Phantom touch illusion, an unexpected phenomenological effect of tactile gating in the absence of tactile stimulation.

We report the presence of a tingling sensation perceived during self-touch without physical stimulation. We used immersive virtual reality scenarios in which subjects touched their body using a virtual object. This touch resulted in a tingling sensation corresponding to the location touched on the virtual body.

Quantifying the alignment error and the effect of incomplete somatosensory feedback on motor performance in a virtual brain-computer-interface setup.

Invasive brain-computer-interfaces (BCIs) aim to improve severely paralyzed patient's (e.g. tetraplegics) quality of life by using decoded movement intentions to let them interact with robotic limbs.

SpikeDeep-classifier: a deep-learning based fully automatic offline spike sorting algorithm.

Advancements in electrode design have resulted in micro-electrode arrays with hundreds of channels for single cell recordings. In the resulting electrophysiological recordings, each implanted electrode can record spike activity (SA) of one or more neurons along with background activity (BA). The aim of this study is to isolate SA of each neural source.

Does Holistic Processing Require a Large Brain? Insights From Honeybees and Wasps in Fine Visual Recognition Tasks.

The expertise of humans for recognizing faces is largely based on holistic processing mechanism, a sophisticated cognitive process that develops with visual experience. The various visual features of a face are thus glued together and treated by the brain as a unique stimulus, facilitating robust recognition. Holistic processing is known to facilitate fine discrimination of highly similar visual stimuli, and involves specialized brain areas in humans and other primates.

Conceptualization of relative size by honeybees.

The ability to process visual information using relational rules allows for decisions independent of the specific physical attributes of individual stimuli. Until recently, the manipulation of relational concepts was considered as a prerogative of large mammalian brains. Here we show that individual free flying honeybees can learn to use size relationship rules to choose either the larger or smaller stimulus as the correct solution in a given context, and subsequently apply the learnt rule to novel colors and shapes providing that there is sufficient input to the long wavelength (green) photoreceptor channel.