Perception of biological motion. No sensitivity differences between patients with Parkinson's disease and healthy observers.

The use of biological motion (BM) stimuli (point-light walkers PLW) may be a novel alternative to improve the clinical impact of Action Observation treatments in Parkinson's Disease, by directing the patient's attentional focus on gait kinematics. However, the recognition of biological motion in Parkinson's patients has thus far been controversial. To evaluate the clinical feasibility of using BM stimuli in Action Observation treatments, we aimed at investigating whether Parkinson's patients in the ON-state condition can identify and use gender-specific cues conveyed by the body structure and by the kinematics of gait of a PLW.

Inter-letter spacing, inter-word spacing, and font with dyslexia-friendly features: testing text readability in people with and without dyslexia.

Over the last years, several studies have suggested a possible link between dyslexia and deficits in low-level visual processing (e.g., excessive crowding).

Is lack of attention necessary for task-irrelevant perceptual learning?

Perceptual learning can occur for a feature irrelevant to the training task, when it is sub-threshold and outside of the focus of attention (task-irrelevant perceptual learning, TIPL); however, TIPL does not occur when the task-irrelevant feature is supra-threshold. Here, we asked the question whether TIPL occurs when the task-irrelevant feature is sub-threshold but within the focus of spatial attention. We tested participants in three different discrimination tasks performed on a 3-dot stimulus: a horizontal Vernier task and a vertical bisection task (during pre- and post-training sessions), and a luminance task (during training).

Location transfer of perceptual learning: passive stimulation and double training.

Specificity has always been considered one of the hallmarks of perceptual learning, suggesting that performance improvement would reflect changes at early stages of visual analyses (e.g., V1).

Early-light embryonic stimulation suggests a second route, via gene activation, to cerebral lateralization in vertebrates.

Genetic factors determine the asymmetrical position of vertebrate embryos allowing asymmetric environmental stimulation to shape cerebral lateralization. In birds, late-light stimulation, just before hatching, on the right optic nerve triggers anatomical and functional cerebral asymmetries. However, some brain asymmetries develop in absence of embryonic light stimulation.