Mechanisms of adverse drug reactions to biologics.

Biologics encompass a broad range of therapeutics that include proteins and other products derived from living systems. Although the multiplicity of target organs often seen with new chemical entities is generally not seen with biologics, they can produce significant adverse reactions. Examples include IL-12 and an anti-CD28 antibody that resulted in patient deaths and/or long stays in intensive care units.

Seeing, sensing, and scrutinizing.

Large changes in a scene often become difficult to notice if made during an eye movement, image flicker, movie cut, or other such disturbance. It is argued here that this change blindness can serve as a useful tool to explore various aspects of vision. This argument centers around the proposal that focused attention is needed for the explicit perception of change.

Perceived object shape affects the perceived direction of self-movement.

The 'direct-perception' model of heading perception posits that heading is computed directly from optic flow without an intervening structural representation of environmental layout. Here, I give an example in which such a representation is seen to play a role in the interpretation of optic flow. Manipulating the outline of concave objects to give an erroneous percept of convexity caused the perceived direction of heading during a stimulated approach to change as well.

Early completion of occluded objects.

We show that early vision can use monocular cues to rapidly complete partially-occluded objects. Visual search for easily-detected fragments becomes difficult when the completed shape is similar to others in the display; conversely, search for fragments that are difficult to detect becomes easy when the completed shape is distinctive. Results indicate that completion occurs via the occlusion-triggered removal of occlusion edges and linking of associated regions.