Effects of canonical color, luminance, and orientation on sustained inattentional blindness for scenes.

Whether scene gist perception occurs automatically and unconsciously has been the subject of much debate. In addition to demonstrating a new method that adapts the Mack and Rock (1998) inattentional blindness cross procedure to allow for sustained inattentional blindness over a large number of trials, we report evidence from a series of experiments that shows that canonical scene features reduce inattentional blindness to scenes by facilitating the extraction of scene gist. When attentional demands are high, the combination of canonical color, canonical luminance, and canonical orientation reduces rates of inattentional blindness.

A Gene Implicated in Activation of Retinoic Acid Receptor Targets Is a Novel Renal Agenesis Gene in Humans.

Renal agenesis (RA) is one of the more extreme examples of congenital anomalies of the kidney and urinary tract (CAKUT). Bilateral renal agenesis is almost invariably fatal at birth, and unilateral renal agenesis can lead to future health issues including end-stage renal disease. Genetic investigations have identified several gene variants that cause RA, including , , and However, whereas compound null mutations of genes encoding α and γ retinoic acid receptors (RARs) cause RA in mice, to date there have been no reports of variants in RAR genes causing RA in humans.

Scene incongruity and attention.

Does scene incongruity, (a mismatch between scene gist and a semantically incongruent object), capture attention and lead to conscious perception? We explored this question using 4 different procedures: Inattention (Experiment 1), Scene description (Experiment 2), Change detection (Experiment 3), and Iconic Memory (Experiment 4). We found no differences between scene incongruity and scene congruity in Experiments 1, 2, and 4, although in Experiment 3 change detection was faster for scenes containing an incongruent object. We offer an explanation for why the change detection results differ from the results of the other three experiments.

No iconic memory without attention.

The experiments reported extend the findings of our earlier paper, (Mack, Erol, & Clarke, 2015) and allow us to reject Bachmann and Aru's critique of our conclusion (2015) that IM requires attention. They suggested our manipulations, which diverted attention from a letter reporting task in a dual task procedure where the task-cue occurred after the array disappeared, might only have affected access to IM and not the "existence of the phenomenal experience". By further decreasing the probability of reporting letters to only 10% and adding a final trial in which the letter matrix was either completely absent or distorted, we found more than half our subjects were unaware of its absence, or distortion i.

Reply to Bachmann and Aru.

A reply to the Bachmann and Aru (2015) critique of our paper (Mack, Erol, & Clarke, 2015) in which we rebut their criticisms and argue once again that our results support our view that iconic memory requires attention.

Iconic memory is not a case of attention-free awareness.

Whether or not awareness entails attention is a much debated question. Since iconic memory has been generally assumed to be attention-free, it has been considered an important piece of evidence that it does not (Koch & Tsuchiya, 2007). Therefore the question of the role of attention in iconic memory matters.

Iconic memory for the gist of natural scenes.

Does iconic memory contain the gist of multiple scenes? Three experiments were conducted. In the first, four scenes from different basic-level categories were briefly presented in one of two conditions: a cue or a no-cue condition. The cue condition was designed to provide an index of the contents of iconic memory of the display.

Genome-wide copy number variation analysis of a Branchio-oto-renal syndrome cohort identifies a recombination hotspot and implicates new candidate genes.

Branchio-oto-renal (BOR) syndrome is an autosomal dominant disorder characterized by branchial arch anomalies, hearing loss and renal dysmorphology. Although haploinsufficiency of EYA1 and SIX1 are known to cause BOR, copy number variation analysis has only been performed on a limited number of BOR patients. In this study, we used high-resolution array-based comparative genomic hybridization on 32 BOR probands negative for coding-sequence and splice-site mutations in known BOR-causing genes to identify potential disease-causing genomic rearrangements.

How effective is the cognitive interview when used with adults with intellectual disabilities specifically with conversation recall?

Background: The cognitive interview (CI) has been shown to increase correct memory recall of a diverse range of participant types, without an increase in the number of incorrect or confabulated details. However, it has rarely been examined for use with adults with intellectual disability.

Measures And Method: This study compared the memory recall of twenty-one adults with a mild intellectual disability (ID) (IQ 70-50) and twenty-one adults from the general population (GP).

TNXB mutations can cause vesicoureteral reflux.

Primary vesicoureteral reflux (VUR) is the most common congenital anomaly of the kidney and the urinary tract, and it is a major risk factor for pyelonephritic scarring and CKD in children. Although twin studies support the heritability of VUR, specific genetic causes remain elusive. We performed a sequential genome-wide linkage study and whole-exome sequencing in a family with hereditary VUR.

Red blood cell supernatant potentiates LPS-induced proinflammatory cytokine response from peripheral blood mononuclear cells.

Allogeneic blood transfusion has an immunomodulatory capacity on its recipients through accumulation of immunologically active substances with blood storage, and prestorage leukoreduction reduces many of these mediators. We investigated lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced cytokine response of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) exposed to packed red blood cell (PRBC) supernatants from leukoreduced (LR) or non-leukoreduced (NLR) units with variable duration of storage. PRBC units were collected with or without leukoreduction on Day 0 before routine storage.

Regulation of c-Ret in the developing kidney is responsive to Pax2 gene dosage.

During kidney development, Pax2 and Pax8 are expressed very early in the mammalian nephric duct and both precede the expression of receptor tyrosine kinase, c-Ret. However, in Pax2-/- mutant mice, expression of c-Ret is lost after embryonic day 10.5.

Melanoma skews dendritic cells to facilitate a T helper 2 profile.

Background: Patients with progressing melanoma have a circulating cytokine profile reflecting a T helper cell type 2 (Th2) imbalance, while patients responding to therapy favor a Th1 profile. The aim of this study was to determine the role of circulating dendritic cells (DCs) in mediating this imbalance.

Methods: Isolated human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were exposed to cell-free melanoma-conditioned medium (MCM) or control fibroblast-conditioned medium before stimulation.

Melanoma inhibits macrophage activation by suppressing toll-like receptor 4 signaling.

Background: Activated macrophages defend against tumors by secreting cytokines to recruit secondary immune cells, presenting antigen to T cells, and by direct tumor cytotoxicity. Peritoneal macrophages harvested from melanoma-bearing mice are less cytotoxic to melanoma cells, and produce less superoxide, nitric oxide, and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) than those from nontumor-bearing mice. Similar impairment of macrophage activation occurs in vitro using media harvested from cultured melanoma cells.