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...

The neurophysiology underlying the Behavioral Activation and Behavioral Inhibition Systems (BAS and BIS) and the impact of the strength of these systems on affective processing have received increased attention over the last 25 years. Specifically, left-frontal brain regions have been implicated in BAS strength as well as the experience of positive-approach affect (such as happiness). Conversel...

Hereditary hemorrhagic telangectasia (HHT) or Rendu-Osler-Weber syndrome, is a rare genetic disorder with autosomal dominance and variable penetrance. The typical findings of the disease are telangiectasias in skin and mucous membranes, and arteriovenous malformations presenting in the organs like lung, intestine, brain and liver. It is characterized by the classic triad of recurrent epistaxis,...