After providing all the funding for The Brain from Top to Bottom for over 10 years, the CIHR Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction informed us that because of budget cuts, they were going to be forced to stop sponsoring us as of March 31st, 2013.

We have approached a number of organizations, all of which have recognized the value of our work. But we have not managed to find the funding we need. We must therefore ask our readers for donations so that we can continue updating and adding new content to The Brain from Top to Bottom web site and blog.

Please, rest assured that we are doing our utmost to continue our mission of providing the general public with the best possible information about the brain and neuroscience in the original spirit of the Internet: the desire to share information free of charge and with no adverstising.

Whether your support is moral, financial, or both, thank you from the bottom of our hearts!

Bruno Dubuc, Patrick Robert, Denis Paquet, and Al Daigen





Monday, 11 June 2012
The Phi Effect Is Not the Beta Effect!

illusionScience is not immune to historic errors that can be passed along for decades. One such error was the confusion of the phi effect with the beta effect, which persisted until Robert M. Steinman and his colleagues published their clarification in 2000.

The phi effect was first described in Experimental Studies on the Seeing of Motion, a book published in 1912 by Max Wertheimer, one of the fathers of Gestalt psychology. The problem was that in his book, Wertheimer did not describe the conditions for the appearance of the phi effect precisely. He said that this phenomenon occurs when two lines are projected on a screen in very close chronological succession, thus creating the impression (under certain observation conditions that he left undefined) that a fuzzily defined area the same colour as the background is moving between these two lines. (more…)

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