Standard models of perception are stimulus-driven, meaning that the external perceptual event drives the brain's perception-related activity. However, the tide may be turning: recent ideas suggest that our perceptual experiences and visually guided behaviors are influenced by top-down processes in the brain – specifically, the brain's predictions about the external world. Recently, scientists at University of Wisconsin–Madison demonstrated that perceptual expectations about when a stimulus will appear are instantiated in the brain by optimally configuring prestimulus alpha-band oscillations in order to optimize the effectiveness of subsequent neural processing. The researchers state that their findings provide direct evidence that forming temporal predictions about when a stimulus will appear can bias the phase of ongoing alpha-band oscillations (one of the dominant oscillations in the human brain) toward an optimal phase for visual processing, and so may be the means for the top-down control of visual processing guided by temporal predictions.
Google Reportedly Set to Launch Tool Revealing Battery Degradation Over Time for Phones and Tablets, Says Android Authority.
Pair it with the company's glucose monitoring patch for even more data.
Google and Samsung are partnering up to compile all our health data across Android devices in one place called Health Connect.
