Activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary adrenal axis in response to a verbal fluency task and associations with task performance.

Speech fluency can be impaired in stressful situations. In this study, it was investigated whether a verbal fluency task by itself, i.e.

Evaluation of the socially evaluated cold-pressor group test (SECPT-G) in the general population.

Background: In stress research, economic instruments for introducing acute stress responses are needed. In this study, we investigated whether the socially evaluated cold-pressor group test (SECPT-G) induces salivary alpha-amylase (sAA) and/or cortisol responses in the general population and whether this is associated with anthropometric, experimental, and lifestyle factors.

Methods: A sample of 91 participants from the general population was recruited.

Spatial competition on the master-saliency map.

The saliency map model (Itti and Koch, 2000) is a hierarchically structured computational model, simulating visual saliency processing. Iso-feature processing on feature maps and conspicuity maps precedes cross-dimensional signal processing on the master map, where the most salient location of the visual field is selected. This texture segmentation study focuses on a possible spatial structure on the master map.

Texture segmentation: do the processing units on the saliency map increase with eccentricity?

The saliency map is a computational model and has been constructed for simulating human saliency processing, e.g. pop-out target detection (e.

Spatial distance between target and irrelevant patch modulates detection in a texture segmentation task.

In three texture segmentation experiments a target patch had to be detected. We studied the impact of a task-irrelevant patch in the backward mask on detection performance, and especially the modulating effects of its spatial distance to the target. It was assumed that the signals of the two texture irregularities interact as a function of their spatial distance.