Fractal images induce fractal pupil dilations and constrictions.

Fractals are self-similar structures or patterns that repeat at increasingly fine magnifications. Research has revealed fractal patterns in many natural and physiological processes. This article investigates pupillary size over time to determine if their oscillations demonstrate a fractal pattern.

Pupil dilations reflect why rembrandt biased female portraits leftward and males rightward.

Portrait painters are experts at examining faces and since emotional content may be expressed differently on each side of the face, consider that Rembrandt biased his male portraits to show their right-cheek more often and female portraits to show their left-cheek more often. This raises questions regarding the emotional significance of such biased positions. I presented rightward and leftward facing male and female portraits.

Attention to endogenous and exogenous cues affects auditory localization.

Three experiments examine attentional differences in auditory localization using either endogenous or exogenous visual cues. Participants were presented with visual cues on a computer screen and asked to localize auditory targets presented through headphones. In conditions in which the auditory and visual stimuli traveled in the same direction, participants showed illusory directional hearing (Hari in Neurosci Lett 189:29-30, 1995) in that the targets were perceived to travel through the head.

We infer light in space.

In studies of lightness and color constancy, the terms lightness and brightness refer to the qualia corresponding to perceived surface reflectance and perceived luminance, respectively. However, what has rarely been considered is the fact that the volume of space containing surfaces appears neither empty, void, nor black, but filled with light. Helmholtz (1866/1962) came closest to describing this phenomenon when discussing inferred illumination, but previous theoretical treatments have fallen short by restricting their considerations to the surfaces of objects.

Timing: A missing key ingredient in typical fMRI studies of emotion.

Lindquist et al. provide a compelling summary of the brain bases of the onset of emotion. Their conclusions, however, are constrained by typical fMRI techniques that do not assess a key ingredient in emotional experience - timing.