Tag Archives: Bangor University

Poetry and the brain

It seems poetry goes deep into the brain. A Feb. 17, 2017 news item on ScienceDaily describes some blended poetry/brain research,

In 1932 T.S. Eliot famously argued, “Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.”

In a recent article published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, Professor Guillaume Thierry and colleagues at Bangor University [Maine, US] have demonstrated that we do indeed appear to have an unconscious appreciation of poetic construction.

A Feb. 20, 2017 Frontiers (publications) blog posting, which despite the publication date appears to have originated the news item, provides more detail,

“Poetry,” explains Professor Thierry “is a particular type of literary expression that conveys feelings, thoughts and ideas by accentuating metric constraints, rhyme and alliteration.”

However, can we appreciate the musical sound of poetry independent of its literary meaning?

To address this question the authors created sentence sample sets that either conformed or violated poetic construction rules of Cynghanedd — a traditional form of Welsh poetry. These sentences were randomly presented to study participants; all of whom were native welsh speakers but had no prior knowledge of Cynghanedd poetic form.

Initially participants were asked to rate sentences as either “good” or “not good” depending on whether or not they found them aesthetically pleasing to the ear. The study revealed that the participants’ brains implicitly categorized Cyngahanedd-orthodox sentences as sounding “good” compared to sentences violating its construction rules.

The authors also mapped Event-Related Brain Potential (ERP) in participants a fraction of a second after they heard the final word in a poetic construction. These elegant results reveal an electrophysiological response in the brain when participants were exposed to consonantal repetition and stress patterns that are characteristic of Cynghanedd, but not when such patterns were violated.

Interestingly the positive responses from the brain to Cynghanedd were present even though participants could not explicitly tell which of the sentences were correct and which featured errors of rhythm or sound repetitions.

Professor Thierry concludes, “It is the first time that we show unconscious processing of poetic constructs by the brain, and of course, it is extremely exciting to think that one can inspire the human mind without being noticed!”

So when you read a poem, if you feel something special but you cannot really pinpoint what it is, make no mistake, your brain loves it even if you don’t really know why.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Implicit Detection of Poetic Harmony by the Naïve Brain by Awel Vaughan-Evans, Robat Trefor, Llion Jones, Peredur Lynch, Manon W. Jones, and Guillaume Thierry. Front. Psychol., 25 November 2016 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01859

This paper has been published in an open access. journal.

While I appreciate the enthusiasm, I think it might be better to do more research before making grand statements about poetry and the brain. For example, are they positive these native Welsh speakers had never ever encountered the poetic form being studied? Would a French or Farsi or Mandarin or Russian or … speaker respond the same way to a poem from their own poetic traditions? Is the effect cross cultural? Does a translation make a difference? Are there only certain poetic forms that create the effect?  I look forward to hearing more about this research in the years to come.

Spider silk as a bio super-lens

Bangor University (Wales, UK) is making quite the impact these days. I’d never heard of the institution until their breakthrough with nanobeads (Sept. 7, 2016 posting) to break through a resolution barrier and now there’s a second breakthrough with their partners at Oxford University (England, UK). From an Aug. 19, 2016 news item on ScienceDaily (Note: A link has been removed),

Scientists at the UK’s Bangor and Oxford universities have achieved a world first: using spider-silk as a superlens to increase the microscope’s potential.

Extending the limit of classical microscope’s resolution has been the ‘El Dorado’ or ‘Holy Grail’ of microscopy for over a century. Physical laws of light make it impossible to view objects smaller than 200 nm — the smallest size of bacteria, using a normal microscope alone. However, superlenses which enable us to see beyond the current magnification have been the goal since the turn of the millennium.

Hot on the heels of a paper (Sci. Adv. 2 e1600901,2016) revealing that a team at Bangor University’s School of Electronic Engineering has used a nanobead-derived superlens to break the perceived resolution barrier, the same team has achieved another world first.

Now the team, led by Dr Zengbo Wang and in colloboration with Prof. Fritz Vollrath’s silk group at Oxford University’s Department of Zoology, has used a naturally occurring material — dragline silk of the golden web spider, as an additional superlens, applied to the surface of the material to be viewed, to provide an additional 2-3 times magnification.

This is the first time that a naturally occurring biological material has been used as a superlens.

An Aug. 19, 2016 Bangor University press release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, provides more information about the new work,

In the paper in Nano Letters (DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.6b02641, Aug 17 2016), the joint team reveals how they used a cylindrical piece of spider silk from the thumb sized Nephila spider as a lens.

Dr Zengbo Wang said:

“We have proved that the resolution barrier of microscope can be broken using a superlens, but production of manufactured superlenses invovles some complex engineering processes which are not widely accessible to other reserchers. This is why we have been interested in looking for naturally occurring superlenses provided by ‘Mother Nature’, which may exist around us, so that everyone can access superlenses.”

Prof Fritz Vollrath adds:

“It is very exciting to find yet another cutting edge and totally novel use for a spider silk, which we have been studying for over two decades in my laboratory.”

These lenses could be used for seeing and viewing previously ‘invisible’ structures, including engineered nano-structures and biological micro-structures as well as, potentially, native germs and viruses.

The natural cylindrical structure at a micron- and submicron-scale make silks ideal candidates, in this case, the individual filaments had diameters of one tenth of a thin human hair.

The spider filament enabled the group to view details on a micro-chip and a blue- ray disk which would be invisible using the unmodified optical microscope.

In much the same was as when you look through a cylindrical glass or bottle, the clearest image only runs along the narrow strip directly opposite your line of vision, or resting on the surface being viewed, the single filament provides a one dimensional viewing image along its length.

Wang explains:

“The cylindrical silk lens has advantages in the larger field-of-view when compared to a microsphere superlens. Importantly for potential commercial applications, a spider silk nanoscope would be robust and economical, which in turn could provide excellent manufacturing platforms for a wide range of applications.”

James Monks, a co-author on the paper comments: “it has been an exciting time to be able to develop this project as part of my honours degree in electronic engineering at Bangor University and I am now very much looking forward to joining Dr Wang’s team as a PhD student in nano-photonics.”

The researchers have provided a close up image with details,

Caption: (a) Nephila edulis spider in its web. (b) Schematic drawing of reflection mode silk biosuperlens imaging. The spider silk was placed directly on top of the sample surface by using a soft tape, which magnify underlying nano objects 2-3 times (c) SEM image of Blu-ray disk with 200/100 nm groove and lines (d) Clear magnified image (2.1x) of Blu-ray disk under spider silk superlens. Credit: Bangor University/ University of Oxford

Caption: (a) Nephila edulis spider in its web. (b) Schematic drawing of reflection mode silk biosuperlens imaging. The spider silk was placed directly on top of the sample surface by using a soft tape, which magnify underlying nano objects 2-3 times (c) SEM image of Blu-ray disk with 200/100 nm groove and lines (d) Clear magnified image (2.1x) of Blu-ray disk under spider silk superlens. Credit: Bangor University/ University of Oxford

Here’s a link to and a citation for the ‘spider silk’ superlens paper,

Spider Silk: Mother Nature’s Bio-Superlens by James N. Monks, Bing Yan, Nicholas Hawkins, Fritz Vollrath, and Zengbo Wang. Nano Lett., Article ASAP DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.6b02641 Publication Date (Web): August 17, 2016

Copyright © 2016 American Chemical Society

This paper is behind a paywall.

A new lens (made from nanobeads) for seeing subwavelength images at visible frequencies

The image which illustrates the research is quite intriguing but I don’t think it makes much sense until you read about the research. From an Aug. 12, 2016 news item on ScienceDaily,

Nanobeads are all around us- and are, some might argue, used too frequently in everything from sun-screen to white paint, but a new ground-breaking application is revealing hidden worlds.

A paper in Science Advances provides proof of a new concept, using new solid 3D superlenses to break through the scale of things previously visible through a microscope.

Illustrating the strength of the new superlens, the scientists describe seeing for the first time, the actual information on the surface of a Blue Ray DVD. That shiny surface is not as smooth as we think. Current microscopes cannot see the grooves containing the data- but now even the data itself is revealed.

Now the image,

(a) Conceptual drawing of nanoparticle-based metamaterial solid immersion lens (mSIL) (b) Lab made mSIL (c) SEM image of 60 nm sized imaging sample (d) corresponding superlens imaging of the 60 nm samples by the developed mSIL. Courtesy: Bangor University

(a) Conceptual drawing of nanoparticle-based metamaterial solid immersion lens (mSIL) (b) Lab made mSIL (c) SEM image of 60 nm sized imaging sample (d) corresponding superlens imaging of the 60 nm samples by the developed mSIL. Credit: ©BangorUniversity Fudan University

An Aug. 13, 2016 Bangor University press release (also on EurekAlert with an Aug. 12, 2016 publication date), which originated the news item, describes the work in more detail,

Led by Dr Zengbo Wang at Bangor University UK and Prof Limin Wu at Fudan University, China, the team created minute droplet-like lens structures on the surface to be examined. These act as an additional lens to magnify the surface features previously invisible to a normal lens.

Made of millions of nanobeads, the spheres break up the light beam. Each bead refracts the light, acting as individual torch-like minute beam. It is the very small size of each beam of light which illuminate the surface, extending the resolving ability of the microscope to record-breaking levels. The new superlens adds 5x magnification on top of existing microscopes.

Extending the limit of classical microscope’s resolution has been the ‘El Dorado’ or ‘Holy Grail’ of microscopy for over a century. Physical laws of light make it impossible to view objects smaller than 200 nm – the smallest size of bacteria, using a normal microscope alone. However, superlenses have been the new goal since the turn of the millennium, with various labs and teams researching different models and materials.

“We’ve used high-index titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanoparticles as the building element of the lens. These nanoparticles are able to bend light to a higher degree than water. To explain, when putting a spoon into a cup of this material, if it were possible, you’d see a larger bend where you spoon enters the material than you would looking at the same spoon in a glass of water,” Dr Wang says.

Nanoparticles splitting single incident beam into multiple=Nanoparticles splitting single incident beam into multiple beams which provides optical super-resolution in imaging.“Each sphere bends the light to a high magnitude and splits the light beam, creating millions of individual beams of light. It is these tiny light beams which enable us to view previously unseen detail.”

Wang believes that the results will be easily replicable and that other labs will soon be adopting the technology and using it for themselves.

The advantages of the technology is that the material, titanium dioxide, is cheap and readily available, and rather than buying a new microscope, the lenses are applied to the material to be viewed, rather than to the microscope.

“We have already viewed details to a far greater level than was previously possible. The next challenge is to adapt the technology for use in biology and medicine. This would not require the current use of a combination of dyes and stains and laser light- which change the samples being viewed. The new lens will be used to see germs and viruses not previously visible.”

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Three-dimensional all-dielectric metamaterial solid immersion lens for subwavelength imaging at visible frequencies by Wen Fan, Bing Yan, Zengbo Wang, and Limin Wu. Science Advances  12 Aug 2016: Vol. 2, no. 8, e1600901 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1600901

This paper is open access.