Tuesday, 5 December 2017

The rhythms of perception: how we perceive reality

PNAS published the results of a study conducted by Luca Ronconi and David Melcher of CIMeC

Versione stampabile

Research on the brain, to discover its deepest and most remote functioning mechanisms, never stops. A recent study focused on the brain’s processing speeds or, in other words, on the coexistence of different rhythms of brain activity that influence perception. 

The study is part of the ERC project "Construction of perceptual space-time" and has been recently published in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a prestigious publication and the official scientific journal of the United States National Academy of Sciences.

The paper, whose title is “Multiple oscillatory rhythms determine the temporal organization of perception", is available in open access.

Luca Ronconi, research fellow at CIMeC, the Center for Mind/Brain Sciences of the University of Trento, is the leading author of the paper, which is co-authored by David Melcher, principal investigator of the ERC project and Professor at CIMeC.

The way the brain collects and processes visual stimuli is crucial to respond efficiently, and therefore to avoid danger, move in a given direction, and so on. To reduce the complexity of our sensory environment, our system of perception processes the flow of information at regular intervals.

More details in the press release (in italian).