Neural Correlates of Preference: A Transmodal Validation Study

Visual preference of plant features in different living environments using eye tracking and EEG

Plants play a very important role in landscape construction. In order to explore whether different living environment will affect people's preference for the structural features of plant organs, this study examined 26 villagers and 33 college students as the participants, and pictures of leaves, flowers and fruits of plants as the stimulus to conduct eye-tracking and EEG detection experiments. We found that eye movement indicators can explain people's visual preferences, but they are unable to find differences in preferences between groups. EEG indicators can make up for this deficiency, which further reveals the difference in psychological and physiological responses between the two groups when viewing stimuli. The final results show that the villagers and the students liked leaves best, preferring aciculiform and leathery leaves; solitary, purple and capitulum flowers; and medium-sized, spathulate, black and pear fruits. In addition, it was found that the overall attention of the villagers when watching stimuli was far lower than that of the students, but the degree of meditation was higher. With regard to eye movement and EEG, the total duration of fixations is highly positively correlated with the number of fixations, and the average pupil size has a weak negative correlation with attention. On the contrary, the average duration of fixations has a weak positive correlation with meditation. Generally speaking, we believe that Photinia×fraseri, Metasequoia glyptostroboides, Photinia serratifolia, Koelreuteria bipinnata and Cunninghamia lanceolata are superior landscape building plants in rural areas and on campuses; Pinus thunbergii, Myrica rubra, Camellia japonica and other plants with obvious features and bright colours are also the first choice in rural landscapes; and Yulania biondii, Cercis chinensis, Hibiscus mutabilis and other plants with simple structures are the first choice in campus landscapes. This study is of great significance for selecting plants for landscape construction and management according to different environments and local conditions.

Emotion Elicitation through Vibrotactile Stimulation as an Alternative for Deaf and Hard of Hearing People: An EEG Study

Despite technological and accessibility advances, the performing arts and their cultural offerings remain inaccessible to many people. By using vibrotactile stimulation as an alternative channel, we explored a different way to enhance emotional processes produced while watching audiovisual media and, thus, elicit a greater emotional reaction in hearing-impaired people. We recorded the brain activity of 35 participants with normal hearing and 8 participants with severe and total hearing loss. The results showed activation in the same areas both in participants with normal hearing while watching a video, and in hearing-impaired participants while watching the same video with synchronized soft vibrotactile stimulation in both hands, based on a proprietary stimulation glove. These brain areas (bilateral middle frontal orbitofrontal, bilateral superior frontal gyrus, and left cingulum) have been reported as emotional and attentional areas. We conclude that vibrotactile stimulation can elicit the appropriate cortex activation while watching audiovisual media.

[Toward establishment of regenerative cell therapy for retinitis pigmentosa using iPS cell derived retinal sheet]

Retinitis pigmentosa (RP) is a group of hereditary diseases that involve loss of photoreceptors. There has been no established treatment for RP, and it is now the 2^nd leading cause of blindness in Japan. Previous clinical researches using human fetal retina transplantation suggested some functional recovery in vision, but it did not become a standard therapy because of ethical concerns for using fetus tissues. Invention of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) in 2006 and the establishment of retinal organoids induction protocol from ES/iPS cells have paved a way of cell therapy for RP without ethical concerns. Our team has shown that mouse iPSC derived retinas can survive and mature after subretinal transplantation to the end-stage retinal degeneration model mice. Further, human ESC derived retinas survived and matured in retinal degeneration monkey models. Recently, we have established a qualitative and quantitative evaluation tool for photoreceptor synapses, QUANTOS, and showed that photoreceptors in mouse iPSC derived retina can form photoreceptor synapses in a time dependent manner after transplantation. We are now moving toward 1^st in human clinical trial using iPSC derived retina for RP.