Latest International School for Advanced Studies Stories

International School of Advanced Studies (SISSA) We know the world through the sensory representations within our brain. Such "reconstruction" is performed through the electrical activation of neural cells, the code that contains the information that is constantly processed by the brain. If we wish to understand what are the rules followed by the representation of the world inside the brain we have to comprehend how electrical activation is linked to the sensory experience. For this...

Rodents recognize objects using sophisticated perceptive strategies Sight is such a spontaneous activity that we are unaware of the complexity of the brain mechanisms it implies. For instance, we easily recognize objects, which appear to look always the same, without realizing that we observe them from ever-changing points of view and that their image – the luminance profile cast onto the retina –varies significantly each time we look at them. To maintain such "invariance" in the...

A new organic 'ferroelectric,' economical and with low environmental impact, has been created The electronics industry has a remarkable impact on the environment, yet research is devising new solutions to reduce it. Among these, a new compound with an unutterable name, the diisopropylammonium bromide (DIPAB), a new ferroelectric material created by an international team of researchers that include Massimo Capone and Gianluca Giovannetti of Istituto Officina dei Materiali at CNR and of the...