When a different pattern is presented to each eye, the perceived image spontaneously alternates between the two patterns (binocular rivalry); the dynamics of these bistable alternations are known to be stochastic. Examining multistable binocular rivalry (involving four dominant percepts), we demonstrated path dependence and on-line adaptation, which were equivalent whether perceived patterns we...

Most people prefer to use their right eye for viewing. New evidence reveals that this dominance is much more plastic than that for one hand or foot: it changes from one eye to the other depending on angle of gaze. Remarkably, sighting dominance depends on the hand being directed towards the visual target.

When two moving gratings are superimposed in normal viewing they often combine to form a pattern that moves with a single direction of motion. Here, we investigated whether the same mechanism underlies pattern motion when drifting gratings are presented independently to the two eyes. We report that, with relatively large circular grating patches (4 deg), there are periods of monocular dominance...

We describe a modification to a standard correlation model for the development of the geniculocortical projection that relays visual input to the visual cortex. The modification is to include threshold-activation of cortical cells as opposed to linear activation and it is shown that this can account for topographic map refinement (TMR). This contrasts with other models that require cortical cel...

Two meta-analyses of 66 behavioral studies examined variables influencing functional cerebral lateralization of each language of brain-intact bilingual adults. Functional lateralization was found to be primarily influenced by age of onset of bilingualism: bilinguals who acquired both languages by 6 years of age showed bilateral hemispheric involvement for both languages, whereas those who acqui...

We present an analytical approach for studying the coupled development of ocular dominance and orientation preference columns. Using this approach we demonstrate that ocular dominance segregation can induce the stabilization and even the production of pinwheels by their crystallization in two types of periodic lattices. Pinwheel crystallization depends on the overall dominance of one eye over t...

A dominance hierarchy is an important feature of the social organisation of group living animals. Although formal and/or agonistic dominance has been found in captive wolves and free-ranging dogs, applicability of the dominance concept in domestic dogs is highly debated, and quantitative data are scarce. Therefore, we investigated 7 body postures and 24 behaviours in a group of domestic dogs fo...

Dominance hierarchy influences the life quality of social animals, and its definition should in principle be based on the outcome of agonistic interactions. However, defining and comparing the dominance profile of social groups is difficult due to the different dominance measures used and because no one measure explains it all. We applied different analytical methods to winner-loser sociomatric...

Since the 1 930s the common house gecko, Hemidactylus frenatus, a sexual species, has been inadvertently introduced to many tropical Pacific islands. Using markrecapture censuses and visual gecko searches we found that Lepidodactylus lugubris, an asexual gecko previously common on these islands, is nearly 800% more abundant on buildings in the urban/suburban environment on islands that lack H. ...