EUREKA!

EUREKA!

Seeing in Color

The periphery fades away.

A new study finds that color perception diminishes dramatically in people’s peripheral vision. Caroline Robertson, assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences, says people fully immersed in a virtual reality (VR) environment don’t notice when most of the color is removed from their peripheral view. Wide VR headsets make it possible to pinpoint the spatial extent of color perception. In the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers used a new technique called gaze-contingent rendering to assure that color appeared only where participants were looking, while the scene in their peripheral vision was changed to black and white. Robertson plans to use VR and gaze-contingent rendering to investigate individual differences in spatial awareness and their implications in conditions such as autism.

Emily Sun ’22

Loner Mentality

Feeling disconnected?

Feeling lonely? The way your brain organizes representations of people could explain why, according to a study in The Journal of Neuroscience, by Andrea L. Courtney, Adv’18, and Meghan Meyer, assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences. Meyer says our brains map relationships, and these neural response patterns correspond to how we think of ourselves and others. The responses we have when thinking about people close to us resemble those we have for ourselves, while we view acquaintances less similarly. In people who say they are lonely, perceptions of even close contacts differ. “The lonelier you feel, the more disconnected your self-representation is from other people,” says Meyer. In this age of quarantine she suggests that mental mapping distortions may reveal why lonely people feel particularly distant from others.

Elizabeth Janowski ’21