Humans naturally have a sense of humor. Experiencing humor not only encourages social interactions, but also produces positive physiological effects on the human body, such as lowering blood pressure. Recent neuro-imaging studies have shown evidence for distinct mental state changes at work in people experiencing humor. However, the temporal characteristics of these changes remain elusive. In this paper, we objectively measured humor-related mental states from single-trial functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data obtained while subjects viewed comedy TV programs. Measured fMRI data were labeled on the basis of the lag before or after the viewer’s perception of humor (humor onset) determined by the viewer-reported humor experiences during the fMRI scans. We trained multiple binary classifiers, or decoders, to distinguish between fMRI data obtained at each lag from ones obtained during a neutral state in which subjects were not experiencing humor. As a result, in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the right temporal area, the decoders showed significant classification accuracies even at two seconds ahead of the humor onsets. Furthermore, given a time series of fMRI data obtained during movie viewing, we found that the decoders with significant performance were also able to predict the upcoming humor events on a volume-by-volume basis. Taking into account the hemodynamic delay, our results suggest that the upcoming humor events are encoded in specific brain areas up to about five seconds before the awareness of experiencing humor. Our results provide evidence that there exists a mental state lasting for a few seconds before actual humor perception, as if a viewer is expecting the future humorous events.
A great number of studies have suggested a variety of ways to get depth information from two dimensional images such as binocular disparity, shape-from-shading, size gradient/foreshortening, aerial perspective, and so on. Are there any other new factors affecting depth perception? A recent psychophysical study has investigated the correlation between image resolution and depth sensation of Cylinder images (A rectangle contains gradual luminance-contrast changes.). It was reported that higher resolution images facilitate depth perception. However, it is still not clear whether or not the finding generalizes to other kinds of visual stimuli, because there are more appropriate visual stimuli for exploration of depth perception of luminance-contrast changes, such as Gabor patch. Here, we further examined the relationship between image resolution and depth perception by conducting a series of psychophysical experiments with not only Cylinders but also Gabor patches having smoother luminance-contrast gradients. As a result, higher resolution images produced stronger depth sensation with both images. This finding suggests that image resolution affects depth perception of simple luminance-contrast differences (Gabor patch) as well as shape-from-shading (Cylinder). In addition, this phenomenon was found even when the resolution difference was undetectable. This indicates the existence of consciously available and unavailable information in our visual system. These findings further support the view that image resolution is a cue for depth perception that was previously ignored. It partially explains the unparalleled viewing experience of novel high resolution displays.
Viewing environment is an important factor to understand the mechanism of visually induced motion sickness (VIMS). In Experiment 1, we investigated whether the symptom of VIMS changed depending on viewing angle and physical display size. Our results showed that larger viewing angle made the symptom of sickness severer and nausea symptom changed depending on physical display size with identical viewing angles. In Experiment 2, we investigated effects of viewing angle and amplitude of oscillation. The results showed that the effects of viewing angle were not only related to amplitude of oscillation but also to the other factors of viewing angle.
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