people he had seen or remember things that had been said just moments earlier. But despite being acknowledged by doctors as having one of the most severe cases of amnesia ever, his musical ability and much of his musical memory was intact. Now aged 73, he is still able to read music and play the piano and once even conducted his former choir again.
