Brief memory reactivation may not improve visual perception.

Visual perceptual learning often requires a substantial number of trials to observe significant learning effects. Previously Amar-Halpert et al. (2017) have shown that brief reactivation (5 trials/day) is sufficient to improve the performance of the texture discrimination task (TDT), yielding comparable improvements to those achieved through full practice (252 trials/day).

A 3D DEM modeling of soil-rock mixture considering spatial distribution orientation of blocks.

Spatial distribution orientations of blocks can cause significant errors in the discrete element model (DEM) calculation of soil-rock mixture (SRM). To avoid this error, spherical harmonic (SH) series whose harmonization degrees fixed at 15 were proposed for block reconstruction. This research refers to the case-history of a deep excavation rift valley spanning from the Mabian to Zhaojue section of the Leshan-Xichang Expressway, mainly containing moderately-weathered silty mudstone, in the Leshan City, Sichuan Province, China.

Feature variability determines specificity and transfer in multiorientation feature detection learning.

Historically, in many perceptual learning experiments, only a single stimulus is practiced, and learning is often specific to the trained feature. Our prior work has demonstrated that multi-stimulus learning (e.g.

Contour integration deficits at high spatial frequencies in children treated for anisometropic amblyopia.

Purpose: This study was conducted to reexamine the question of whether children treated for anisometropic amblyopia have contour integration deficits. To do so, we used psychophysical methods that require global contour processing while minimizing the influence of low-level deficits: visibility, shape perception, and positional uncertainty.

Methods: Thirteen children with anisometropic amblyopia (age: 10.

The impact of training on the inner-outer asymmetry in crowding.

Inner-outer asymmetry, where the outer flanker induces stronger crowding than the inner flanker, is a hallmark property of visual crowding. It is unclear the contribution of inner-outer asymmetry to the pattern of crowding errors (biased predominantly toward the flanker identities) and the role of training on crowding errors. In a typical radial crowding display, 20 observers were asked to report the orientation of a target Gabor (7.

Classification and Interpretation for 11 FBN1 Variants Responsible for Marfan Syndrome and Pre-implantation Genetic Testing (PGT) for Two Families Successfully Blocked Transmission of the Pathogenic Mutations.

The lifespan of Marfan Syndrome (MFS) patients is shortened, especially in patients without early diagnostics, preventive treatment, and elective surgery. Clinically, MFS diagnosis is mainly dependent on phenotypes, but for children, sporadic cases, or suspicious MFS patients, molecular genetic testing, and mainly mutation screening, plays a significant role in the diagnosis of MFS. PGT-M gives couples that had a family history of monogenic disorders the opportunity to avoid the occurrence of MFS.

Dichoptic Perceptual Training in Children With Amblyopia With or Without Patching History.

Purpose: Dichoptic training is becoming a popular tool in amblyopia treatment. Here we investigated the effects of dichoptic demasking training in children with amblyopia who never received patching treatment (NPT group) or were no longer responsive to patching (PT group).

Methods: Fourteen NPT and thirteen PT amblyopes (6-16.

Dichoptic De-Masking Learning in Adults With Amblyopia and Its Mechanisms.

Purpose: Recently, we reported that dichoptic de-masking training can further boost stereoacuity, but not visual acuity, in adults with amblyopia after extensive monocular perceptual training. Here, we investigated whether this dichoptic training targets on interocular suppression directly, or improves vision through high-level brain mechanisms.

Methods: Eleven adults with amblyopia first used amblyopic eyes (AEs) to perform contrast (n = 6) or orientation (n = 5) discrimination training, while resisting dichoptic noise masking from fellow eyes (FEs).

Occurrence, Distribution, and Potential Sources of Organophosphate Esters in Urban and Rural Surface Water in Shanghai, China.

In this study, the occurrence and distribution patterns of eight organophosphate esters (OPEs) were investigated in urban and rural surface water in a typical cosmopolitan city: Shanghai, China. In addition, concentration levels and removal efficiencies of seven sewage treatment plants were analyzed. The OPEs concentrations detected in urban rivers were significantly higher than those detected in rural rivers.

Vernier learning with short- and long-staircase training and its transfer to a new location with double training.

We previously demonstrated that perceptual learning of Vernier discrimination, when paired with orientation learning at the same retinal location, can transfer completely to untrained locations (Wang, Zhang, Klein, Levi, & Yu, 2014; Zhang, Wang, Klein, Levi, & Yu, 2011). However, Hung and Seitz (2014) reported that the transfer is possible only when Vernier is trained with short staircases, but not with very long staircases. Here we ran two experiments to examine Hung and Seitz's conclusions.

Dichoptic training in adults with amblyopia: Additional stereoacuity gains over monocular training.

Dichoptic training is a recent focus of research on perceptual learning in adults with amblyopia, but whether and how dichoptic training is superior to traditional monocular training is unclear. Here we investigated whether dichoptic training could further boost visual acuity and stereoacuity in monocularly well-trained adult amblyopic participants. During dichoptic training the participants used the amblyopic eye to practice a contrast discrimination task, while a band-filtered noise masker was simultaneously presented in the non-amblyopic fellow eye.

Bottom-up and top-down influences at untrained conditions determine perceptual learning specificity and transfer.

Perceptual learning is often orientation and location specific, which may indicate neuronal plasticity in early visual areas. However, learning specificity diminishes with additional exposure of the transfer orientation or location via irrelevant tasks, suggesting that the specificity is related to untrained conditions, likely because neurons representing untrained conditions are neither bottom-up stimulated nor top-down attended during training. To demonstrate these top-down and bottom-up contributions, we applied a "continuous flash suppression" technique to suppress the exposure stimulus into sub-consciousness, and with additional manipulations to achieve pure bottom-up stimulation or top-down attention with the transfer condition.

The transfer of motion direction learning to an opposite direction enabled by double training: A reply to Liang et al. (2015).

A recent paper from our lab (Zhang & Yang, 2014) reports that perceptual learning of motion-direction discrimination, which is known to be specific to the trained direction, can transfer significantly, and sometimes completely, to an opposite direction, provided that the observers receive additional exposure of the opposite direction via an irrelevant task. However, in a newly published study, Zili Liu and collaborators claim that they cannot replicate our original double training results using identical procedures (Liang, Fahle, & Liu, 2015). Here we point out that the relevant data in Liang et al.

Perceptual Learning at a Conceptual Level.

Unlabelled: Humans can learn to abstract and conceptualize the shared visual features defining an object category in object learning. Therefore, learning is generalizable to transformations of familiar objects and even to new objects that differ in other physical properties. In contrast, visual perceptual learning (VPL), improvement in discriminating fine differences of a basic visual feature through training, is commonly regarded as specific and low-level learning because the improvement often disappears when the trained stimulus is simply relocated or rotated in the visual field.

Perceptual learning of basic visual features remains task specific with Training-Plus-Exposure (TPE) training.

Visual perceptual learning is known to be specific to the trained retinal location, feature, and task. However, location and feature specificity can be eliminated by double-training or TPE training protocols, in which observers receive additional exposure to the transfer location or feature dimension via an irrelevant task besides the primary learning task Here we tested whether these new training protocols could even make learning transfer across different tasks involving discrimination of basic visual features (e.g.

Development and validation of an UFLC-MS/MS method for enantioselectivity determination of d,l-thero-methylphenidate, d,l-thero-ethylphenidate and d,l-thero-ritalinic acid in rat plasma and its application to pharmacokinetic study.

A chiral UFLC-MS/MS method was established and validated for quantifying d-threo-methylphenidate (d-threo-MPH), l-threo-methylphenidate (l-threo-MPH), d-threo-ethylphenidate (d-threo-EPH), l-threo-ethylphenidate (l-threo-EPH) and d,l-threo-ritalinic acid (d,l-threo-RA) in rat plasma over the linearity range of 1-500ng/mL. Chiral separation was performed on an Astec Chirobiotic V2 column (5μm, 250×2.1mm) with isocratic elution using methanol containing 0.

Perceptual learning eases crowding by reducing recognition errors but not position errors.

When an observer reports a letter flanked by additional letters in the visual periphery, the response errors (the crowding effect) may result from failure to recognize the target letter (recognition errors), from mislocating a correctly recognized target letter at a flanker location (target misplacement errors), or from reporting a flanker as the target letter (flanker substitution errors). Crowding can be reduced through perceptual learning. However, it is not known how perceptual learning operates to reduce crowding.

Vernier perceptual learning transfers to completely untrained retinal locations after double training: a "piggybacking" effect.

Perceptual learning, a process in which training improves visual discrimination, is often specific to the trained retinal location, and this location specificity is frequently regarded as an indication of neural plasticity in the retinotopic visual cortex. However, our previous studies have shown that "double training" enables location-specific perceptual learning, such as Vernier learning, to completely transfer to a new location where an irrelevant task is practiced. Here we show that Vernier learning can be actuated by less location-specific orientation or motion-direction learning to transfer to completely untrained retinal locations.

Perceptual learning of contrast discrimination under roving: the role of semantic sequence in stimulus tagging.

Perceptual learning may occur when multiple contrasts are practiced in a fixed, but not in a roving (random), temporal sequence. However, learning may escape roving disruption when each contrast is assigned a letter tag (i.e.

Perceptual learning improves adult amblyopic vision through rule-based cognitive compensation.

Purpose: We investigated whether perceptual learning in adults with amblyopia could be enabled to transfer completely to an orthogonal orientation, which would suggest that amblyopic perceptual learning results mainly from high-level cognitive compensation, rather than plasticity in the amblyopic early visual brain.

Methods: Nineteen adults (mean age = 22.5 years) with anisometropic and/or strabismic amblyopia were trained following a training-plus-exposure (TPE) protocol.

Perceptual learning of motion direction discrimination transfers to an opposite direction with TPE training.

Motion direction learning is known to be specific to the trained direction. However, in this study we used our recently developed TPE (training-plus-exposure) method to demonstrate that motion direction learning can transfer to an opposite direction. Specifically, we first replicated the strict direction specificity of motion direction learning with a group of moving dots.

Whole report uncovers correctly identified but incorrectly placed target information under visual crowding.

Multiletter identification studies often find correctly identified letters being reported in wrong positions. However, how position uncertainty impacts crowding in peripheral vision is not fully understood. The observation of a flanker being reported as the central target cannot be taken as unequivocal evidence for position misperception because the observers could be biased to report a more identifiable flanker when failing to identify the central target.

Task relevancy and demand modulate double-training enabled transfer of perceptual learning.

Location-specific perceptual learning can be rendered transferrable to a new location with double training, in which feature training (e.g., contrast) is accompanied by additional location training at the new location even with an irrelevant task (e.

Rule-based learning explains visual perceptual learning and its specificity and transfer.

Visual perceptual learning models, as constrained by orientation and location specificities, propose that learning either reflects changes in V1 neuronal tuning or reweighting specific V1 inputs in either the visual cortex or higher areas. Here we demonstrate that, with a training-plus-exposure procedure, in which observers are trained at one orientation and either simultaneously or subsequently passively exposed to a second transfer orientation, perceptual learning can completely transfer to the second orientation in tasks known to be orientation-specific. However, transfer fails if exposure precedes the training.