I Know That Nose
When you’re trying to recognize a face, the first thing you look at is the nose—whether you know it or not. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, showed subjects faces on a computer screen and tracked their eye movements. They found that most people look first just to the left of the nose, then to the center of the nose, then to the eyes. The first look was enough for people to recognize a face more than half the time, the second look increased accuracy, but the third did not—those two glances at the nose were enough. The researchers speculate that glancing at the center of the face makes it easiest to take in enough information about the whole face to enable recognition.  —Kurt Kleiner

Nanotech Meets Neuroscience
Carbon nanotubes, those smaller-than-microscopic cylinders made of superthin sheets of graphite, could be the go-to material of the future for correcting disrupted nerve wiring caused by traumatic brain or spinal cord injury. A Nature Nanotechnology study shows that the highly conductive nanotubes form tight connections with the cell membranes of neurons, increasing their electrical activity and speeding information flow—potentially useful for everything from improving deep-brain stimulation to developing neuroprosthetics.  —Nikhil Swaminathan

Car Character
Which of these cars is friendlier? A car can’t really be friendly, of course, but most people would choose the Nissan (right). In a recent study at the University of Vienna, participants perceived cars as more dominant, adult and hostile if the automobiles had a wider stance and slitlike headlights, such as the BMW has (left). They judged cars that had prominent windshields and rounder headlights to be more submissive, childlike and friendly. These traits may remind us of a baby’s larger forehead and eyes, says co-author Dennis Slice, a computational biologist at Florida State University.  —Rachel Mahan

Put on a Happy Face
Are the facial expressions we use to signify social emotions learned by observing others, or are they hardwired genetically? The latter, according to a study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that examined the reactions of athletes participating in judo competitions at the 2004 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The fighters, some of whom were blind and could not have picked up expressions through observation, all wore the same forced “social smile” when at the podium after having just lost a gold medal match.  —Nikhil Swaminathan

Value Vision
Our brain knows a valuable thing when we see it—even if we may not be consciously registering its worth, a recent Neuron study says. While having their brain scanned, volunteers repeatedly chose between two targets, winning money if they happened to pick the right one. As the experiment progressed, visual areas responded more strongly to the option that paid off more fre­quently; in fact, brain activity was a better indicator of which target was more profitable than a subject’s personal assessments were. The scientists say their results indicate that we may see valuable things more clearly than we see worthless objects.  —Nikhil Swaminathan

1 Comments

1. 1. svshepherd 09:14 AM 3/31/09

   It would be really great if these briefs included links back to the journal articles - or, if that's somehow impractical, included the first author's name.

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