Thinking on your feet: potentially enhancing phylogenetic tree learning accessibility through a kinaesthetic approach.

Background: Phylogenetics is one of the main methodologies to understand cross-cutting principles of evolution, such as common ancestry and speciation. Phylogenetic trees, however, are reportedly challenging to teach and learn. Furthermore, phylogenetics teaching methods traditionally rely solely on visual information, creating inaccessibility for people with visual impairment.

Towards Human Sensory Augmentation: A Cognitive Neuroscience Framework for Evaluating Integration of New Signals within Perception, Brain Representations, and Subjective Experience.

New wearable devices and technologies provide unprecedented scope to augment or substitute human perceptual abilities. However, the flexibility to reorganize brain processing to use novel sensory signals during early sensitive periods in infancy is much less evident at later ages, making integration of new signals into adults' perception a significant challenge. We believe that an approach informed by cognitive neuroscience is crucial for maximizing the true potential of new sensory technologies.

Potential factors contributing to observed sex differences in virtual-reality-induced sickness.

Virtual reality (VR) technology has been widely adopted for several professional and recreational applications. Despite rapid innovation in hardware and software, one of the long prevailing issues for end users of VR is the experience of VR sickness. Females experience stronger VR sickness compared to males, and previous research has linked susceptibility to VR sickness to the menstrual cycle (Munafo et al.

Self as a prior: The malleability of Bayesian multisensory integration to social salience.

Our everyday perceptual experiences are grounded in the integration of information within and across our senses. Due to this direct behavioural relevance, cross-modal integration retains a certain degree of contextual flexibility, even to social relevance. However, how social relevance modulates cross-modal integration remains unclear.

Correctly establishing evidence for cue combination via gains in sensory precision: Why the choice of comparator matters.

Studying how sensory signals from different sources (sensory cues) are integrated within or across multiple senses allows us to better understand the perceptual computations that lie at the foundation of adaptive behaviour. As such, determining the presence of precision gains - the classic hallmark of cue combination - is important for characterising perceptual systems, their development and functioning in clinical conditions. However, empirically measuring precision gains to distinguish cue combination from alternative perceptual strategies requires careful methodological considerations.

The Role of Sexual and Romantic Attraction in Human Mate Preferences.

Sex differences in mate preferences are ubiquitous, having been evidenced across generations and cultures. Their prevalence and persistence have compellingly placed them in the evolutionarily adaptive context of sexual selection. However, the psycho-biological mechanisms contributing to their generation and maintenance remain poorly understood.

The power of the self: Anchoring information processing across contexts.

A stable self-representation has an intrinsically beneficial connotation for information processing: it allows the individual to flexibly adapt to different contexts, while prioritizing information that pertains to the own immediate survival. Indeed, many studies have shown how linking arbitrary information to physical or psychological aspects of the self leads to pervasive effects on our decision-making and even our perception. However, the evidence we have gained so far stems from isolated aspects of the self, and varying measures across studies and different levels of processing make results difficult to compare.

Social relevance modulates multisensory integration.

When interacting with the environment, humans exhibit robust biases toward information that pertains to themselves: Self-relevant information is processed faster and yields more accurate responses than information linked to others. Recent studies have shown that simple social associations can lead to the instant deployment of this benefit in the processing of abstract stimuli. However, how self-prioritization evolves across the processing hierarchy has been a subject of intense debate.

The Role of Vision in the Emergence of Mate Preferences.

Cross-cultural research has repeatedly demonstrated sex differences in the importance of partner characteristics when choosing a mate. Men typically report higher preferences for younger, more physically attractive women, while women typically place more importance on a partner's status and wealth. As the assessment of such partner characteristics often relies on visual cues, this raises the question whether visual experience is necessary for sex-specific mate preferences to develop.

Efficiency of Sensory Substitution Devices Alone and in Combination With Self-Motion for Spatial Navigation in Sighted and Visually Impaired.

Human adults can optimally combine vision with self-motion to facilitate navigation. In the absence of visual input (e.g.

Late- but not early-onset blindness impairs the development of audio-haptic multisensory integration.

Integrating different senses to reduce sensory uncertainty and increase perceptual precision can have an important compensatory function for individuals with visual impairment and blindness. However, how visual impairment and blindness impact the development of optimal multisensory integration in the remaining senses is currently unknown. Here we first examined how audio-haptic integration develops and changes across the life span in 92 sighted (blindfolded) individuals between 7 and 70 years of age.

Active touch facilitates object size perception in children but not adults: A multisensory event related potential study.

In order to increase perceptual precision the adult brain dynamically combines redundant information from different senses depending on their reliability. During object size estimation, for example, visual, auditory and haptic information can be integrated to increase the precision of the final size estimate. Young children, however, do not integrate sensory information optimally and instead rely on active touch.

Effects can precede their cause in the sense of agency.

The sense of agency, i.e., the feeling that one׳s action is the cause of an external sensory event, involves causal inference based on the predicted sensory outcome of a motor act.